Pierre Poujade

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Robert Poujade is an unrelated French politician.

Pierre Poujade (December 1, 1920 – August 27, 2003), born in Saint-Céré, was a French populist politician after whom the Poujadist movement was named.

Poujadism flourished most vigorously in the last years of the French Fourth Republic, and articulated the economic interests and grievances of shopkeepers and other proprietor-managers of small businesses facing economic and social change. The movement's ideological issues were: lower taxes, corporatism, and the denouncing of politicians and media; later, the movement grew increasingly nationalist, antisemitic, xenophobic, and critical of parliamentary institutions.

The political arm of the movement was the UDCA, which secured 53 seats in the National Assembly in 1956. The youngest member of parliament, elected on an UDCA list, was Jean-Marie Le Pen. However Poujade later distanced himself from Le Pen; and after the French Fifth Republic began in 1958 under Charles de Gaulle's presidency, Poujade and his party largely faded from view. In the 1981 and 1988 presidential elections he favoured François Mitterrand, while in the 1995 election he voiced his support for Jacques Chirac.

The word poujadisme now has in France the general meaning of some political ideology that articulates the worries of some part of the population facing social or economic change, and that blame the problems on the "establishment" and the political system. Examples of political groups with strong poujadist leanings include Le Pen's own National Front. Others, such as the Third Way, have also claimed to be heirs of the poujadist tradition.