Talk:La France Insoumise

name lfi finally as a far left party as it was named such by MINISTRY OF INTERIOR

and that has been sourced Venis067067067 (talk) 11:21, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

now called by the french president a far left party Venis067067067 (talk) 11:52, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

But how relevant is the opinion of politicians who are hostile to the political party in question? Obviously, politicians from opposing political parties will criticize each other, including by calling each other extremists. An encyclopedia should use the analysis of political scientists rather than the diatribes of political figures... Eleventh1 (talk) 19:12, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

opinion of politicians ? it's the MINISTRY OF INTERIOR who classifiés parties, you can't get more of a reliable source than a state ministry which is btw, impartial. Venis067067067 (talk) 09:01, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

and also there's no consensus from political scientists, some call it far left and some left, so at least add "left wing to far left" why are we just choosing left??? what's the logic behind that? there's plenty of political scientists who do think this party is far left and that can be sourced if you want me to Venis067067067 (talk) 09:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

The minister is by definition partisan, since they are indeed a member of a party that is opposed to LFI. The sourcing that should be used is that of scholarly articles by subject matter experts, not opinions of politicians from opposing parties. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 11:28, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

You only take into account the opinions of political scientists who support La France Insoumise (Gaël Brustier, Pierre Martin, Pascal Perrineau), and you reject the views of political scientists such as Pierre Vercauteren, Martin Deleixhe, and Jean-Loup Amselle, among others, who classify it as far-left.

These people have often done similar work and hold comparable positions, yet you choose to suppress information.

They are all sme. Deremig (talk) 09:58, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

As of today, who designates LFI as far-left:

- some political scientists (Pierre Vercauteren, Nonna Mayer, Henri Weber, Federico Tarragoni, Martin Deleixhe, Jean-Loup Amselle, Dominique Reynié)

- the President and the Minister of the Interior of France

- 70% of the population (https://www.ifop.com/article/le-regard-des-francais-sur-la-classification-a-lextreme-gauche-de-la-france-insoumise)

Who designates LFI as left:

- some political scientists (Philippe Buton, Christine Pina, Aurélien Dubuisson, Paolo Stuppia, Pascal Perrineau, Luc Rouban) Deremig (talk) 10:13, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

If there is reliable sourcing supporting the label, please provide it. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 11:27, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Column by SME Matthieu Hocque : https://www.lejdd.fr/politique/lfi-classee-a-lextreme-gauche-fin-du-privilege-rouge-et-debut-de-celui-de-lextreme-centre-166737

Debate between two SME

https://www.liberation.fr/politique/lfi-a-lextreme-gauche-le-point-de-vue-de-deux-chercheurs-20260211_DW6CABXXOBF3RFO4MIR54DHZ4Q/

It is important to understand that, since the former sources of the article, LFI’s program and actions have changed. Two years ago, I would not have tried to label it as far-left, but now, violent actions and antisemitism pushes me to act so that the world understands the situation ~2026-10706-02 (talk) 12:00, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, one of those is just a news article reporting on the classification by the Ministry of the Interior and the other is an opinion piece from a tabloid that has been accused of having a far-right editorial stance. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 12:06, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Can you read french or not? Neither of these article are directly reporting the classification. It's SME analysing the classification, exactly the things you asked. You didn't even bother to read. Don't worry between the ballot papers classified as far-left and the new classification by the Council of State coming soon, you will not be able to sidestep the issue.

And again, you are calling a legitimate source as a tabloid, because you like censure. ~2026-10697-83 (talk) 14:57, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

If Le Pen's National Rally is called far-right despite its compromise policies and years of leaning toward the center, then the LFI deserves even more the label of far-left.

Wikipedia is biased at this point and favors the left, since it applies such blatant double standards. ~2026-10786-19 (talk) 13:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia is based on reliable sourcing, not the personal opinions of its contributors. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 13:39, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Sources can also be biased, as you yourself admitted when you called the Ministry of Internal Affairs an unreliable source because it's run by a different party.

You, however, choose political scientists who often openly hold leftist views, completely ignoring those who classify the LFI as far left. ~2026-10786-19 (talk) 14:03, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Sources can also be biased, correct, that's why there is ore-established criteria for what classifies as a reliable source. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 14:05, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Sorry @Eleventh1, I should have checked if there was a discussion beforehand, and my truncated edit message did not help make my point clear.

However, what I haven't seen in this debate is their links to the violent and radical group Jeune Garde antifasciste (if you can read French), which should in corroboration with the judgment by the minister of the interior warrant at least the mention of far-left aside "left".

BTW @~2026-10706-02 I don't believe Le JDD is a reliable source (and I say it even more readily as I know personally the author :-)). Hplotter (talk) 15:52, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi, it's alright, I understand that this page is difficult to navigate with all the different sections. I think that the ties with the Jeune Garde can be mentioned in the article as Raphaël Arnault is an obvious link between them (I can indeed read French but there are also English-language sources on this topic: for example, there were three recent articles about this affair in the Guardian).

However, this does not automatically change the classification of the political party itself. For instance, in the 60s and 70s, there was a very violent group called the SAC (Service d'Action Civique) associated with the Gaullists (UNR, then UDR, then RPR), yet these political parties were never classified as far-right (and for good reasons). I understand that people are very passionate about this issue but, in an encyclopaedia, we should try to be as dispassionate as possible. Eleventh1 (talk) 20:22, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

That's a good point, though it doesn't fundamentally change my mind, as there are enough RS classifying it as far left to at least mention it. Hplotter (talk) 14:44, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

it's pretty clear that these people only listen to political scientists that fit their beliefs, lmao, wikipedia is known for being extremely biased. if we were unbiased we would list LFI as far left Venis067067067 (talk) 10:19, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Left to far-left is ok, because it's the reality, the last version was enough ~2026-10597-40 (talk) 11:14, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

my brother in christ people need to stop changing it Venis067067067 (talk) 08:14, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Decorum

• Uninvolved Comment As for the factual aspect, I agree with the users who say Wikipedia should categorize LFI as far-left. There is ample sourcing for that and it is hard to see how it could even be contested (PS and PCF are both "left" and LFI is clearly far to the left of both). That said, I really must urge some users above to revisit their line of argumentation. Personal accusations are never acceptable, not in any situation. Generic accusations of "bias" are also not helpful. In short, if you want to categorize LFI as far left, you need to understand that you making that argument has no bearing (same as if I make that argument). What you need to do is to cool down, discuss rationally without emotional outbursts, and factually present the reliable sources that categorize LFI as far left. Jeppiz (talk) 12:22, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks for this comment. I just want to point out (absolutely not directed at you) that nobody in this discussion has provided WP:RS that support the label, the only two sources are two opinion pieces published on news websites, and there aren't any journals or peer-reviewed studies that have been brought up. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 12:36, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't personally have an opinion on the party being left-wing or far-left, I simply follow the sources, which state both. Intellectual honesty therefore commands us to mention "left-wing to far-left" both in the infobox (at "political position") and in the introductory sentence. The [A] note in the infobox sums this up well. PalleyCov2030 (talk) 12:42, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

There has still been no demonstration in this discussion of sources that demonstrate due weight to include it. The note in the infobox mentions the label, and unless it can be shown that there are a significant amount of reliable sources using the label, I don't see anything compelling us to include it in wikivoice. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 12:46, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

In addition to the ones mentioned by Deremig:

https://www.lenouveleconomiste.fr/financial-times/jean-luc-melenchon-la-conflictualite-est-le-fondement-de-la-gauche/

https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/melenchon-et-le-pen-renvoient-a-une-vision-ultra-simple-de-la-societe-21-04-2017-6872514.php

https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/elections-legislatives-choquee-par-la-purge-au-sein-de-lfi-tondelier-convoque-les-instances-d-eelv-20240615

https://www.tf1info.fr/politique/la-france-insoumise-n-est-pas-d-extreme-gauche-assure-manuel-bompard-l-avis-d-un-historien-2252956.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnkkng554w8o Hplotter (talk) 17:18, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

who doesn't agree to name lfi as "left wing to far left" and state your arguments as to why, we need a consensus

please Venis067067067 (talk) 08:16, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi, while I agree that we should discuss the topic on this talk page, could you use a presentation similar to the "RfC: How should the political position of La France Insoumise be described?" sections (parts 1 and 2), so that contributors can choose between the different options? Could you also please take into account what has already been said in these sections to avoid endless repetition? And, last but not least, if you and other contributors could provide scholarly/academic sources to support their position, that would be great. Thanks Eleventh1 (talk) 10:03, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: if you wanted to establish a proper consensus here, this isn't the way to go about it, opening up a neutrally-worded WP:RFC is the appropriate method in this scenario. Also, WP:ONUS is on the contributors who wish to add content to establish a consensus. So far, there haven't been any compelling arguments to do so nor any reliable non-opinion piece sources provided. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 21:43, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

RFC, 2nd edition in light of the reclassification of the Minister of the interior.

Should the political position of La France Insoumise be described as:

1. Left-wing
2. Radical left-wing
3. Far-left
4. Left-wing to far-left
5. Left-wing to radical left-wing
6. Radical left-wing to far-left

Hplotter (talk) 17:35, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

C, D or F Hplotter (talk) 17:37, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

C Venis067067067 (talk) 19:04, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

D, as the government classifies it far-left, but there is ongoing debate about it being left-wing or far-left, as for example mentioned here. PalleyCov2030 (talk) 01:54, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

A is the existing consensus and I would support to keep it. If we really needed to change it, E would be the most descriptive and my second choice (I think C and F send the wrong message as they liken LFI to Trotskyist or anarchist groups. This creates confusion as their recent political strategy was the opposite of theirs, as they tried to create a large left-wing coalition for electoral purposes, a typical strategy of social democratic parties, not of the far left). When we look at scholarly discourse on the topic, La France Insoumise is consistently described as left-wing, with 'populist' or 'populism' being the most common additional terms used. I am not a fan of these terms, but they are well documented: for instance here, here, here and here (note that I have taken as examples the first few relevant results on Google Scholar, so to not be biased by choosing authors I already know and may agree or disagree with but, of course, a lot of other political scientists use the same terms) --Eleventh1 (talk) 10:02, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

A, the Minister of the Interior is not a reliable source, he is a politician from a party known to be hostile to LFI. Pre-established consensus was generally of the opinion that the sources that should be used for wikivoice claims on this article are scholarly and academic sources, as WP:NEWSORGs tend to be more loose with the term than academic papers are, and I'm not aware of any notable amount of academic study that supports that conclusion. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 00:11, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

• C as news organizations are still considered reliable. My second choice would be any of these, except for A. Wikieditor662 (talk) 04:30, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

A or D. We have plenty of sources to maintain left-wing and it would not be due weight to leave something so well cited out of the infobox. Given scholars don't agree on the definition of far-left, that is much more debatable. Helper201 (talk) 09:42, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello, Helper201. Yesterday, I read the following in The Daily Telegraph: At the start of February, the French government officially classified Melenchon’s La France Insoumise party as “extreme-Left”. And I see the following on a French website for the legal profession, dating from the 10/2/2026, which seems to confirm what that article says

"Le ministère de l’Intérieur a classé La France insoumise à l’extrême gauche de l’échiquier politique dans le cadre de l’attribution des nuances en vue des élections municipales de 2026. Le parti a contesté cette décision et a déposé un recours devant le Conseil d'État."]

Incidentally, other editors could benefit from the knowledge that your Userid was today warned about sockpuppetry on account of edits to the article on the Traditional Unionist Voice political party under a Temporary Account with the Userid ~2026-11445-55. Here is the warning: User Talk Page Helper201. Bonne Soirée. BrownBowler (talk) 16:06, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

That definetly sounds like it could help BrownBowler, thank you. We will need more than one scholarly source to make any sort of judgement on whether scholars in general share this analysis though. Not that I'm saying they do or do not, my initial reading was based on a note on this page indicating scholars don't agree on the matter.

I must however address your personal attack. That warning has absolutely nothing to do with this page. Your public promotion and spreading of it only appears to be in attempt to discredit my reputation. It is in no way relevant to this page or discussion. Helper201 (talk) 01:15, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Nearly all the claims that LFI is simply left-wing in the medias are openly based on the decision of the then minister of the Interior to classify it as such (more exactly, the judgment of the Conseil d'État that validated this classification). But as discussed here, this assessment has been revised and it now classifies it as far left. Hplotter (talk) 18:47, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Helper201, if you feel that my comment above is a personal attack on you then please tell either Wikipedia Admin or myself which of these forms of personal attack you are referring to. In that list, my eye is drawn to the following element: "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence, usually in the form of diffs and links.". And here is where I provided Wikipedia Admin with the diffs and links that prompted their speedy reaction to my complaint about your conduct.

You say that my mention of the Sockpuppet warning you received on 22 February 2026 "is in no way relevant to this page or discussion.". Yes it is. Your conduct across the whole Wikipedia Project is relevant to your contribution to any single Wikipedia page.

