Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.velo9x>
Abstract
Municipal socialism from 1900 to 1939 represents a decisive political experience for the socialists, and yet, it has long remained among the relatively under-researched aspects of French socialism. In the communes they governed, socialist mayors acquired their first experience in political power, an experience that proved more lasting than the exercise of power at the national level. In the daily management of local affairs, socialists revealed themselves to be reformers in their practices as well as in their discourse. They conducted ambitious social programs to transform their communes into islands of socialism, which sometimes lead to close cooperation with the so-called bourgeois institutions, not least the Prefect. Mayors accepted and practiced reformism every day even though the official party doctrine prohibited it. Therefore they distanced themselves from a party which doctrine no longer corresponded to their daily political practice. With their clientèle networks and a political legitimacy extending beyond the confines of their political party, the socialist mayors displayed an independence verging at times on disobedience towards their own political party which desperately needed them for its own electoral and financial survival.