Political Continuities in French Families: A New Perspective on an Old Controversy

Much dispute has characterized topic of transmission of political orientations within family.' In one domain, however, consensus has prevailed. The influence of family on formation of partisan orientations seemed unquestionable. This was a major finding because it was key to explaining stability of party system and of regime over time according to a very simple causal model: partisan transmission by parents ---+-continuity of partisan preferences from one generation to next ---+-stability of partisan orientations ---stability of party systems --and so forth. This schema certainly seemed true in United States and, by extension, in a number of other Western nations. France was typically offered as a counter example, as 1958 study by Converse and Dupeux apparently demonstrated.2 Converse and Dupeux were not primarily interested in political socialization processes; rather, they wanted to explain instability of French party system when compared with stability of American one. They were struck, however, by fact that only a minority of their French respondents (45 percent of those who did not refuse to answer question) expressed any attachment to a given party or broad They were equally impressed by fact that even fewer of respondents could characterize even approximately partisanship of their fathers. Among French only 26 percent (against 86 percent in United States) could link their father with any party or with the vaguest of tendance. They then concluded, Where socialization processes have been same in two societies results in current behavior appear to be same, in rates of formation of identification. The strong cross-national differences lie in socialization processes.z The major difference stems from fact that the French father is uncommunicative about his political behavior before his children,4 from