As for this article on La France Insoumise, I'd plump for either :C or :D. One thing to watch out for in this discussion is when there is insistence that only "scholarly" sources are of value; Secondary Sources or even Primary Sources, such as the French Ministry of the Interior, are also valuable (Primary Sources are valid as Wikipedia Sources so long as there is no original research by the editor). I also note your comment above on 22 February where you say "scholars don't agree on the definition of far-left": if there is no agreed definition for the term "far-left", then any suggestion that a political party be assigned the Political Position of "far-left" could be vetoed for want of a definition of the term. BrownBowler (talk) 21:00, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

@BrownBowler Ok, and this is the reason why it's perfectly fine to write in the body of the article "The French Ministry for Interior classified LFI as extreme-left" using the official statement, but here we're talking about the infobox and the lead, where we provide a political position written in wikivoice, that should reflect the general consensus on the matter. Per WP:BESTSOURCES we shouldn't rely on primary sources to establish the consensus among RS on a specific matter and per WP:SOURCETYPES we should prefer scholar material. Even the policy that you cited says very clearly that we shouldn't put undue weight on a primary source. --Friniate ✉ 19:48, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you though when you say that it's not necessary that there is a consensus on the "far-left" position, what it's needed to include that label in the lead is that that view is sufficiently represented among RS (so if there were, let's say, 60% of the sources stating that it's left-wing and 40% stating that it's far-left, then we should include far-left; if the percentages were more something like 90-10, then, no; but in order to express an informed opinion we should first do a review of RS on the issue). --Friniate ✉ 19:52, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

• C For consistency and going by WP:RS, alternatively F. Jeppiz (talk) 14:54, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

D Slodkiszczur (talk) 12:46, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

• Bad RfC Whether a party should be described as (extreme) left or (extreme) right wing is not up for vote. Wikipedia needs to follow the reliable sources (and a government is not reliable, no matter on which part of the spectrum they are, so their claims should be attributed per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV). And of course a (far) right government describes anything to the left of hunting the poor for sport as extreme left-wing communism.

Compare nlwiki: In the media, LFI is presented with some regularity as a far-left party, and according to political scientist Aurélien Dubuisson, this mistake is made in particular due to the rightward shift of politics. The ideology of the party is, according to another political scientist, Rémi Lefebvre, not to be described as revolutionary, but rather reformist. For instance, the party does not advocate the abolition of capitalism, does not propose leaving the market economy, but rather strong regulation of the market by the state, and supports a high level of public spending. LFI therefore supports an interventionist, reformist socialism.

Polygnotus (talk) 04:26, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

• I agree with Polygnotus, bad RFC. We should first analyze many reliable sources (especially the academic ones, since this is an academic topic), not just two or three, and then draw a conclusion about the consensus among RS (there is another ongoing RFC on a party's political position in which it was done exactly this process, I'm not going to link it since I'm unsure wether it would be considered canvassing). The Ministry of Interior is a primary source and it should be irrelevant. I don't see how we could possibly caste !votes before having done that.--Friniate ✉ 18:41, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Here are some scholar opinions: https://elicit.com/agent/acf29713-bc37-4d14-8a0c-6eef9d67a471.

The LLM summarizes them as “radical left”.

Here's the same question in French: https://elicit.com/agent/a9255622-e6bb-4143-89c2-4668b930ef1c; the LLMs summarize the scholar opinions as “radical left“.

a (far) right government describes anything to the left of hunting the poor for sport as extreme left-wing communism.

The current government and president are centrist, not (far) right, so I don't know what this sentence is for. Hplotter (talk) 15:49, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

LLMs are not RS, and looking at those sessions, the term "radical left" is used anyway, which is a distinct category, particularly in French politics. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 21:52, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I didn't write it because it seems obvious to me, but the RS are sources on which the LLM bases its answer, not the LLM answer. You can easily see them at the end of each assertion by clicking on the scholar's name and forming your opinion. Hplotter (talk) 10:20, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

A cursory glance at the sources listed do not explicitly support the label. LLMs are known to hallucinate, so if you have actual sources backing up the claim, then provide those (alongside proof that the label is supported in said sources). – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 10:30, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

As I said, the sources are at the end of each assertion and by clicking on the "View X items" element. Copying them here won't achieve anything, but if that's what you want, here are 2:

Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise

P. Marlière; The Populist Radical Left in Europe · 2019

"In the run-up to the 2017 presidential election in France, Jean-Luc Melenchon who, so far, had been associated with the radical left [..]"

From The Front de gauche to La France insoumise: Causes and Consequences of the Conversion of the French Radical Left to Populism  ; C. Alexandre, Antoine Bristielle, and 1 more 2021

"[..] this article shows how the space of the French radical left has evolved since the 2000s."

A recurring stance is also that it's a populist party.

I am under the impression (yes, I know, it's not worth much) that it has radicalized itself since its inception, so I think the more recent sources, the better. Hplotter (talk) 11:12, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, but as I said, radical left is a distinct category, particularly in French politics. The English term "far-left" is translated into French as "extrême gauche" and vice versa. So the sources do not, in fact, support a "far-left" descriptor for the party. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 11:18, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I did not say the opposite :) (I only voted for the far left before seeing myself corrected). The current classification, however, simply says left-wing. Hplotter (talk) 11:23, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Since "radical left" is not a well-defined phenomenon, nor is there an article on it, "left-wing" is the most WP:NPOV way to describe the party. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 11:29, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't believe there is anything that says as such in NPOV, and we should stick to what the sources say. I don't see how not being well-defined is an issue (besides, the word « radical » does a good job at defining the concept). But even if your points were corrects, why should we fall back to « left » and not « far left »? Hplotter (talk) 12:46, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is a need for a community discussion on the matter. Very recently a lot of users made an argument about a radical right party, claiming that we should avoid using labels such as "far-right" or "radical right". I think that this argument doesn't hold water (it just makes a little more sense for "radical left" since there is no article about it, but that could be obviously solved) and potentially violates NPOV, but of course we should keep a common standard across the encyclopedia, and it wouldn't be acceptable to deprecate the use of "far-right" and "radical right" and not the use of "far-left" and "radical left" (or vice versa).... --Friniate ✉ 16:01, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Anyway, in the next days I hope to manage to open a subpage dedicated to a thorough source review on the matter (if someone wants to anticipate me I won't be offended XD) --Friniate ✉ 16:06, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Here are some sources which may be of use on your subpage (I know this is rather long).

French national radio website confirms that the Conseil d'Etat has rejected LFI's appeal against being classified as extreme-left

France national television confirms it too

According to the above reports, the Conseil d'Etat gave the following reasons for their decision: LFI's calling into question of judicial authority, its systematic accusations against the police "who kill", its calls for civil disobedience and also the Conseil d'Etat felt it was appropriate to distinguish LFI's classification from that of other parties of the left such as the PS, EELV and PCF (which are classified simply as "left-wing".)

As to what <<extrême gauche>> means, TF1 has had several goes at answering that:

French national tv asks if RN and LFI can fairly be classified as extreme (from 2024)"

This contains an interesting definition of <<extrême gauche>> from the dictionary Larousse: leftist parties which reject liberal parliamentary democracy and advocate total revolution. Another opinion comes from a political scientist whose opinion is that the <<extrême gauche>> engages in electoral politics but isn't totally committed to it, believing that general strikes and similar actions offer an alternative route to power.

French national tv reports that LFI says it's not far left (from 2023)"

Philippe Buton, a professor of contemporary history and specialist in french left-wing politics says there's no absolute agreement on the meaning of <<extrême gauche>> but in his opinion, the <<gauche>> seek societal change while respecting the rule of law, the <<ultragauche>> think that societal change can only be brought about by rejecting the rule of law while <<extrême gauche>> are prepared to use both approaches. He says that LFI can seem rather relaxed about the use of violence and appear ambivalent regarding the role of "la rue" in achieving their aim of a new constitution (a VIth Republic).

He says also that LFI appears ambiguous regarding the degree to which it wants to nationalise industry and confiscate private capital.

right-wing paper Le Figaro reports on purges within LFI prior to 2024 elections

Le Figaro has been calling LFI <<extrême gauche>> for quite a while now, even when the Conseil d'Etat classified LFI as <<gauche>>.

the paper La Croix which often presents a Roman Catholic point of view reports on the new classification of LFI

This report in La Croix notes that LFI describe themselves as << gauche radicale>>.

The paper l'Humanité, close to the Parti Communiste Francais, seems to avoid giving LFI any classification at all, so far as my searches show.

Does anyone know what term the paper Libération ("the paper for all the Left") uses to describe LFI?

As for english-speaking news media, the BBC and the FT have both published articles which label LFI as "far-left".

The following are from 2024 (when the Conseil D'Etat still labelled LFI as "left-wing").

BBC previews the 2024 election in France

FT looks at the outcome of the 2024 election in France

As noted a couple of times above, the Telegraph has published some articles recently which describe LFI as "far-left" but,to my memory, was describing LFI as "left-wing" not long ago.

Le Monde International edition reports on formation of Nouveau Front Populaire left-wing alliance and calls LFI "radical left" i.e. << gauche radicale>>, which is what LFI self-define as.

Perhaps someone can tell us what is the latest description of LFI in the Guardian, Independent and in news magazines. BrownBowler (talk) 20:56, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2026/02/27/la-france-insoumise-sera-bien-classee-extreme-gauche-par-le-ministere-de-l-interieur-juge-le-conseil-d-etat_6668622_823448.html

the highest jurisdiction of France confirmed the classification

is this biased too according to you? Venis067067067 (talk) 17:38, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

• Comment I have already expressed my preference for C but to further develop: when this was discussed last time some years ago, the whole argument for saying "left-wing" rather than "far-left" was that the French Conseil d'État had qualified it as left-wing and that is the reason we used "left-wing" in the infobox. As the Conseil d'État now has changed its description, it is hard to see a reason not to do the same on Wikipedia. The consensus decision was to go by the French conseil d'État as the official version and those who back then argued against saying far-left built the whole argument for "left-wing" around the credibility and relevance of what the French conseil d'État said. With that in mind, we should probably have changed to "far-left" the moment the Conseil d'État changed its official designation. Jeppiz (talk) 14:55, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Nobody as of yet has provided non WP:NEWSORG sources that support the label, nor has anybody shown any viable reason to exclude the existing "left-wing" label. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 14:59, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  What sources are you looking for? We have plenty of reliable sources reporting that both Ministry of the Interior and the Conseil d'État have changed their previous description from "left-wing" to "far-left" so that is not in doubt. As for why to exclude the previous "left-wing", the simple answer is that when the categorization changes, as it has done for LFI in the last month, Wikipedia should reflect that. That is how Wikipedia works. Jeppiz (talk) 15:25, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Wikipedia actually works based on what sources say, news sources reporting on the Conseil's classification is not the same as reliable independent sources describing the party as far-left themselves. There are pre-existing sources on this page that have no reason to be superceded describing the party as left-wing. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 15:30, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  You realize the Conseil d'État is France's supreme administrative court and a highly reliable authority on legal matters right ? ][2] Venis067067067 (talk) 15:35, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Legal matters, not political science, and how exactly have you determined that they're a highly reliable authority? They're also the only non-news source I've been able to find who use the label for the party. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 15:39, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Here you go: https://www.conseil-etat.fr/actualites/elections-municipales-2026-le-conseil-d-etat-rejette-les-recours-de-lfi-et-de-l-udr-contre-la-circulaire-attribuant-des-nuances-politiques-pour-l. Hplotter (talk) 15:27, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I mean I really think it's quite incredible, I don't think there's a source in the world that we could provide to change these people's minds.

  Yes far left sounds bad, it's reality, deal with it Venis067067067 (talk) 15:30, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I have to agree that opposition to describing LFI as far-left by now starts to look more rooted in WP:IDONTLIKEIT than any policy-based argument. We are talking about a party that actively supported Castro in Cuba, Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, Putin in Russia, Assad in Syria, and which the highest administrative court has officially categorized as "far-left". From a factual point of view, the matter seems straightforward. Jeppiz (talk) 15:43, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I wouldn't have an objection to including the label if there were more reliable and independent sources brought up in this discussion that aren't just news sources reporting on the Conseil's classification. However, I still see no reason to remove "left-wing" entirely based on this one event, there are still contemporary sources that don't use the label, and it's WP:UNDUE to exclude them.

  Note: I'd also like to remind editors here of the WP:AGF guideline. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 15:50, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  But you even removed the "radical" in the infobox citing MOS:VAR while we are in the case unless there is some substantial reason for the change.

  there are still contemporary sources that don't use the label.

  Which ones? Hplotter (talk) 16:20, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  It's 3 in the morning right now, I'll provide sources when I get the chance, and "radical" is always excluded from the infobox of political parties, there is no substantial reason for the change when, by definition, radical left parties are left-wing. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 16:23, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Laura Chazel & Vincent Dain, Journal for the Study of Radicalism (2022) - "The Great Recession (2007-2009) has created a breeding ground allowing the emergence of new left-wing movements in Europe, among which are Podemos and La France insoumise (LFI)."

  Charles Ruben Ulysse Torron, European University Institute (2023) - "La France Insoumise, a left-wing political party, that managed to reorganize the domestic political stage in only a decade."

  Patrick Soulard, LFI, anatomie d'un mouvement politique contemporain (2026) - "LFI : Anatomie d’un mouvement politique contemporain Enquête sur les transformations de la gauche radicale française (2016-2024) Née en 2016 dans un contexte de crise profonde de la gauche française, La France Insoumise s’est imposée en moins d’une décennie comme une force politique majeure, capable de mobiliser des millions d’électeurs, de structurer une opposition parlementaire puissante et de remodeler durablement le paysage politique."

