In 1981, in uneasy alliance with the Communists and amidst a storm of revolutionary rhetoric, the French Socialist party came to power for the first time since the founding of the Fifth Republic. The only full-length study of the subject yet written, this book looks at the realities beyond the rhetoric--how the Left came to power, what the Socialists achieved in the way of social change, where they failed to diverge from policies associated with the...