Conclusion

Abstract

Our study has demonstrated the inordinately significant role of ‘performance’, that is to say the acts, the rhetoric, the projection of the image of individual political actors within a culturally and mythically informed configuration of institutions. These acts and performances are constitutive of the republic itself. The republic ‘is’ what people ‘do’ and how they do it. And by ‘people’ we mean politically significant individuals performing within the spaces created for them by the Fifth Republic. These individuals have a consequent political persona, part real, part imagined. The persona performs within and in relation to the institutions and on a culturally, institutionally and circumstantially defined scale of drama, spectacle and ritual. This has major political effects, often realigning the institutions themselves and their direction. It is the performance and the fortunes of the political persona and its relationship to its contexts and audiences that determine the political process.