In a strangely climactic ending, the conclusion of my research on the sociopolitical climate of France has perfectly coincided with the end of my career as a Francophile. Returning from 9 months abroad in Paris and now on a hiatus (temporarily, at least) from French classrooms, concluding two years of research on the French nation and its people feels much like completing a marathon. Though I’ve ultimately come to recognize that, to a certain degree, I will always be limited by my outsider’s bias when studying the French people, since January I feel that I have learned an enormous amount about France as a nation, eventually gaining what is (I hope) an invaluable insight into the nuances of French society and politics. It is from this unique position—as an outsider with insight—that I’ve concluded my study of France.

In my Freshman Monroe project, I examined the meticulous, ongoing preservation of the French language, one of the clearest examples of the purist concept of the French culture and nationality. Building from this idea of a rigid sense of the French national identity, in this final stage of my study of France, I explored the place of cultural traditionalism and its effect on the determined nationalism which has come to dominate the 21st century French politics. The case of the National Front—the face of French cultural traditionalism political protectionism—has provided an extraordinary lens through which to explore the whether a country can—or even should—defend its national identity in the face of supra-nationalization, or whether the compromise of nationality is ultimately inevitable.

Even as a recovering Francophile, I’ll be just as keen as any European to see the outcome of the French Presidential elections next April.

In researching the overwhelming rise in popularity of the French National Front in the highly-contentious race to the 2012 French Presidential elections, I was repeatedly shocked by the seemingly-overnight transformation of this once-radical rightwing party to a leading favorite amongst the general electorate.

Within a mere matter of months, long-escalating French domestic malcontent has exploded in the form of a dramatic resurgence in popularity of the rightwing—thoroughly upending national politics and unnerving mainstream politicians on all sides of the race. While the French left, particularly the Socialist opposition, has been left in ideological and factional disarray as leftwing elites battle to reassert control over political discourse in Europe, the National Front has managed to rebrand itself as a far-right party positioned in line with the mainstream. In effect, the recent European has been the greatest imaginable publicity for the already highly-visible National Front, lending undeniable credence to the anti-EU platform which has for years anchored the party’s platform.

As the daughter of the National Front’s founder, Marine Le Pen—the new leader of this revamped National Front—has crafted a unique plan of attack through which the once-radical party has finally begun to achieve the widespread support it has always wanted. Instead of xenophobia, Le Pen suggests protectionism; instead of racism, she warns against the clash of cultures—attitudes which are precisely in-step with the demands of the French general electorate.

Perhaps most notable of all, Le Pen is also a highly outspoken Euroskeptic and extremely critical of the loss of French sovereignty to the European Union, and wants France to use the French franc instead of the euro—a calculated move designed to help France emerge from the global financial fallout. In an effort even further cement support amongst mainstream French citizens who have seen a drop in their standard of living due to the economy, Le Pen plans to increase public sector wages, which are currently frozen, and cut France’s fuel tax by 20 percent. Le Pen has stated repeatedly that she believe is that it is unreasonable, almost criminal, for the French public to bear the brunt of government debt crises and the resulting market turmoil with reduced public services and purchasing power—to which the French voters themselves, in the past largely indifferent to the multi-billion euro bailouts to debt-laden euro zone states, but now finally tired of stubbornly high unemployment and shrunken purchasing power, have responded in an unprecedented outpouring of support for the rigidly protectionist platform of the National Front.

Two-hundred years ago, the days of Western multi-national empires were numbered: across Europe, radical intellectuals and the general public alike rose to question the old monarchial order, culminating in the eventual re-drawing of the political map of the entire Continent. Historians today agree that one of the foremost catalysts for this monumental political transformation of Europe at the close of turn of the  18^th century was the French Revolution, which, by obliterating the traditional structures of power in France and its territories, paved the way for the modern nation-state. Thus, while revolutionary armies quickly spread the innovative theories of liberalism and national self-determinism to Germany, Italy, Romania, Poland and many more new countries in a matter of mere decades, the most cherished Enlightenment notions of nationalism—of intellectual awakening through nationhood, and cultural self-expression through a distinct national identity—remained the conception, and thus the credit, of the French people.

A century after the French Revolution, these ideals of European nationalism had been exported not only to Ireland and Sweden on the periphery of the Continent, but worldwide as well: in an age when dynastic and religious allegiances were fast declining, a strong sense of nationality and a rich cultural identity were considered to be one of the fundamental characteristics of a modern society. Throughout the 20^th century, the careful construct of a uniquely French culture therefore played—and continues to this day to play—an essential role in how the French  perceive themselves as a nation, as well as the way in which France as a country is seen by the rest of the world.

Using information learned in coursework while studying abroad, in conjunction with further research in the United States, and drawing from my own experiences and observations in Paris, I ultimately focused my study of these rigidly defined —yet vastly complex— French sociocultural norms and politics on the modern French National Front, using the party’s emerging importance in the race to the 2012 Presidential Elections as a lens through which to examine the effects of the highly fixed national identity on France’s international political position—above all emphasizing the ramifications of France’s traditionalist self-identity on its place in an increasingly globalized world community.