  Municipales 2026 : les alliances avec LFI sont-elles encore tenables ? - "Les nouveaux écarts de Jean-Luc Mélenchon sur Epstein ou Glucksmann... hypothèquent un peu plus les potentielles alliances de second tour aux municipales avec le reste de la gauche."

  France's divided left faces tough choices in local elections - "This election, however, has been made more complicated by France's fractured political landscape and the deep divide between parties on the left - which has been intensified by the killing of far-right activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon, and the arrest of far-left activists, some with links to the hard left La France Insoumise party (LFI)."

  There is also, of course, the sourcing already present in the article as well. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 01:00, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

  Among your recent sources, only sud-ouest classifies it other than hard or radical left by calling "le reste de la gauche", but it does not means that it is simply left wing, as far left is still part of the left to my understanding. Hplotter (talk) 09:34, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

  Hard-left and radical left are not synonymous with "far-left", especially in French politics. Radical left is explicitly separate from the far-left and the label used by the MoI. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 10:08, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

  But as I said, you're even refusing to mention "radical" in the infobox (let alone far let) Hplotter (talk) 13:17, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

  I have no objections to radical left being in the footnote and the article's main text, but including it in the position parameter breaks stylevar. Political party infoboxes never include extra descriptors in the position param, it clutters the infobox and also goes against WP:IBP, The less information that an infobox contains, the more effectively it serves its purpose. Radical left is also included in "left-wing" by definition. The party is absolutely radical left, and should be described as such, the infobox position parameter is not an appropriate place to use that descriptor though. I think the footnote definitely needs an update, and should certainly include the radical descriptor, as that's by far the most uncontroversial label. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 22:39, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

  No, as I explained, it doesn't break stylevar, sources have changed their denomination. You keep referring to recommendations but I don’t see how they pertain.

  I see 2 possibilities: you are nice with others and accept to at least put "radical" in the infobox; or we go by the majority in the vote which supports the far left label. Both are valid, but you can't have your cake and eat it. Hplotter (talk) 09:42, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  See WP:NOVOTE, and no you have not explained how stylevar is not broken, you've merely stated that there's "substantial reason" without elaboration. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 09:55, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  "sources have changed their denomination" (from left to far or radical (which was already the case before the classification by the Conseil d'Etat) left): that's the explanation. Hplotter (talk) 10:33, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  I don't see what's substantial enough to add an extra descriptor that's never used in infoboxes. And the fixation on including it in the infobox confuses me, there's no article for radical left politics either, and by definition that is included under "left-wing". I'd be willing to add "far-left" alongside it "Left-wing to far-left" (retaining the footnote to add extra context), as it seems a consensus is building in favour of that, I just oppose removing left-wing entirely, as that's excluding sources that don't support the far-left label. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 10:46, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  +1 for me too.

  left wing to far left should be added Venis067067067 (talk) 10:48, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  Ok, that's good to me too. To address your comment, the article exists in 7 languages, but I still don't see how that's an issue: we don't link to it. As for the inclusion of simply left-wing, you haven't been able to find a recent source that classifies it as such. Hplotter (talk) 16:58, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  +1 Hplotter (talk) 09:46, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

There seems to be a clear consensus (all users but one) to use far-left. Jeppiz (talk) 16:02, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

• @Hplotter and GlowstoneUnknown: I'm really sorry for the delay, I've been quite busy in the past two weeks. I've seen that there seems to be a consensus on "left to far-left", which I also believe that it probably reflects the consensus among sources, but anyway, I've started a source review that you can find below. Anyone is welcome to contribute, it will take a while...--Friniate ✉ 16:37, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

  I think “radical left to far left” would be a more apt description, as none of the recent sources that I've read use simply left, and as the intro said, scholars use “radical” while the Conseil d'Etat use “far left”. Hplotter (talk) 12:42, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

  I'm going to give an informed opinion only after having done the source review, but I think it's worth noting that the Conseil d'Etat checks only if the classification made by the government is not "blatantly wrong" (see here). So, I don't think that we can speak of a classification of the Conseil d'Etat (which would be a primary source anyway), but that it should be defined more correctly as a definition given by the French Government that the Conseil d'Etat didn't consider blatantly wrong. --Friniate ✉ 20:03, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

  The decision of the conseiller d'état isn't a primary source once it has been reported by newspapers. You're right about the not blantantly wrong character of the response, but a weakly substantive response remains a substantive response. Hplotter (talk) 08:43, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

  No sorry, but a primary source remains a primary source even if it's reported by secondary sources such as newspapers. The newspapers prove the notability of the primary source, and justify its inclusion (with attribution) in the body of the article, but they don't change its nature. Then of course it can happen that secondary sources agree with the primary source, and in this case we should take them into account, but that must be proven (which is what I'm trying to do with the source review). --Friniate ✉ 10:52, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Hplotter, have a look at the numerous sources Google Scholar brings up for left-wing (including 4 from 2025). There are plenty others listed there too within the last 5/6 years that call the party left-wing. Here are multiple other sources that describe the party as simply left-wing:

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/sep/10/france-block-everything-protests-macron-lecornu-europe-live-news-updates
• https://time.com/7323462/french-prime-minister-sebastien-lecornu-resigns/
• https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260210-france-epstein-inquiry-macron-says-scandal-mainly-concerns-usa
• https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2022/07/01/left-wing-lfi-seizes-presidency-of-finance-committee-in-french-assemblee_5988678_5.html
• https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/02/21/macron-urges-calm-ahead-of-march-for-slain-far-right-activist_6750718_7.html

If your edit summary was referring to only what sources of the last few weeks or months say, that would be WP:RECENTISM. Helper201 (talk) 09:28, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Please take into account that I'm not finished with the source review (in fact, I haven't even finished to add the sources linked from this talk page and I still haven't started to look for new sources). Anyone who wants to help is welcome, I'd ask for the courtesy to wait to edit the article until the review is reasonably finished. --Friniate ✉ 14:56, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

(I was mainly writing to @Hplotter) --Friniate ✉ 14:57, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Your sources from G. scholar don't tell what you think they do. You have to look for the ratio numbers of both classification, because of course a major party will have some citations for either of these claims.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=radical+left+La+France+Insoumise (3,7k)

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=left-wing+La+France+Insoumise (2k)

It has nearly the double.

Compare this with a party that *is* far-right:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=far-right+rassemblement+national (6k)

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=right-wing+rassemblement+national (9k) Hplotter (talk) 16:28, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

While WP:HITS generally applies to notability I think it is applicable here too. Just because a lot of hits for one thing or another can come back from a search result isn't the be-all-and-end-all. I'm not saying that "radical" or "far-left" has no place within the article. What I'm saying is we have plenty of reliable sourcing - including from recent years - for left-wing, including from both scholarly sources and reliable and notable news publications (including specifically French ones). Certainly enough to where omitting "left-wing" from the infobox and lead would be a mischaracterisation and place undue emphasis on only "radical" or "far-left". Just because one can be cited more than another doesn't mean omission of the lesser when it can still be plenty well sourced by reputable sources, both journalistic and academic. Helper201 (talk) 14:09, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

You are the one first discussing WP:HITS, I'm just battling on your ground.

(..) we have plenty of reliable sourcing - including from recent years - for left-wing, including from both scholarly sources and reliable and notable news publications (including specifically French ones). Certainly enough to where omitting "left-wing" from the infobox and lead would be a mischaracterisation and place undue emphasis on only "radical" or "far-left".

No, for the same reason you won't see right-wing as the position of the RN, even though more sources qualify it as such. Hplotter (talk) 15:15, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to the raw total number of sources that can be found when I referenced Google Scholar. I was showing that recent, reliable scholarly sources are still calling the party left-wing and to save listing every single one I left the Google Scholar link. This was because you were saying sources are no longer referring to the party as simply left-wing. You were the one stating how many results each search term accumulated in brackets. Helper201 (talk) 02:46, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

@Hplotter Radical left and far-left are different concepts though... With your line of reasoning we should write only "radical left" in the infobox, leaving aside both left-wing and far-left. --Friniate ✉ 20:57, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

(anyway I think that each source should be analyzed one by one, numbers from google scholar are too impredictable...) --Friniate ✉ 20:58, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Reread the title of the section you've written in. Hplotter (talk) 14:26, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

? --Friniate ✉ 16:30, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

• Comment on timeline I would pay little to no attention to any sources prior to 2023. LFI has been shifting its position quite drastically to the left in recent years, to the extent that the party these days hold positions its own leaders used to condemn. The situation is very similar (in lots of ways) to the Republican party in the US, which also has been shifting in a much more extreme direction under the influence of a charismatic populist leader, just like LFI. Jeppiz (talk) 16:58, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

  @Jeppiz LFI has been led by Mélenchon since its foundation though... It could even be argued that between 2022 and 2024 it was more moderate than before (and after), since it entered into coalitions with the Socialist Party... Until now I've found only one author (Boulouque) arguing that there has been a shift in 2025. --Friniate ✉ 10:05, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, I know LFI has been led by Mélenchon since the start. And as I am sure you know, there are lots of meme videos showing "arguments" between the younger Mélenchon and the older, as he has become increasingly more totalitarian and extreme. Jeppiz (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

  Memes aren't an encyclopædic way to determine if a political party has become more extreme and thus to ignore certain reliable sources that argue to the contrary. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 23:47, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

  On this issue, I've even found a paper that in 2025 claimed that LFI abandoned the far-left with its "populist turn" in 2017. --Friniate ✉ 16:21, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

  I’m not sure what’s worse: cherrypicking a source, disregarding the consensus among scholar sources, disregarding the decision of the Conseil d’ État or disregarding the Wikipedia consensus. Hplotter (talk) 09:04, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

  What? I'm single-handendly analyzing dozens of academical sources and you're accusing me of disregarding consensus among scholar sources??? Seriously??? What's even funnier is that I haven't even expressed an opinion yet, but somehow you're already preemptively attacking me...

  I can't really see a consensus here, but more importantly, we are not voting, we should look at sources and then express our opinion. That's why I think that expressing opinions before doing a thorough source review is totally useless. But if you think that bringing sources to the discussion is "cherry picking" because we should blindly follow the categorization of the French Ministry of Interior, then I don't think that there's any ground for discussion. The closing admin will decide if WP:BESTSOURCES (In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, secondary published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.) will apply to this article too or not... --Friniate ✉ 09:21, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

  I wrote cherry-picked because your source in your parent comment is, I'm not commenting your other sources elsewhere. I didn't say (nor think) we should blindly follow the categorization of the Conseil d’État (not only the Ministry of Interior btw), but it is an authority on the matter of political positions, so its opinion should weight on the matter, and weight more than a journalist's one. I already did a source review, which while not as thorough and rigorous as yours, is still existent, so we can have opinions on the matter. I did not want to jump to conclusion regarding your motivation(s), sorry if this came across as such. Hplotter (talk) 14:58, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  @Hplotter I literally brought up the only two sources commenting on a change of LFI's position that I had found, one (Boulouque) states that there has been a movement towards the far-left since 2025, the other (Lucidi) states that there has been a movement away from the far-left in 2017, could you please explain where is the cherry-picking?

  You did a source review that showed that "radical left" is the most used label for LFI's position. This is a fact that is very clear also from the temporary results of mine. What remains contentious is the inclusion of "left-wing" and "far-left" (or even "extreme left"). My impression (but I still have to start to review the usage among NEWSORGs, until now I have only collected the links from previous RFCs) is that they are both used especially among NEWSORGs (with a comparable usage), whereas among scholarly sources they are very scarcely used and when they are used, they appear as passing comments. --Friniate ✉ 15:14, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  I missed your comment on Boulouque, sorry. Hplotter (talk) 15:24, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Ok, I don't know how many people will see this comment, since the discussion has already clearly ended, but I've finally ended the source review (I'm sorry for the delay, but these things take time if well done). You can see the results in the synthesis below. Of course there are still sources that I haven't checked, but I think that the method that I used (I've looked at the first 10 pages of google scholar of the articles published between 2025 and 2026, and then I looked for all the other articles that they were citing) ensures that the most important and influential ones have been included. I think that it's pretty clear that the most used label for LFI among academic sources is "radical left". The second one is "left-wing populism", which is an ideology though and not a political position (I've included it only for transparency). Far-left is slightly more used than simply "left-wing", but not substantially.
  

Among non-scholarly sources, "Radical left", "left-wing" and "extreme-left" are more or less all equally used ("extreme left" only by sources in French though).

Among newsorgs the most used labels are "radical left", "hard left" and "far-left", although these are all passing comments and therefore they are not really relevant.

