Category:Political parties in France

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Due to historic reasons, France doesn't divides parties into "liberals" and "conservatives" as in the US, but according to left-wing and right-wing. Thus, this categorization is used in order to avoid confusion (what US people call "liberal" is generally considered "center-left" in France, while what French people understand by "liberal" is a party that supports economic liberalism or neoliberalism, and this is generally considered in France as "right-wing").

Some few parties, such as the Radical Socialist Party may with difficulty enter one or the other category, because they have moved during their history (most left-wing parties have a tendency to go closer to the center and, in some cases, cross the threshold to become right-wing during their history). Thus, the Radical-Socialist Party is included in both categories (it has members which belong to the center-right and others to the center-left).

Parties that claim being "neither right nor left" are categorized in "right-wing parties" (left-wing parties never claim not to be left-wing; but some right-wing parties claim to be left-wing, this has been called sinistrisme by political scientists). Most eurosceptic parties are also "right-wing", apart from the Citizen and Republican Movement which is a "socialist euro-sceptic" party.

Furthermore, "Socialism" in France is a very large category, which includes social-democracy as well as communism (although "socialism" is usually thought today - in France - in opposition to "communism", having become a synonym of "social-democracy"), and may even be close in some cases to social-liberalism (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, member of the Socialist Party, represent such a trend). Finally, even the French Communist Party (PCF) may be considered social-democrat since it has participated in left-wing governments since François Mitterrand's 1981 election (like most left-wing parties, it has a tendency of getting closer to the center while the years pass).