The legislative history of decentralization during the Fourth Republic and the conservative Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle and his conservative successors was one of failed attempts at reform. Whereas in the Fourth Republic, no real reforms were passed, during the Fifth Republic, the reforms that were passed remained basically ineffective. In the meantime, the periphery had been changing. Decentralization in the beginning of the Third Republic, as we have seen, essentially enfranchised the middle-income peasants and shopkeepers at the expense of the proletariat and of the formerly all-powerful aristocracy, thereby setting the stage for a new balance of local political power. But by the Fourth and especially the Fifth Republics, France was no longer a nation of peasants and shopkeepers, even though these groups continued to hold the balance of power in the periphery. They were increasingly challenged by newer, more progressive groups made up of the salaries. These wage earners consisted of middle-level managers and workers who, living in the rapidly growing urban agglomerations that were essentially left out of the ruraldominated complicity in center-periphery relations, were intent on creating a more diverse set of local institutions and on demanding an equal share of local power. These are the groups that were turning more and more toward the Socialists and Communists, first in local elections and finally in the national elections of 1981.