So, ideally I'd propose to use "radical left" alone. Unfortunately we don't even have an article on this meaning (Radical left is a disambiguation page), and I don't think it's ideal to use labels in wikivoice that we don't have even defined in an article. So, until we won't have one, I think that the present situation ("left to far left") is a good intermediate solution.--Friniate ✉ 15:08, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I just noticed that this discussion took place (thanks for popping out on my watchlist), so I'll give my 2c. A consensus via the RfC option does not count votes, but arguments. Second, options D, E, and F are unsourced and WP:OR (read my essay on this long-standing problem), therefore they are invalid. Third, instead of running RfC's like this one, editors should focus on actually adding substantial content to the article. In this case, it would mean adding content to La France Insoumise#Ideology: 1) why do sources describe LFI as left-wing and why do they describe it as far-left 2) is LFI a truly far-left party 3) why is LFI a radical left party 4) what does it mean to be left-wing, far-left, or radical left party. Having well-explained sections about the party's ideology and political positions is much much much better than having a pointless discussion about an infobox parameter, that, actually, would not even require a RfC if the Ideology section was to be expanded. That's it from me. Also, thanks Friniate for the source review. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 15:27, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I fully agree on the fact that using the "to" is OR. A better solution in presence of contrasting political positions among RS would be a slash IMHO (so left[1][2]/far-left [3][4]). --Friniate ✉ 15:41, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Didn't think of that, but that sounds like a good alternative to me. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 15:43, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Source review

