Third Force (France)

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The Third Force (Troisième Force) was a French coalition during the Fourth Republic (1947-1958) which gathered the Socialist SFIO party, the UDSR center-right party, the Radicals, the Christian-Democrat Popular Republican Movement (MRP) and other centerist politicians, opposed both to the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Gaullist movement. The Third Force governed France from 1947 to 1951, succeeding to the tripartisme alliance between the SFIO, the MRP and the PCF. The Third Force was also supported by the conservative National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), which succeeded in having its most popular figure, Antoine Pinay, named president of the Council in 1952, a year after the dissolving of the Third Force coalition.

The Third Force was composed after the eviction of Maurice Thorez, vice-premier, and four others Communist ministers from Paul Ramadier's government during the May 1947 crisis. Presidents Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and then François Mitterrand unsuccessfully tried to revive the Third Force, in particular following the rupture between the Socialist Party (PS) and the PCF in 1984. However, each time, the most important right-wing party, the Rally for the Republic (RPR), opposed itself to such an alliance. This strategy is now followed by François Bayrou and the Union for French Democracy (UDF), a conservative Christian-Democrat party.