In the last few decades, many moderate left parties adopted centrist strategies. These strategies did not only involve a programmatic repositioning but also the implementation of a set of economic policies with substantial distributive effects. What are the consequences of these policies? This chapter assesses the electoral costs associated with centrist policies by focusing on the case of fiscal consolidations. It considers the relationship between different types of fiscal consolidations and the electoral performance of social democratic parties. The results suggest that implementing fiscal consolidations is risky for social democratic parties but that not all fiscal consolidations are equal. Social democratic parties lose particularly badly when they implement spending-based consolidations that cut investment spending or public sector wages. Fiscal consolidations centered around tax increases are not associated with losses. Most forms of fiscal consolidations have a smaller or no effect on the likelihood to win office, but they still decrease the size of the left field. Overall, this suggests that fiscal consolidations, which hurt key constituencies of social democratic parties, are particularly costly for social democratic parties.

This chapter discusses centrism as another face of moderation. It distinguishes between various meanings of centrism and makes a connection between a vital center and political moderation. It also considers a few concrete topics on which a centrist agenda is possible and desirable.

The 2017 French presidential and legislative elections constituted a crisis point for the mainstream right. Since the mid-1980s, the mainstream right had proved remarkably adept at exploiting the political opportunity structure of the French political system, balancing the centripetal forces of the silent revolution with the centrifugal pull of the silent counter-revolution. This chapter analyses how the conservative Gaullists and their centre-right liberal coalition partners constituted competing but stable bloc components within France’s two-round majoritarian electoral system, while pursuing weak accommodative strategies vis-à-vis the FN. The absence of an effective competitor ensured that the Gaullists’ increasing encroachment upon the centre-right’s support, culminating in the formation of the UMP in 2002, did not threaten the bloc’s stability. Conversely, from 2007 onwards, a more conservative mainstream right faced challenges from both the populist radical right, reviving silent counter-revolution values which were again salient in the wake of the economic crisis, and renewed centrist formations which were largely accepting of progressive silent revolution cultural values.