List of sources

Academic sources

Journal name/Publisher	Author(s)	Title	Year published	Label used	Link	Peer reviewed?	Topic	Passing comment?	Definition	Notes
European Politics and Society	Manuel Cervera-Marzal	A populist turn in the European left. What is new, and what is not?	2023	Populist left		Y	Left-wing populism in Europe	No	The "left-wing populism" is characterized by six elements strictly interlinked: 1 they disapprove neoliberalism, productivism, and all forms of discrimination 2 they turn the cleavage left/right into a cleavage people/oligarchy 3 they have a charismatic leader (sometimes tecnophile) able to incarnate the aspirations of the working and middle class 4 they rely on social mobilisations offering them an extension onside the state institutions 5 it instills a supplementary dose of emotion in politics 6 it resignifies words currently grabbed by the right (order, nation, souveraignity). This definition is inspired by the one given by Chantal Mouffle.
La Découverte		Le populisme de gauche. Sociologie de la France Insoumise	2021	Radical left (used as a synonim of "left-wing populism")		N	Left-wing populism and La France Insoumise	No		In French
	Fabien Escalona	L’émergence d’une nouvelle gauche radicale in En quête d’alternatives	2017	Radical left		N	Radical left parties in Europe	No (for radical left) / Yes (for LFI)	La « nouvelle » gauche radicale médiatise selon nous un conflit structural de son temps. [...] Il s’agit d’une bataille entre ceux qui veulent prolonger un capitalisme épuisé en un système encore plus dur de hiérarchie et de domination, et ceux qui cherchent à mettre en place un système plus démocratique et égalitaire. La nouvelle gauche radicale ne rejette pas la mondialité en tant que telle, mais son hégémonisation par la logique du capital. [...] Acquise au libéralisme culturel, et donc aux luttes contre le patriarcat, l’hétéronormativité et la xénophobie, cette gauche ne conteste pas les fondamentaux des démocraties libérales représentatives, considérées comme le seul cadre légitime de conquête et d’exercice du pouvoir. Elle souhaite au contraire restaurer un cercle vertueux entre gouvernants et gouvernés, à défaut de recréer un véritable mécanisme représentatif à l’échelle supranationale	In French
	Federico Tarragoni	L'esprit démocratique du populisme	2019	Extreme left, radical left		N	Left-wing populism	No (for LFI) / Yes (for radical left and extreme left)	Undefined	In French
Raisons politiques		Populisme et démocratie : les impasses d’une polarisation scientifique	2022	Radical left, left-wing populism		N	Controversies in populism studies	Yes	Radical left is undefined	In French
Presses de Sciences Po	Bruno Cautrès	Mélenchon, « vainqueur caché » de la présidentielle ? in Le vote disruptif. Les élections présidentielle et législatives de 2017	2017	Radical left / Non-socialist left		N	LFI and Mélenchon in the 2017 elections	No (for LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	Undefined	In French
	Luc Rouban	Les raisons de la défiance	2022	Radical left, left (as in "left vs right")		N	French political crisis	Yes	Undefined	In French
Springer Cham	Marco Guglielmo	Anti-party Digital Parties Between Direct and Reactive Democracy. The Case of La France Insoumise in Digital Parties	2021	Radical left		N	LFI's organizational model	Yes (for radical left) / No (for LFI)	It cites Chiocchetti, 2016; March & Keith, 2016
	Gilles Ivaldi	Populism in France in Populism Around the World	2018	Radical left populist		N	Populism among French parties	No	Mudde (2004) defines populism as a “thin-centred ideology” which “considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (p. 543). Populist parties vilipend the political elite as an oligarchy and separate “caste,” while simultaneously claiming to represent the “ordinary people” (Stanley 2008). [...] The radical left presents on the other hand a universalistic profile, embracing a more socially inclusive notion of the people which is essentially pit against an economic elite (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013; Gómez-Reino and Llamazares 2016).
Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po		L’élection présidentielle de 2022 va-t-elle marquer la fin du cycle populiste?	2022	Radical left, populist left		?	Populism among French parties	No (for LFI and left populism) / Yes (for radical left)	Very similar to the definition given in 2018 (see below)	In French
Revue française de science politique		Populisme et choix électoral	2018	Left populist		Y	Populist voters in France	No	On the left, populism is associated to the socio-economic dimension and to a radical criticism of economic liberalism, on the model of the popular movements in Latin America in the first decade of the XXIth century. It's an inclusive populism, connected to egalitarian, humanist and universal values, representing disadvantaged groups and minorities, that underscore their opposition to a common "other", consisting in the political establishment and/or in the liberal élite.	In French
	Vincent Tiberj	Le clivage gauche/droite en 2017	2017	Left		Y	Left-wing and Right-wing among French voters	No	In 2017 the left and the right lock themselves in the social-libertaire and libéral-autoritaire idealtypes
	Frédéric Gonthier	« On lâche rien ». Les demandes populistes en 2022	Left-wing populist / radical left	2022		Y	Populist voters in France	No (for left-wing populist and LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	The ideological core of populism is a moral antagonism between the virtuous people and the corrupt élite. Among these scholars there's a consensus on the fact that the ideological core of populism is primarily structured along three dimensions: antielitism, assertion of popular souvereignity and a manicheism due to the refusal of compromise [Mudde 2017]. [...] From the point of view of the political offer, the [French] political system is characterized by the contemporary presence of a "right-wing" populism, caused by the slide of the far-right towards themes such as antielitism and social chauvinism and by a populist turn of a part of the "left of the left".	In French; "Radical left" is referred only to Mélenchon
Palgrave Macmillan		What Drives Dissatisfied Democrats? Views of Democracy, Democratic Satisfaction and Voting in French Democracy in Distress	2025	Radical left		N	Dissatisfaction in democracy among French voters	Yes	Undefined
	Bruno Cautrès and Luc Rouban	The Social Roots of Political Trust and Democracy. The French Critical Citizen Revisited in French Democracy in Distress		Radical left			Trust in French political parties	Yes	Undefined
	Romain Lachat	Party Stances on Direct and Deliberative Democracy in French Democracy in Distress		Far-left, populist left			French parties' positions on direct democracy	No (for LFI) / Partially (for far-left, many references but it's not specifically discussed)	Undefined
	Daphne Halikiopoulou and Nonna Mayer	How Social Exclusion Breeds Political Exclusion in French Democracy in Distress		Far-left, radical left			Political consequences of social insecurity	Yes	Undefined
	Fabien Escalona	France in The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Left Parties in Europe	2023	Radical left		N	Radical left in Europe	No	[From the introduction]: March and Mudde’s (2005) pioneering attempt to map the landscape of Europe’s radical left defined it as left by its commitments to equality and internationalism, and as radical in its aspirations for the fundamental transformation of capitalism. Subsequently, studies have sought to add clarity to the way that the radical left is conceptualised as a party family (Escalona & Vieira, 2013; Gomez et al., 2016; Keith & March, 2016; March, 2011a; Olsen et al., 2010). Studies still use a plethora of terms (e.g. ‘far left’, ‘extreme left’ and ‘Left’). At the same time, most now either employ the term ‘radical left’ or are at least generally consistent with March and Mudde’s definition—even if they do not share all of its nuances. [...] we reserve the qualifier of ‘extreme’ for those that profess hostility to contemporary democratic regimes and rely on a revolutionary process or violence to gain power (March, 2008, 2011a, 2011b).
	Morgane Belhadi	The Populist Aesthetic of the Rassemblement National and la France Insoumise	2025	Far-left populist / radical left		N	Populism in LFI and RN's propaganda	No (for LFI and populism) / Partially (for far-left/radical left)	the far-left targets an international people, without borders, from diverse backgrounds, ethnic, and cultural origins. Beyond this distinction, however, far-left populism remains in a sense exclusive in that its international people are united against designated enemies—the elite, globalisation—who are de facto excluded from the “real” people. [...] populism is at once a proposal, a project, and a political mobilisation that aims to defend the “people”, as a homogeneous and united body, in what is deemed to be an unbreakable antagonism with the “elite”, and to restore to them their full and complete sovereignty, by proposing immediate and simple solutions, in a short timeframe.
	Nonna Mayer and Olivier Rozenberg	France: When Euroscepticism Becomes the Main Credo of the Opposition in Euroscepticism and the Future of Europe	2021	Far-left / radical left		N	Euroscepticism in France	Yes (for far-left/radical left) / Partially (for LFI: only some fast references)	Undefined
	Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi	The 2017 French Presidential Elections	2017	Radical left		N	2017 French elections	No (for LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	Undefined
	Laura Chazel	Left-Wing Populism and Sovereignty: An Analysis of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Discourse (2011–2022) in Sovereignty in Conflict	2023	(Populist) radical left		N	Mélenchon and national sovereignity	No	Populist socialist parties belong to the radical left family, a party family located “to the left of social democracy” (March, 2011: 15) and characterized by its anti-capitalism, its opposition to “globalized neoliberalism”, its defense of a mixed economy model, and its adherence to democracy (March, 2008: 3). Socialism is the host ideology of populist socialist parties, but they rather call upon the “people” more than upon the “working class”. Their anti-capitalism is materialized by a critique of the “establishment” and of a corrupt elite (March, 2008, 2011; March & Mudde, 2005).
Taylor & Francis		Theory and Praxis of Left Populism: A Comparative Analysis of Podemos and La France insoumise	2026	Radical left		N	Radical left parties in France and Spain	No (for LFI) / ? (for "radical left")	?? (Undefined in the preview I had access to)
Journal for the Study of Radicalism	Laura Chazel and Vincent Dain	Left-Wing Populism and Nationalism: A Comparative Analysis of the Patriotic Narratives of Podemos and France insoumise	2021	Populist left		Y	Left-wing populism and nationalism among LFI and Podemos	No	Their discourse has been described as populist based on the following elements: (1) the mobilization of a rhetoric opposing two antagonist groups: the “people” versus the “elite”; and (2) the attachment to popular sovereignty, which implies a Rousseauian vision of democracy.
Political Studies		Left-Wing Populism and Environmental Issues: An Analysis of La France Insoumise’s ‘Popular Environmentalism’	2023	Populist radical left		Y	LFI and environmentalism	No	Nevertheless, the main contemporary approaches – ideational (Mudde, 2004) and discursive (Laclau, 2005) – agree on formal and minimal criteria as they both consider that populism (a) can be attached to different ideologies, and (b) that it is defined on the basis of three elements: people-centrism, anti-elitism and popular sovereignty (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2020). Populist parties divide society into two antagonistic camps (people-elite) and call on a radicalisation of democracy (Mouffe, 2018) considering that ‘politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’ (Mudde, 2004). By looking at the host ideology to which populist parties are attached (e.g. socialism, liberalism and conservatism), the existing literature draws a distinction between exclusionary populist radical right parties (PRRPs) which combine populism with a nationalist and nativist ideology (Mudde, 2007), and inclusionary populist radical left parties (PRLPs) which associate populism with the demands of the traditional left and an anti-neoliberal agenda (Damiani, 2020; Katsambekis and Kioupkiolis, 2019).
	Or Dar	One Size Does Not Fit All: Explaining Radical-Left Parties’ Engagement with Populism	2024	Radical left		Y	Radical left parties in Europe and populism	No	RLPs are to the left of social-democratic parties (Amini, 2015: 12; Chiocchetti, 2016: 10). The RLP family contains anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal parties; both oppose the socio-economic structures, values, and practices of modern capitalism (Chiocchetti, 2016: 10; Ramiro, 2016b: 10). For them, economic equality is the basis for political and social arrangements, and collective economic and social rights are at the center of their agendas (March and Rommerskirchen, 2015: 41; Ramiro, 2016b: 10).
	Bartek Pytlas	‘Fix the system!’ Variations of anti-establishment normalisation strategies in comparative perspective	2024	Radical left		Y	Anti-establishment communication strategies	No (for radical left) / Yes (for LFI)	Radical left parties instead fundamentally contest ‘politics as usual’ on the primary basis of socioeconomic egalitarianism, aspiring for a fundamental transformation of capitalism, or its neoliberal, globalised practice (cf. March and Keith 2016; March 2017).
British Journal of Politics and International Relations	Donatella Bonansinga	‘A threat to us’: The interplay of insecurity and enmity narratives in left-wing populism	2022	Radical left populist		Y	LFI's discuorse on élites	No	Radical left populism (March, 2011; March and Keith, 2016) is a variety of populism that combines the people-elite struggle with an inclusionary understanding of the ‘people’ and a left-wing agenda centring on a critique of capitalism, the denunciation of inequalities and the advocacy for social rights (March and Mudde, 2005).
	Jakub Wondreys, Luke March and Bartek Pytlas	‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’? European radical left parties’ response to Russia’s war in Ukraine	2024	Radical left			Radical left parties' response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine	Yes (for LFI), No (for radical left)	Overall, the contemporary radical left, which is generally seen as a consolidated party family, has a number of shared foreign policy principles that emerge from its (historically conditioned) core ideology (Keith and March, 2023) – inter alia: opposition to neo-liberal globalisation or imperialism; criticism of US foreign policy; anti-militarism; solidarity with the globally oppressed; multilateralism (e.g. enhancing the United Nations (UN)’s role).
Journal of European Integration	Jakub Wondreys, Luke March	Comparing radical left parties’ positions on Ukraine and Israel: between Russophilia and anti-Semitism?	2026	Radical left (democratic socialist)		Y	Radical left parties' stances on Russia and Israel	Yes (for LFI), No (for radical left)	Within the radical left, the most ideologically ‘extreme’ positions come from conservative communists and revolutionary extreme left groups, characterized by Marxist-Leninist dogma, ‘campist’ anti-imperialism, and hostility toward bourgeois democracy, traits linked to their Russia-friendly orientation (Keith, March, and Escalona Citation2023). More pragmatic factions include reform communists and, especially, anti-authoritarian democratic socialists.
	Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués	The re-politicization of an EU–NATO-led European security order in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine	2026	Far-left		Y	Stances of European parties on foreign and security policies	No (for LFI) / Partially (for far-left: many references but it never deals in detail with the label)	Undefined
	Wolfgang Wagner	Contesting Western support for Ukraine. The radical left in the European Parliament	2024	Radical left		Y	Radical left parties in the EP and the Russian invasion of Ukraine	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	Luke March and Cas Mudde have defined the radical left as a political family that is radical ‘in that it rejects the underlying socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism and its values and practices’ (March and Mudde 2005). It is left because of three convictions: first, it identifies ‘economic inequity as the basis of existing political and social arrangements, and their espousal of collective economic and social rights as their principal agenda’(March and Mudde 2005); second, ‘anti-capitalism is more consistently expressed than anti-democracy’ (March and Mudde 2005) and third, ‘the left is internationalist, both in terms of its search for cross-national networking and solidarity, and in its assertion that national and regional socio-political issues have global structural causes (such as “imperialism” or “globalization”)’ (March and Mudde 2005).
Manchester University Press	Luke March and Richard Dunphy	The European Left Party	2020	Radical left		N	European Left party	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	those parties defining themselves as to the left of and not merely on the left of social democracy and the Green party family
	Antonella Seddone and Julien Navarro	Take a walk on the left side: the impact of austerity politics in France in The European Left and the Financial Crisis	2019	Radical left		N	Left parties in Europe	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	By contrast, for radicals the opposition to capitalism is absolute, and the project of left-wing parties must be to replace capitalism by some form of socialist economy. What exactly that socialist alternative might look like remains a hazy concept, and indeed radical left parties are often defined simply as being ‘to the left of social democracy’ (Dunphy, 2004: 2; Hudson, 2012: 2; March & Keith, 2016: 1). Over time, the insistence on revolutionary overthrow of capitalism has waned, and instead there is acceptance of the need for evolution. This has brought the radical left closer to the reformists – or at least, closer to the positions held by reformists before their neoliberal drift. The radical left parties include a wide range, from former communists to student radicals to a new generation of alter-globalisation protesters.
Partecipazione e Conflitto	Alexandre Chloé, Antoine Bristielle, Laura Chazel	From The Front de gauche to La France insoumise: Causes and Consequences of the Conversion of the French Radical Left to Populism	2021	(Populist) Radical left		Y	Ideological changes within Melénchon-led parties	No	These parties are part of the radical left family: they are located to the left of social democracy, and are characterized by their anti-capitalism, their opposition to globalized neoliberalism, their defense of a mixed economy model, and their adherence to liberal democracy. (it cites the work of March and Mudde 2005)
	Samuele Lucidi	The Evolving Political Discourse of Movement-Parties: The Case of La France Insoumise - Nouveau Front Populaire in the 2024 French Legislative Elections	2025	Left-wing populism			LFI's rhetoric	No	According to their definition, left-wing populist discourse is marked by several elements that are prominently featured in the rhetoric ofmovement-parties and LFI (Mouffe in Cervera-Marzal 2021, p.19): • Critique of neoliberalism, • Translation of the left-right cleavage into “people-oligarchy.”, • Presence of a charismatic leader, • A commitment to bringing the demands of social movements into institutions, • A re-evaluation of the role of emotions in political mobilization, • A redefinition of right-wing political signifiers (such as nation, order, sovereignty).
Journal of Political Ideologies	Salomé Ietter	Back to class? The populism of the ‘Gilets jaunes’	2025	Populist left		Y	Gilets jaunes and populism	Yes (for LFI) / Partially (for left populism)	Undefined
	Giorgos Katsambekis	Constructing ‘the people’ of populism: a critique of the ideational approach from a discursive perspective	2020	Populist left		Y	Pluralistic populism	Yes (for LFI) / No (for left-wing populism)	One of the distinctive characteristics of left-populist parties, as noted by Luke March, is that they emphasize ‘egalitarianism and inclusivity rather than the openly exclusivist anti-immigrant or anti-foreigner concerns of right-populism
Routledge	Giorgos Katsambekis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis	Introduction in The Populist Radical Left in Europe	2019	-	N	Populist radical left parties in Europe	No (for radical left) / Yes (for LFI)	To situate the radical left on the level of party politics, we also follow Luke March in acknowledging that we are dealing with parties that ‘regard themselves as to the left of social democracy and are part of international associations (for example, the Party of the European Left, PEL) that also have a (radical) left self- definition’ (March 2011: 15). 3 Indeed, ‘this radical Left is left by its commit- ments to equality and internationalism and radical in its aspirations to fundamental transformation of capitalism’ (Keith and March 2016: 5). one comes to embrace Ernesto Laclau’s definition (Laclau 1977), who construes the notion as a political and discursive distinction between ‘the people’ and ‘the oligarchy’ (or in certain circumstances ‘the cast’ or ‘the establishment’).
	Philippe Marlière	Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise in The Populist Radical Left in Europe		Populist left			Populism strategy within LFI		No
	Paolo Chiocchetti	‘Make way for the people!’ Left-wing populism in the rhetoric of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s 2012 and 2017 presidential campaigns in Left Radicalism and Populism in Europe	2019	Populist radical left		N	Populism within LFI and French radical left	No	The politological literature has reached a near-consensus on the definition of the fundamental premises of populist rhetoric (Akkerman, Mudde and Zaslove 2014; Mudde 2004; Rooduijn 2014; Rooduijn and Akkerman 2017). These are often summarised as people-centrism and anti-elitism; in fact, they also include the belief of the separation of societies in two camps (dualism) and the claim of a fundamental antagonism between them. [...] Left-wing radicalism normally embraces the idea of a binary division of society, an antagonistic conception of politics and a radical anti-elitism based on the pursuit of political and social equality.
	James Shields	France in Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe	2021	Populist radical left		N	Populist parties in Europe	No	The studies collected in this volume adopt Cas Mudde’s (2007) widely cited definition of populism as: a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people. [...] Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2013a) draw a line between inclusionary and exclusionary populists [...] While inclusionary populists are more encompassing when it comes to defining who belongs to the people, who should benefit from state resources and who should participate in the political process, exclusionary populists actively target groups that are said not to belong to the community, thus arguing for their exclusion at the symbolic or political levels, or from the redistribution of resources. In the Western European context, radical left populist parties have (so far) usually adopted an ‘inclusionary’ approach, while radical right ones have been on the ‘exclusionary’ side.
	Raul Gomez, Luis Ramiro	Radical Left Voters in Western Europe	2023	Populist radical left		N	Radical left voters in Europe	No (for radical left) / Yes (for LFI)	The RLP family is fundamentally characterized by its denunciation of capitalism and its radical criticism of the role of markets in defining social, political, and economic structures.	Tertiary source: In the specialized academic literature, there is a consensus as to the definition of the Radical Left party family and the use of the term ‘radical left’ to refer to these parties (March 2011).
	Marco Damiani	Radical left-wing populism and democracy in Europe in Routledge Handbook of Global Populism	2018	Populist radical left		N	Populist radical left parties in Western Europe	No	The political proposals of all European PRLPs follow this line. After the collapse of faith in the established teleological and political narratives, and before the proliferation of countless nationalist, ethnic and religious conflicts, this part of the European left chose not to identify its function in either the reconstruction of the fragments of the 20th-century mosaic, in order to return to the Marxist project at the point when it was interrupted, or in the tendency to yield to post-modern isolationist promises. For the populist parties of the European radical left, the task is to formulate a new democratic programme with “radical” and “plural” characteristics, which could be the expression of a “general will” for a new historical bloc, identifiable (no longer by only one social class, but rather) as the “people”, opposed to an enemy identified in a collective trama which pursues objectives contrary to those of the working classes.
	Łukasz Jakubiak	Extreme Populist Parties and the Presidentialisation of Politics as a New Threat to the Fifth French Republic's Constitutional Order in Democracy and Its Enemies in Europe	2025	Extreme left, left-wing		N	Threats to the French Fifth Republic	No (for LFI) / Yes (for extreme left)	Undefined
	Enrico Padoan	Anti-Neoliberal Populisms in Comparative Perspective: A Latinamericanisation of Southern Europe?	2020	Populist left		N	Left-wing populism in Latin America and Southern Europe	No	I thus define populism as a ‘political project’ aiming at occupying the public institutions through electoral means in order to allow ‘the people’ to recuperate or achieve its sovereignty, while relying on an antagonistic, polarising political dis- course to generate new collective identities and on varying organisational resources to overcome the problems of collective action that could arise among dispersed and/or heterogeneous constituencies
Res Publica Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas		Anti-Austerity Parties Ten Years Later: A Framework for Analysis	2025	Anti-austerity, Populist left, radical		Y	Anti-austerity parties in Southern Europe	No (for LFI and populist leftist)	It cites C. Mudde and C. Rovira Kaltwasser, “Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America for the definition.	It's unclear what "radical" means in the context
	Samuele Mazzolini	Left populism is dead, long live left hegemony. Lessons from European politics	2025	Radical left, populist left		Y	Left populism in Europe	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	Undefined
Modern & Contemporary France	Raymond Kuhn	Wither the French left?	2022	Radical left, part of the mainstream left (not part of the extreme left)		Y	French Left in the 2022 election	Partially (many references, but no explicit discussion on the political position)	Undefined
	Nick Hewlett and Raymond Kuhn	Reflections on the 2022 elections in France					2022 French elections
