TO SURVIVE DE GAULLE
27
Congress, had succeeded in shaking off a few more of the exclusive, sect-
like characteristics which long had hampered the expansion of the Gaullist
movement. Only the Independent Republicans and a few small Left Gaul-
list groups remained organizationally outside the fold. During the legislative
election campaign of June, 1968, further efforts were made to draw prom-
inent politicians into the Gaullist coalition, the Union for the Defense of the
Republic.
Apart from the usual rivalries among party leaders, the most permanent
cleavage within the UDR — and more pronouncedly within the extended
Gaullist majority — now centers on social and economic policy. So long
as de Gaulle remains on the scene to arbitrate and to force agreement, as
he had done through his indirect intervention in the Action Committee for
the Fifth Republic and through his strong public statement on Gaullist
unity on October 28, 1966, there is little danger of schism.120 AsReneCap-
itant has written, the present unity of the UDR “. . . is strongly favored
by the presence of General de Gaulle at the head of Gaullism. Still today
as in the past, from him come political drive and leadership, and arbitration
in the domain of organization, where personalities are involved.,,'3n When
the supreme arbiter retires, Gaullist unity at last will become dependent
upon compromise and adjustment.
V. Organization
If the UDR is to survive de Gaulle it must not only prevent fragmenta-
tion, but must also build an organization with solid local roots. The party’s
record in this regard is a mixed one.
As is fitting for a party which borrows from both the Left and the
Right, the UDR falls neatly neither into the traditional category of “cadre-
type party” nor into that of “mass-type party.”’31 As in the cadre party, de-
tailed programmatic commitments are avoided, and decision making within
the UDR tends to be the affair of a rather small clique of men. Unlike the
cadre party, the UDR is highly centralized and disciplined. In terms of
membership, there has been no massive recruitment drive, such as the one
which won the RPF a million members in 1948. Yet with a formal mem-
bership which grew to over eighty thousand by 1963, at a time when French
party memberships generally were low, the UNR became much more
of a mass organization than typical French cadre parties like the Radicals
and the Independents.’22 Moreover, after an initial fear of flooding the party
with French Algeria partisans (as Delbecque and Soustelle desired),'23
UNR leaders used study circles, forums, cadre schools, women’s, youth,
agricultural, and student clubs, and a variety of other techniques in order
to catch a larger proportion of the population in the party’s organizational