	Gino Gérard Raymond	Bottom-up democracy, blame and a republican monarch among the ‘déclassés’		Radical left			Macron's presidency and his social policies	Yes
	Andrew Knapp	France’s party system in 2022		Left, radical left, hard left			See title	Yes
	Robert Elgie	The election of Emmanuel Macron and the new French party system: a return to the éternel marais?	2017	Extreme left			French political system after the 2017 elections	Yes
	Emile Chabal and Michael C. Behrent	The deluge: France’s 2024 legislative elections	2024	Left, populist left			2024 French elections	Yes
French History	Emile Chabal, Michael C Behrent, Marion Van Renterghem	Historical perspectives on the 2022 electoral cycle in France	2023	Far-left		2022 French elections	Yes (for far-left) / Partially (for LFI: cited 4 times but never dealt with in detail)	Undefined
CEVIPOL Working Papers	Pascal Delwit	“This is the final fall”. An electoral history of European Social Democracy (1870-2019)	2021	Radical left		Y	Electoral evolution of social democracy in Europe	No (for radical left) / Yes (for France Insoumise)	Until 1989, most of the radical left was made up of communist parties. For thirty years, the spectre of the radical left in Europe has undergone considerable changes (Delwit, 2016; Amini, 2015).
Party Politics	Diane Bolet	The janus-faced nature of radical voting: Subjective social decline at the roots of radical right and radical left support	2022	Radical left	(see the appendix)	Y	Economic sociology of radical right and radical left support	No (for radical left) / Yes (for France Insoumise)	Radical parties are classified following the academic consensus regarding each party family (March and Rommerskirchen, 2015, for radical left parties). Communist, Post-Communist and Left Socialist parties are included among radical left parties because they propose radical changes in the mode in which capitalist market societies and economies are organised. [...] Using the CSES expert party placement [...] on the left–right ideological dimension, [...] radical left parties are ranked between 1 to 3 out of 10 on this scale. (LFI gets a 2.8/10 on the CSES scale)
	Andrej Zaslove, Robert Huber and Maurits J. Meijers	The state of populism: Introducing the 2023 wave of the Populism and political parties expert survey	2025	Radical left (0.5/10 on a 1-10 left-right scale)			Populism across Europe	Database	Undefined
	Maria Snegovaya	Fellow travelers or Trojan horses? Similarities across pro-Russian parties’ electorates in Europe	2021	Radical left			Pro-Russian parties in Europe	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	I followed the CHES classification schema
West European Politics	Florian Gougou	The 2024 French legislative elections: maintaining elections, political crisis	Part of the "left"		Y	2024 French elections	Yes	Undefined
	Anja Durovic	Rising electoral fragmentation and abstention: the French elections of 2022	2022	Far-left					2022 French elections
		The French elections of 2017: shaking the disease?	2019						2017 French elections
	Andreas Fagerholm	Far left and far right party reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine	2024	Far-left			Far-right and far left parties' stances on the Russian invasion of Ukraine	Yes (for LFI) / No (for far-left)	The set of included parties is rather similar to the set of parties classified as either far left or far right in the 2.0 version of PopuList.
Europe-Asia Studies		Sympathy or Criticism? The European Far Left and Far Right React to Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine				Y
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology	Martin Baloge & Nicolas Hubé	How populist are populist parties in France? Understanding parties’ strategies within a systemic approach	2022	Far-left / left populist / radical left / extreme left		Y	Populism among French parties (FN and LFI)	No (for LFI and populism) / Yes (for far-left, radical left and extreme left)	relying on Mudde’s definition of populism ‘that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’ (Mudde, 2004, p. 543; See also Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017a; Taggart, 2000).
European Journal of International Security	Ugo Gaudino	A populist desecuritisation? Mélenchon, left-wing populism, and the fight against Islamophobia in France	2024	Left-wing populist / radical left		Y	Melénchon's attitudes towards Muslims	No (for LFI and left-wing populism) / Yes (for radical left)	Following the definition provided by Cervera-Marzal, six key elements feature in left-wing populism: (1) critique of neoliberalism; (2) translation of the cleavage ‘right–left’ into ‘people–oligarchy’; (3) charismatic leadership; (4) alliance with social movements; (5) affective politics; (6) reinterpretation of concepts usually appropriated by the Right (e.g. sovereignty).	"Radical left" is referred only to Mélénchon, not to the party
Patterns of Prejudice		‘Islamo-leftism’ or the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and Islamophobia in French politics	2025	Radical left, left-wing		Y	Islamo-leftist theory	No (for LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	Undefined
Cités	Pierre Birnbaum	Les « gens » contre « l’oligarchie » : le discours de La France insoumise	2017	Left-wing populist		N	LFI's rhetoric	No	Undefined (based on the self-description by the party and on Mouffe's books)	In French
Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review	Sorina Soare, Moreno Stambazzi	Y-at-il quelque chose de pourri dans la démocratie contemporaine? La vision des populismes contemporains (France et Italie)	2017	Populist radical left		Y	Populists' relationship with democracy in France and Italy	No	le radicalisme se définit en opposition avec une vision constitutionnelle, à savoir libérale, de la démocratie ; de ce point de vue, les partis dits radicaux acceptent les principes de base de la démocratie et ils critiquent une dérive constitutionaliste. Dans ce cas-ci, le rapport conflictuel avec la démocratie est justifié au nom d’une perversion de nature élitiste ou, plus précisément, une perversion issue des limitations constitutionnelles apportées à la souveraineté populaire5 . Par rapport à ce que l’on appelle la démocratie militante6 , si les partis extrémistes représentent une menace pour un régime démocratique, les partis populistes restent dans les limites constitutionnelles du fonctionnement des partis, à savoir les principes de la souveraineté nationale et de la démocratie [...] le genre populiste partage trois points principaux : la vénération du peuple, la critique des élites (politiques avant tout, mains non seulement) et le culte de la volonté générale [...] le populisme d’inclusion (la gauche radicale populiste). Ce dernier est un populisme d’origine marxiste, caractérisée par l’importance de la vox populi au détriment de celle des prolétaires et une valorisation accrue des particularismes (nationaux, régionaux et ethniques) au détriment de l’internationalisme traditionnel.	In French
Globalizations	Joshua E. Rigg	From ‘dégage!’ to ‘dégagisme’: the travel of the political thinking of the Arab uprisings between Tunisia and France	2022	Populist left		Y	"Degagiste" rhetoric in Tunisia and France	No	In For A Left Populism, Mouffe moves to outline what this would look like. In contrast to a ‘revolutionary politics’, which ‘seeks a total rupture with the existing sociopolitical order’, Mouffe advocates a project of ‘radical reformism’ that ‘accepts the principles of legitimacy but attempts to implement a different hegemonic formation’ (Mouffe, 2018). To build such a hegemonic formation, Mouffe, returning to her earlier work with Ernesto Laclau, argues that ‘left populism, understood as a discursive strategy of construction of the political frontier between “the people” and “the oligarchy” constitutes, in the present conjuncture, the type of politics needed to recover and deepen democracy’ (Mouffe, 2018).
Verso Books	Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger	The Populist Moment: The Left After the Great Recession	2023	populist left, left-wing since 2022		N	Populist left parties in Europe	No	Populism can never be a “pure” phenomenon, however. The protagonists of this book have all, to some extent, created hybrid forms of politics between the social democratic, communist, and populist traditions. All of them, however, have gone through at least one specific moment in their development in which the populist approach was dominant. All of them were forced to construct “the people” as a political subject and find a charismatic leader to embody their hopes, dreams and demands; all of them fed on the strong antagonism between this popular subject and a power bloc; all of them called for the expansion of rights and economic redistribution to popular sectors; all of them sought mass participation across classes; and, finally, all of them rose up during moments of democratic crises.
	Stefano Palombarin, Bruno Amable	The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France's Political Crisis	2021	left, sovereignist left			2017 French elections	Yes	Undefined
Government and Opposition	Mattia Zulianello	Varieties of Populist Parties and Party Systems in Europe: From State-of-the-Art to the Application of a Novel Classification Scheme to 66 Parties in 33 Countries	2019	left-wing populist, social populist		Y	Classification of European populist parties	Database	left-wing populists, which combine populism with variously defined forms of socialism. While six out of the 11 parties that fall in this category qualify as typical ‘social populists’ (Mudde 2007)
	Ioannis Balampanidis, Ioannis Vlastaris, George Xezonakis and Magdalini Karagkiozoglou	‘Bridges Over Troubled Waters’? The Competitive Symbiosis of Social Democracy and Radical Left in Crisis-Ridden Southern Europe	2019	Radical left		Y	Radical left and social democracy in Southern Europe	No	The radical left is a post-communist party family which promotes root-and-branch change without renouncing liberal democracy. Its traditional anti-capitalism has changed into opposition to ‘neoliberal globalization’ (March 2011).
	Jannis Saalfeld	Identity Politics and Left-wing Populism	2025	left-wing populist, "on the left"		Y	see title	No	First, they are defined as populist due to the centrality of people-centrism and anti-elitism – the two defining features of populism – in their political rhetoric (March 2007; Venizelos and Stavrakakis 2023). Second, they are leftist ‘in their emphasis on egalitarianism, and their identification of economic inequity as the basis of existing political and social arrangements’ (March 2007)
British Journal of Political Science	Matthijs Rooduijn, Andrea L. P. Pirro, Daphne Halikiopoulou, Caterina Froio, Stijn Van Kessel, Sarah L. De Lange, Cas Mudde and Paul Taggart	The PopuList: A Database of Populist, Far-Left, and Far-Right Parties Using Expert-Informed Qualitative Comparative Classification (EiQCC)	2023	far-left and populist		Y	Classification of far-right, far-left and populist parties in Europe	Database	Far-left parties: parties that reject the underlying socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism and advocate for alternative economic and power structures. They see economic inequality as the basis of existing political and social arrangements and call for a major redistribution of resources from existing political elites (March 2011).
						?
Italian Political Science Review	Paul Taggart and Andrea L. P. Pirro	European populism before the pandemic: ideology, Euroscepticism, electoral performance, and government participation of 63 parties in 30 countries	2021	Radical left		Y	Classification of European populist parties	No	the radical left can be interpreted as the most inclusionary and egalitarian and the radical right as the least egalitarian and most exclusionary. The extreme poles of this continuum broadly correspond to the endorsement of democratic socialism (radical left, as per March 2011) and nativism and authoritarianism (radical right, as per Mudde 2007).
Electoral Studies	Jan Rovny, Jonathan Polk, Ryan Bakker, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Gary Marks, Marco Steenbergen and Milada Anna Vachudova	The 2024 Chapel Hill Expert Survey on political party positioning in Europe: Twenty-five years of party positional data	2025	0.8 on a 1-10 left-right scale		Y	Classification of European parties	Database	-
Political Research Exchange	Adam Holesch, Piotr Zagórski and Luis Ramiro	European radical left foreign policy after the invasion of Ukraine: shifts in assertiveness towards Russia	2024	Radical left		Y	Radical left parties' positions on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	The RLPs’ ideological background or identity has decisively framed their international policy positions to the point of generating one of the elements that precisely distinguish the contemporary radical-left party family from other party groupings (Calossi 2016; Chiocchetti 2017; March 2012; March and Mudde 2005).
Euroflections	Cas Mudde	Populism is dead! Long live the far right!	2019	Left populism		N	Populist parties in 2019 European elections	Yes (for LFI) / No (for left populist)	Undefined
	Luis Ramiro	The radical left in the 2019 European parliament elections: an electoral defeat and a cautionary tale		Radical left			Radical left parties in 2019 European elections	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	Undefined
	Thierry Chopin, Giulia Sandri	The 2019 EP elections in France: Second (dis)order elections?		Leftist			2019 European elections in France	Yes	Undefined
Swiss Political Science Review	Pedro Lourenço	Studying European Radical Left Parties since the Fall of the Berlin Wall (1990–2019): A Scoping Review	2021	Radical left		Y	Literature on radical left parties in Europe	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	And although the use of the term ‘radical left’ is (still) not entirely consensual (e.g. Bortun, 2019; Calossi, 2016), most studies now follow March’s definition (2011: 8–9): RLPs are ‘radical’ in the sense that they ‘reject the underlying socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism’ and advocate a ‘“root-and-branch” change of the political system’; and ‘left’ due to their commitment in overcoming inequality through the promotion of ‘collective economic and social rights’. Their main ideological features ‘can be regarded as a radicalization of values held by (some of) the political mainstream, such as egalitarianism and internationalism’ (March, 2011: 9). However, at its ideological core is anti-capitalist socialism – i.e. RLPs are ‘(more or less explicitly) critical toward capitalism and in favor of (some form of) socialism’ – often combined with other values, such as ecologism, feminism, multiculturalism, antiimperialism or Euroscepticism (Fagerholm, 2018b: 416–417).	Tertiary source: confirms the existence of a growing definitional agreement around the term ‘radical left’, particularly after 2010.10 In the last decade, 74% of articles used the term ‘radical left’, 21% ‘communist(s)’ and only 8% ‘ far left’
Pluto Press	Paolo Gerbaudo	The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy	2019	Populist left	-	N	Parties' organizational models	Yes	Undefined
	Giorgos Charalambous	The European Radical Left. Movements and Parties since the 1960s	2022	Radical left		N	History of radical left parties in Europe	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	The fundamental characteristics highlighted for contemporary RLPs and movements by Luke March and Cas Mudde offer a useful depiction of the Radical Left’s ideational and policy core [...] This particular political family is today said to either reject consumerism and neoliberalism, or even fundamentally oppose capitalist profit; it advocates for extensive redistribution and the establishment of alternative institutions and structures of political and economic governance that reinforce social justice; it identifies economic inequality as the basis of existing arrangements and espouses its elimination through the establishment of collective economic and social rights; it is more anti-capitalist and less antidemocratic while it does articulate a critique of capitalist democracy and offers its own democratic alternative; it embraces international solidarity and asserts that national and regional socio-political issues reflect global dynamics. The first two characteristics denote radicalism and the last four a left-wing identity according to the definition’s authors
tripleC		Reclaiming Radicalism: Discursive Wars and the Left	2021	Radical left / left-wing populism		Y	Labelling of the radical left	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	the movements and parties of the socialist tradition and its contemporary derivatives
Constellations	Giorgos Venizelos, Yannis Stavrakakis	Bound to fail? Assessing contemporary left populism	2022	Populist left		Y	Left populism in the world	Yes (for LFI) / No (for left populism)	left populism can be defined as “one way” in which a leftist programmatic package can be articulated (regardless of its degree of left radicalism), within a certain context, in order to construct a popular collective subject and acquire a form/shape potentially able to undermine the status quo. Its aim is to expand representation/inclusion and increase participation, strengthening (symbolic and affective) identification.
Hérodote	Wilfried Serisier	La Seine-Saint-Denis en 2022 : une gauche forte, une abstention aiguë, des inégalités croissantes	2022	Radical left		Y	Electoral sociology in La Seine-Saint Denis	Yes	Undefined	In French
Politics	Alex Yates	Pluralising pluralism in the study of populism	2024	Left-wing populism		Y	Pluralistic populism	Yes (for LFI) / No (for left-wing populism)	populist formations, which pit ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’
	Gilles Ivaldi	Contesting the EU in times of crisis: The Front National and politics of Euroscepticism in France	2018	Radical left		Y	Euroscepticism in the FN	Yes	Undefined
Emerald Points	Óscar García Agustín	Left-Wing Populism: The Politics of the People	2019	Left-wing populist		N	Left-wing populism	No	Left-wing populism is defined as the combination of the populist impetus of expanding representation (through the appeal to “the people” against the elites) and higher participation and of the left tradition to promote equality and social justice.
Journal of Common Market Studies	Marta Lorimer, Marianna Griffini and Léonie de Jonge	Snap Out of It? Governmental Instability and Far-Right Mainstreaming in the Dutch and French Elections of 2023/2024	2025	Radical left		Y	Dutch and French elections of 2023/2024	Yes	Undefined
	Marta Lorimer, Lise Esther Herman	The French Elections of 2022: Macron's Half Victory in a Changing Political Landscape	2023	Left-wing, far-left		Y	French elections of 2022	Yes	Undefined	"Far-left" is referred to Mélenchon
Comparative European Politics	Lise Esther Herman, Julian Hoerner, Joseph Lacey	Does the radical left stand up for liberal democracy in the European parliament? Evidence from 53 debates on the rule of law crisis	2025	Radical left		Y	Positions of radical left parties on liberal democracy	Yes (for LFI) / No (for radical left)	All parties part of the GUE group in the EP are considered "radical left"
Journal of Contemporary European Studies	Thomás Zicman de Barros and Théo Aiolfi	From sovereignty to créolisation: populist strategies and the Mélenchon-Ruffin split. A response to Rojas-Andrés, Mazzolini, and Custodi	2025	Radical left / left-wing populist		Y	"Créolisation" vs "left-wing patriotism"	No (for LFI and left-wing populism) / Partially (for radical left: many references but no specific discussion about the label)	parties that abandoned the traditional rhetoric of antagonism between left and right and adopted an anti-system discourse that framed the political struggle as a dispute between those ‘below’ and those at the ‘top’, in the name of ‘popular sovereignty
Ethnic and Racial Studies	Thomas Serres	Authoritarian liberalism and the triangulation of the antiracist left in France	2026	Leftist / reformist		Y	Antiracism and the French left	No (for LFI) / Yes (for left)	Undefined
Parliamentary Affairs	Aurelien Mondon	Hegemonic defeatism: The mainstreaming of far-right politics in France	2025	left		Y	Far-right rise in France	Yes	Undefined
	Jessy Bailly, Coline Rondiat, Anaïs Augé, Min Reuchamps	Populism as a centrist strategy for disqualification: The use of ‘populism(s)/populist(s)’ in Belgian, French and Spanish Parliaments	2024	Far-left, left populist		Y	Use of the "populist" label	Yes (for LFI and far-left)	Undefined
PS: Political Science & Politics	Damien Lecomte and Calixte Bloquet	A Wrench in the Works: France and its Increasingly Frustrated Power Dynamic	2025	Radical left		Y	French political landscape	Yes	Undefined
French Politics	Cameron Michael Gil	Spatial analysis of La République En Marche and French Parties, 2002–2017	2018	Far-left		Y	En Marche's political position	Partially (for both LFI and far-left: both are cited many times, but never dealt with in detail)	Undefined
Hermès, la Revue	David Copello	« I like to be in (Latin) America ? » Les gauches européennes et l’Amérique latine : enjeux anciens et questions nouvelles	2025	Radical left, left		?	Influence of the Latin American lefts on Podemos and LFI	No (for LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	Undefined
New Perspectives in the Social Sciences	Simon Laflamme	Populisms of the Right and the Left: A Comparative Study of Political Programs	2025	Left-wing populist		Y	Left and right-wing populism	No	l’ensemble populiste se différencie entre ses composants selon que la doctrine emprunte plutôt au socialisme qu’au libéralisme.
Civitas Europa	Laurent Olivier	Usages du « populisme de gauche » dans le champ des partis politiques français	2021	Left-wing populist		N	Left-wing populism in France	No	Afin de mieux distinguer le populisme classique du populisme de gauche on peut se fonder sur l’énoncé de six critères cumulatifs que M. Cervera-Marzal [3] repère dans l’ouvrage de Chantal Mouffe : 1. il critique le néolibéralisme, le productivisme et des discriminations ; 2. il retraduit le clivage « gauche/droite » en clivage « peuple/oligarchie » ; 3. il se dote d’un leader charismatique apte à incarner les aspirations des classes populaires et moyennes ; 4. il s’appuie sur les mobilisations sociales en leur offrant un prolongement au sein des institutions étatiques ; 5. il insuffle une dose d’affects en politique ; 6. il réinvestit des signifiants actuellement accaparés par la droite (l’ordre, la nation, la souveraineté).
Journal of European Public Policy	Oliver Treib	Euroscepticism is here to stay: what cleavage theory can teach us about the 2019 European Parliament elections	2020	Radical left		Y	Euroscepticism in EP	Yes	Parties were classified using the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys of 2017 and 2014 (Polk et al. 2017), Team Populism’s ‘PopuList’ (Rooduijn et al. 2019), individual parties’ party group affiliations, as well as internet-based research on their main programmatic stances.
International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology	Cong Fu	The populistisation of green politics and the greening of populism: an examination of environmental populism in Europe	2025	Populist left		Y	Green politics and populism in Europe	No	A key feature of populism is the belief that society is divided into two opposing camps—the pure people and the corrupt elites—who are in conflict in terms of ideology, actions, and culture. From an ideological perspective, another critical feature of populism is its weak centrality, meaning it is a thin-centered ideology that can be combined with a wide range of broader ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, conservatism, or ecologism (Oswald 2022). In terms of political operation, populism emphasizes direct political participation by the people, often bypassing institutional norms and procedures, making it inherently anti-establishment. Broad left-wing populists criticize capitalism and laissez-faire policies, advocate for social equality, wealth redistribution, and big government programs, attribute social disparities and inequalities to large corporations and oligarchs, and promote cultural pluralism.
Polity	Benjamin Moffitt	Populism (Key Concepts in Political Theory)	2020	Populist left	-	N	Populism in the world	No (for left populism) / Yes (for LFI)	Mudde, Rovira Kaltwasser (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012b, 2013) and Filc (2015) hint at an answer to this question in terms of their labelling the (primarily) right-wing populism of Europe as ‘exclusive’ and the (primarily) left-wing populism of Latin America as ‘inclusive’.
Cambridge University Press	Bojan Bugarič	Populist Constitutionalism – Between Democracy and Authoritarianism in Anti-Constitutional Populism	2022	Populist left		N	Populism and democracy	No (for left populism) / Yes (for LFI)	In stark contrast, ‘left-wing’ populism emphasises social justice for the ‘underdogs’ of the working classes as well as ethnic-cultural minorities, redistributive economic policies against pre-existing neoliberal regimes, and grassroots mobilisation against systemic racism and inequality. [citing Mouffle]
European Journal of Communication	Julien Figeac, Marie Neihouser, Ferdinand Le-Coz	The digital party paradox: behind participationism, the persistence of traditional political repertoires on Facebook	2025	Far-left		Y	French political parties' digital communication	Yes (for far-left) / Partially (for LFI)	Undefined
Communications	Information-sharing practices on Facebook during the 2017 French presidential campaign: An ”unreliable information bubble” within the extreme right	Julien Figeac, Nikos Smyrnaios, Tristan Salord, Guillaume Cabanac, Ophélie Fraisier, Pierre Ratinaud, Fanny Seffusatti	2020	Far-left		Y (?)		Yes (for far-left) / No (for LFI)	Undefined
Twelfth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media	#́Elysee2017: The 2017 French Presidential Campaign on Twitter	Oph́elie Fraisier, Guillaume Cabanac, Yoann Pitarch, Romaric Besancon, Mohand Boughanem	2018	Far-left		N	Yes (for far-left) / Partially (for LFI)	Undefined
Politics and Governance	Elena Cossu and Caterina Froio	How Terror Attacks Shape Political Agendas on Multiculturalism in France	2025	Left		Y	Yes	Our far‐left/far‐right categorization is based on the PopuList dataset (Rooduijn et al., 2024), and for other party families we use the PartyFacts database.
Ethnic and Racial Studies	Abdellali Hajjat	The French invention of the “Islamo-leftist” peril: origins and first uses of a reactionary category of thought	2025	Left-wing		Y	Yes (for LFI) / Partially (for left)	Undefined
Spatial Economic Analysis	Tania Fernández García, Diana Gutierrez-Posada, Fernando Rubiera Morollón & Andre Torre	Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité? The role of spatial inequalities in understanding the determinants of the populist vote in the 2022 French presidential election	2025	Radical left		Y	Yes	It cites Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2013
Journal of Regional Science	Sebastien Bourdin, André Torre	Geography of contestation: A study on the Yellow Vest movement and the rise of populism in France	2022	Radical left, far-left		Y	Yes (for radical left and far-left) / No (for LFI)	It cites Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2013

Scholars in non-academic sources

Work name	Author(s)	Title	Year	Label used	Link	Topic	Passing comment	Definition	Notes
Libération	Manuel Cervera-Mazal	Fin de cycle pour le populisme de gauche ?	2020	Left-wing populism, radical left		Left-wing populism and LFI	No (for left-wing populism and LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	Le populisme de gauche désigne des forces politiques 1) qui assument leur appartenance à la gauche tout en priorisant une rhétorique centrée autour du clivage «peuple» / «oligarchie», 2) qui visent la conquête électorale du pouvoir d’Etat afin de convertir les revendications des mouvements sociaux en politiques publiques, 3) qui sont dirigées par un leader charismatique à même d’incarner les aspirations des classes populaires et d’opérer une jonction avec les classes moyennes, 4) qui insufflent en politique une dose supplémentaire d’affects, 5) et qui se réapproprient des thèmes traditionnellement accaparés par la droite (la patrie, l’ordre, la souveraineté).	In French
		LFI classée à l’extrême gauche : le point de vue de deux chercheurs	2026	Against "extreme left"		LFI's political position	No	There is a fundamental difference between Melénchon's party and extreme left organisations, he explains. They think that social change doesn't come from the ballot but from the street, meaning from the weapons. [...] The sociologist thinks that only the groups proposing the abolition of the State and of capitalism fit the definition of "extreme left"
	Sylvain Boulouque			Extreme left				The collective consciousness brought by the party is focused on the change of society, on anticapitalism, and the party denounces often the police violence, something that puts it to the left of the PCF
Radio France		La France insoumise est-elle de gauche ou d’extrême gauche ?	2026	Extreme left (extrême gauche), since 2025		LFI's political position	No	It can be considered as extreme-left everything to the left of the French Communist Party. [...] LFI is not taking part to alliances in a relevant number of elections, and they accuse everyone that doesn't agree with them on the left of being a traitor. This is an elements that is part of a political culture that comes from the extreme red	In French
				Between reformist left and extreme left				LFI plays on both tables, wich allows it to be sometimes on the side of the extreme left and sometimes to portray itself as a traditional reformist party
	Gilles Candar			Left (gauche)				The extreme left can be defined by its relationship with elections and with the legal means to take the power
The Conversation	Paul Smith	French election: as Marine Le Pen makes it to second round, the left‑wing vote is what troubles president Emmanuel Macron	2022	Left-wing		2022 presidential elections	Yes	Undefined
	Hugo Melchior and Bryan Muller	La France insoumise aux européennes de 2019 : radiographie d’un échec	2019	Radical left		LFI and the 2019 European elections	Yes	Undefined
	Aurélien Dubuisson, Paolo Stuppia	Pourquoi le Nouveau Front populaire et son programme commun ne sont pas d’« extrême gauche »	2024	Part of the institutional left		NFP and LFI's political position	No	The extreme lefts uphold a maximalist program in which the abolition of the private property plays a central role [...] [They] think that the elections and the parliamentary system are an impasse for those who want to break with capitalism and emancipate labour.	In French
Le Monde	Aurélien Dubuisson, Serge Cosseron	La France insoumise est-elle d’extrême gauche ? Comprendre en trois minutes	2024	Against "extreme left"		LFI's political position	No	The extreme left is made up of different mouvements (for ex. trotskysts, anarchists or antifascists) that share a certain number of ideas, such as an anticapitalist and revolutionary nature, the will to take the power on the street rather than through the institutions, and an anti-reformist approach.
	Nicolas Roussellier	Nicolas Roussellier, historien : « “Gauche radicale” est une expression plus appropriée pour décrire LFI que l’étiquette connotée d’“extrême gauche” »	2026	Radical left		LFI's political position	No	L’extrême gauche [...] désigne des mouvements qui privilégient une lutte subversive et révolutionnaire, hors du système. [...] LFI s’inscrit bien, elle, dans une perspective électorale et parlementaire.
20 minutes	Aurélien Dubuisson	Législatives 2024 : Pourquoi c’est faux de dire que LFI est un parti d’extrême gauche ?	2024	(reformist) left		LFI's political position	No	This "alternative left" is characterized by the will of breaking with the capitalist system while criticizing, more or less radically, the institutional left	In French
Le Nouvel Obs	Rémi Lefebvre	La France insoumise est-elle vraiment un parti d’extrême gauche ?	2022	Against "extreme left" (he argues that it's a reformist socialist party)		LFI's political position	No	Historically, the extreme left is represented by those who are to the left of the French Communist Party. [...] [they] play the electoral game but they question the legal means to gain the political power, believing that the conquest of the power should be done through general strikes and the social movements, and not through elections.	In French
TF1	Frédéric Sawicki	Est-il juste de classer le Rassemblement national et La France insoumise parmi les "extrêmes" ?	2026	Against "extreme left"		LFI's political position	No	The extreme left is first of all a mouvement of ideas, organisations, parties, that question the bourgeiose democracy and the capitalist society, and that believe that the direct revolutionary action prevails on the electional action	In French
	Philippe Buton	"La France insoumise n'est pas d'extrême gauche" assure Manuel Bompard : l'avis d'un historien	2023	Formally not extreme, but extreme in practice		LFI's political position	No	The extreme left includes those who want to transform the society following the law but thinking that one day it will be necessary not to follow it. It's different to the ultraleft (ultragauche) that believes that in order to transform the society it's already necessary to renounce to legality	In French
Le Parisien	Dominique Reynié	Mélenchon et Le Pen « renvoient à une vision ultra simple de la société »	2017	Extreme left		LFI and RN's political positions	No	Undefined
Revue Mouvements	Pablo Castaño	Populismes de gauche en Europe : une comparaison entre Podemos et la France insoumise	2018	Populist left		Left-wing populism in Podemos and LFI	No	[definition inspired by Cas Mudde ] Populism includes three elements: 1 division of society between the people and the élite 2 a Manichean idea of a "pure people" and a "corrupt élite" 3 an appeal to the general will [...] The "inclusionary populism" has three specific contents: 1 the defense of keynesian economic policies, opposing austerity policies (material dimension) 2 the proposition of mechanisms to ensure a direct participation to politics 3 the definition of "the people" not on an ethnic or cultural basis	In French
PONARS Eurasia	Şener Aktürk	Five Faces of Russia’s Soft Power: Far Left, Far Right, Orthodox Christian, Russophone, and Ethnoreligious Networks	2019	Far left		Russian influence in European politics	Yes	Undefined
Chatham House	Angelos Chryssogelos	Is there a populist foreign policy?	2021	Left-wing populist		Foreign policies of populist parties	No (for left populist) / Yes (for LFI)	whereas left-wing populists usually define the people–elite divide in economic terms, right-wing populists define it along ethnic and cultural lines. When this thin-centred ideology is applied to foreign policy, it can take different forms. Left-wing populists tend to be internationalists (though they may take some sovereigntist positions on economic policy), whereas right-wing populists tend to be nationalists.
Medium	Thomás Zicman de Barros	Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “creole” populism	2022	Left-wing populist		Mélenchon's "creole" populism	No	a movement with outreach beyond any partisan framework appealing to the “people” against the “elites”.
Jacobin	Anton Jäger	We Bet the House on Left Populism — and Lost	2019	Populist left		Left-wing populism in Europe	No (for left populist) / Yes (for LFI)	Left populists, on the other hand, have prioritized a defense of popular over national sovereignty, seeking to restore social safety nets and organs of democracy lost in the neoliberal 1990s.
Transform! Europe	Vladimir Bortun	United We Stand, Divided We Fall in The Cul-de-sac of the Left	2024	Radical left		Cooperation among radical left parties in Europe	No (for radical left) / Yes (for LFI)	these new parties shared five key, interrelated features: opposition to neoliberalism, including a strong antiausterity stance; emphasis on New Left issues such as gender equality and the environment; strong ties to social movements and the younger generations of activists; the ambition to build more democratic and bottom-up party organisations; and a notable orientation towards transnational cooperation at the EU level and beyond.
	Sarah Wagner	European Integration in The Cul-de-sac of the Left		Radical left				Undefined
London Review of Books	David Todd	Parable of the Parakeets	2025	Radical left		Situation of LFI and the French left	No (for LFI) / Yes (for radical left)	Undefined
Après-demain	Éric Fassin	La gauche et la stratégie populiste	2017	Left-wing populism		Left-wing populism	No (for left-wing populism) / Yes (for LFI)	Le populisme de gauche défend le peuple contre une élite ou l’establishment. C’est une politique verticale où le bas et le milieu se liguent contre le haut.	In French
Revue Politique	Arthur Borriello and Éric Fassin	Pour ou contre le « populisme de gauche » ?	2022	Left-wing populism		Left-wing populism	No	Debate, not defined	In French
Tocqueville 21	Thomás de Barros	Le populisme « créole » de Jean-Luc Mélenchon	2021	Left-wing populism		LFI's populism	No	Undefined	In French
CEPREMAP	Yann Algan, Thomas Renault, Hugo Subtil	La Fièvre parlementaire : ce monde où l’on catche !	2025	Extreme left		Emotional rhetoric at the National Assembly	Partially (for LFI) / Yes (for extreme left)	In French
Dissent	Philippe Marlière	What's Next for the New Popular Front?	2025	left-wing, "most radical" among the NFP's parties, seen as far-left by voters		Future perspectives for the NFP	No (for LFI) / Yes (for left-wing)
London School of Economics blogs	Anton Jäger	Book Review: The Populist Radical Left in Europe edited by Giorgios Katsambekis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis	2019	left populist		Review of Katsambekis and Kioupkolis' book	No (for left populist) / Yes (for LFI)

Other sources

Work name	Author	Title	Year	Label used	Link	Topic	Passing comment	Definition	Notes
Radio France Internationale	Olivier Favier	Extrême gauche, extrême droite, extrême centre: de quoi parle-t-on?	2024	Radical left (against extreme left)		LFI and RN's political positions	No	À la différence des partis d’extrême-gauche, elle joue pleinement le jeu des urnes et n’envisage pas de prendre le pouvoir par la Révolution. Ce dernier trait demeure, pour les institutions de la République, comme pour la communauté des historiens et des politistes, un critère essentiel de définition.	In French
Dissent	Jacob Hamburger	Whose Populism? The Mixed Messages of La France Insoumise	2018	On the left		LFI's political position	No	Undefined
Center for Strategic and International Studies		European elections watch: France 2022	2022	Far-left (referred to Mélenchon)		2022 French elections	Database	Undefined
Europe Elects		France	2024	Left-wing		Political positions of French parties	Database	Undefined
Pew Research Center	Kat Devlin and Mara Mordecai	Supporters of European populist parties stand out on key issues, from EU to Putin	2019	Left populist		Stances on EU and Russia of European populist parties	Yes	Undefined
The Brooklyn Rail	Charles Reeve	Letter from Paris: Political Cancan in a Time of World Sickness	2025	Left socialist		LFI's links with the civil society	No (for LFI) / Yes (for left socialist)	Undefined
Le Débat	Bernard Poulet	Un populisme de gauche est-il possible ?	2019	Left-wing populism		Possibility of a left-wing populism	No	It repeats the definition given by Chantal Mouffe

News sources

Work name	Label used	Year	Link	Notes
Le Monde	Left	2022 (2)	,	1 in French
	Radical left	2024, 2025 (3), 2026 (16)	, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,	1 in French
	Hard-left	2026
	Far-left	2022 (2)	,
Le Figaro	Extreme left	2024, 2026	,	In French
	Hard-left	2025
Le Nouvel Économiste	Extreme left	2025		In French
France 24	Hard left	2024 (2), 2025, 2026 (4)	, , , , , ,
	Left-wing	2024, 2026	,
	Multiple labels (left-wing, hard left)	2024
	Far-left	2022
BBC	Far-left	2017 (2), 2018, 2022 (2), 2024, 2025 (2)	, , , , , , , ,	WP:RSPBBC
	Radical left	2017 (4), 2023, 2026	, , , , ,
	Hard-left	2023, 2024	,
	Left-wing	2019, 2023 (2), 2024	, , ,
	Multiple labels	2024, 2025	,
Libération	Radical left	2017 (3), 2024 (3), 2025 (2), 2026 (2)		In French
	Extreme left	2019
Financial Times	Far-left	2024 (3), 2025, 2026	,	WP:FINANCIALTIMES
Euractiv	Left-wing	2024
	Multiple labels (left and radical left)	2022 (2), 2023
	Radical left	2023 (5), 2024
	Far-left	2023, 2024
Sky News	Left-wing	2023 (2), 2024 (2)	, ,	WP:SKYNEWSUK
	Hard-left	2023, 2024 (2), 2025	,
	Far-left	2022 (2), 2024 (2)	, ,
Al Jazeera	Left-wing	2019, 2020 (2), 2021 (3), 2023, 2024 (7), 2025 (3), 2026 (5)	,	WP:ALJAZEERA
	Radical left	2019
	Hard left	2022 (2), 2023, 2024 (4), 2025 (3), 2026
	Far-left	2017, 2018, 2020 (2), 2021, 2022 (2), 2023, 2024 (3), 2025 (6), 2026 (2)
The Independent	Left-wing	2023		WP:INDYUK
Euronews	Left-wing	2026 (2)
	Hard-left	2024, 2025, 2026 (3)
	Far-left	2022, 2025 (2), 2026
New York Times	Leftist	2022		WP:NYT
	Far-left	2024, 2025 (2), 2026 (3)
Green Left	Radical left	2025

Synthesis

Academic sources

Label	Passing comments		Sources not about LFI's political position		Sources about a political family		Databases	Sources on topic		Total	Tot. excl. pass. comm.	Tot. on topic + datab.	Tot. on topic
	Books	Articles	Books	Articles	Books	Articles	Articles	Books	Articles
Left-wing	2	4		1				1	1	9	3	2	2
Left-wing populist	1	1			3	3	1	4	11	25	23	17	16
Radical left	3	11	3	3	7	12	1	8	6	54	40	15	14
Multiple labels	2	2	2	2						8	4	-	-
Far-left	1	6	1	2		2	1			13	6	1	-
Extreme left		1	1							2	1	-	-

Expert surveys

Survey	Num. of experts	Year	Score
Populism and political parties expert survey	9	2023	0.5
Chapel Hill	11	2024	0.8

Non academic sources

Label	Passing comments		Sources not about LFI's political position	Sources about a political family		Databases	Sources on topic		Total	Tot. excl. pass. comm.	Tot. on topic + datab.	Tot. on topic
	By scholars	Not by scholars	By scholars	By scholars	Not by scholars	Not by scholars	By scholars	Not by scholars
Left-wing	1		1		1	1	3		7	6	4	3
Left-wing populist		1		4			4	1	10	9	5	5
Radical left	1		2	2			1	1	7	6	2	2
Multiple labels							1		1	1	1	1
Far-left	1								1	-	-	-
Extreme left	1						3 in favour, 4 against		4	3	3	3

News organisations (all passing comments)

Label	Newsorg
Left	Le Monde (2), France 24 (2), BBC (4), Euractiv (1), Sky News (2), Al Jazeera (22), Euronews (2), NYT (1), The Independent (1)
Radical left	Le Monde (20), BBC (6), Libération (10), Euractiv (6), Al-Jazeera (1), Green Left (1)
Hard left	Le Monde (1), Le Figaro (1), France 24 (7), BBC (2), Sky News (4), Al-Jazeera (11), Euronews (5)
Far-left	Le Monde (2), France 24 (1), BBC (8), Financial Times (5), Euractiv (2), Sky News (4), Al-Jazeera (19), Euronews (4), NYT (6)
Extreme left	Le Figaro (2), Le Nouvel Économiste (1), Libération (1)
Multiple labels	Euractiv (3), BBC (2), France 24 (1)

References

"Mélenchon advocated for French to stop being the official language of the country."

Does anyone have a source that actually quotes Melenchon on this? I would find this very surprising. The article cited only really mentions it in passing without actually citing anything, so it's very hard to know what it is referring to. ~2026-31404-27 (talk) 22:48, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

More generally speaking I think that these edits by @G13 vs G14 are skewed against the party. There was even a blatant falsification (later fixed) of at least one source ("Nous n’approuvons pas la violence", so "we don't approve violence" was changed into "condones violence", so the exact opposite).

Tablet Magazine is an American conservative magazine, I don't think that it's particularly reliable on these issues. --Friniate ✉ 10:21, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

According to the most recent discussion on RSN, majority of users have concluded that Tablet Magazine is generally reliable: . There is no reason to treat its claims with suspicion.

I apologize for "Mélenchon added that he condones violence", it was a grammatical error. I accidentally typed the wrong word and didn't notice because it looked similar. G13 vs G14 (talk) 13:35, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, passing comments are generally never particularly reliable per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. Secondly, I don't think that an American magazine is particularly reliable about a French party.

On this specific issue, what Mélenchon did was only proposing to change the name of the language underlining the fact that it is shared also by other countries besides France. --Friniate ✉ 14:08, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

My issue with the citation is that it doesn't refer to anything specific. I have been trying to look for a specific position and besides what has been mentioned about changing the name of the language I just cannot find anything. I think it is highly suspicious because Melenchon has publicly taken position against the ratification of the European Charter on Minority languages, for example. If he really had taken position against French being the official language, there should be traces of it.

While the article cited is slanted negatively against LFI, the way it is phrased in the article is factual and would be totally acceptable if it didn't risk completely misrepresenting both Melenchon and LFI's position... (In fact, it seems to be the exact opposite of their position) ~2026-31404-27 (talk) 16:23, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

After searching the internet for evidence that Mélenchon is against French being the official language, I found nothing. It seems like Tablet Magazine was mistaken.

I corrected the sentence, now it looks like this: Mélenchon advocated that French should become a "common language" and be renamed, becoming Creole language. He argued that French had spread to other countries as a result of colonialism and was "no longer the exclusive property of the French nation". G13 vs G14 (talk) 18:19, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

@G13 vs G14 But is it a policy of LFI? I doubt it... From the video that I've seen it was just an intellectual remark/suggestion by Mélenchon, also in the source that you used nothing says that it's an official LFI's policy. --Friniate ✉ 10:40, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

The concept of creolisation has been a somewhat important part of LFI's platform (although they usually refer to it as "nouvelle France"). I think it is relevant to the article. Here's a exemple of Bompart using the term, so it isn't only Melenchon. I am not sure whether the proposal to rename French has ever been mentioned by other LFI party figures though. ~2026-31404-27 (talk) 14:59, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

The concept of créolisation is definitely important for LFI, what I'm objecting to is mainly this method of describing a party's ideology assembling various declarations of the party leader. I think that a correct approach instead would be using the many academic sources covering the matter. --Friniate ✉ 15:25, 27 May 2026 (UTC)