Regional Outlook : Europeans Yearning for ‘Clinton Effect’ : A new generation is eager to take political power, especially in France. But quick change seems unlikely.

It was 3 a.m. in Paris. The polls were just closing in California. And the Clinton-Gore victory celebration in the offices of the moderate left-wing French political party had become so boisterous that neighbors called the police.

Young members of the Mouvement des Radicaux de Gauche, a small but important political party with 15 representatives in the French Parliament and two ministers in the government, showered each other with confetti and playfully waved American flags. Rock music blared from the office stereo, drowning out late election returns from a big-screen television set tuned to CNN.

After reassuring a pair of police officers that the revelry would soon cease, Mouvement des Radicaux de Gauche President Jean-Francois Hory, 43, a Dijon lawyer and member of the European Parliament, recalled to a reporter the party’s decision months ago to endorse Clinton--a rare act by any French political party, normally reluctant to mix in foreign electoral campaigns.

What he and other like-minded young political leaders in France hope to see, Hory said, is a “Clinton effect” that would shake up the post-World War II European political Establishment.

“There is a generation here ready to take the controls,” he said. “Our main reason for supporting Clinton was the hope that it would cause a shock wave in Europe that would give a real push to retire the people who have been in the forefront of the political scene for 20 years, 30 years and sometimes even 40 years. It’s a question of generational solidarity.”

Bill Clinton, 46, and Al Gore, 44, represent something conspicuously absent from today’s mainstream European politics--the “young hope” that marks a generational break.

British Prime Minister John Major and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, 49 and 50 years old, respectively, are exceptions to the rule--although Conservative Party leader Major could hardly be called a generational break.

But in France, Germany and Italy, there are no similarly youthful political leaders in top office and few with a realistic chance of taking power in the next few years. The European political system is clogged at the top with post-World War II leaders more in the mold of outgoing U.S. President Bush than that of Clinton.

In Germany, the lack of younger people in high office is caused, in part, by the country’s drawn-out education process and by the German preference for older, seasoned politicians, said Dr. Gerd Langguth, a political scientist in Bonn and confidant of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Because most German politicians seek advanced degrees before they enter active political life, they often do not start their careers until they are over 30. Then, they begin a long apprenticeship inside their chosen political party as they establish their Hausmacht , or “power base,” Langguth said.

As in most European countries, for a candidate to seek office without the support of a highly structured and disciplined party is a practical impossibility.

When he was first elected to the Bundestag in 1976 at a very young 30, Langguth said, he faced strong resistance from his mostly older colleagues. “Let’s just say that one had to be very aggressive in showing that he was up to this very important job,” he said in a telephone interview. “Most Germans prefer their politicians to be at least 50 years old, not too old but not too young either.”

For this reason, Kohl was considered a relative youngster when he was first elected chancellor 10 years ago at 52.

The next German national elections for the Bundestag are in 1994. Christian Democratic Party leader Kohl, now 62, is expected to run for his fourth term. If he does not win, the man considered most likely to replace him is Social Democratic Party leader Bjoern Engholm, now 53.

In Italy, where demands for reform are spreading, seven-time former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, 73, grand old man of the Christian Democratic Party, long symbolized a political system marked by short-lived but ultimately unchanging governments that has run out of steam.

However, the country’s current premier, 53-year-old Socialist Party reformer Giuliano Amato, represents what many feel is a new wave in Italian political life. The Italian political scene is also marked by noisy right-wing reform movements--the neo-fascist Social Movement under the leadership of 40-year-old Gianfranco Fini and the populist, anti-Rome, anti-immigrant, pro-northern efficiency movement of 51-year-old Sen. Umberto Bossi.

The broad-based public protest against political patronage and corruption under the alternating Christian Democratic and Socialist governments has discredited longtime Italian political warhorses such as Andreotti and Bettino Craxi, 58. So far, Amato has been able to steer clear of personal implication in continuing corruption scandals.

With Italian national preoccupation focused now on economic stress, the Mafia and political reform, the issue is not “generational change” but structural political change.

Where the post-World War II political order seems most solidly intact, however, is in France, where the upper reaches of the political terrain are populated by the same names and personalities that have dominated the last 20 years here.

French President Francois Mitterrand, 76, has pledged to step down by the end of his seven-year term in 1995, after serving a record 14 years in office. But already lined up for the race to replace him are two former prime ministers, Michel Rocard, 62, and Jacques Chirac, 60, and former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, 66.

Rocard, Chirac and Giscard d’Estaing have lost before in presidential contests. But in France, unlike in the United States, a loss is not considered much of a liability. Mitterrand lost twice before becoming the longest-serving French leader since the 19th-Century Emperor Louis Napoleon.

Nicolas Sarkozy, 38, mayor of the wealthy Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, member of the National Assembly and one of France’s most promising young politicians, predicts the French presidency will not open up to new talent until the election of 2002. “There will be a generational change,” he said, “but not until then.”

“French presidential candidates must have long political careers before they even consider running for office,” said Denis Lacorne, a specialist on American political issues at the Paris-based Centre d’Etudes and de Reserches Internationales. “Usually you are not considered ‘presidential’ unless you have already been prime minister.”

That’s why French political hopefuls such as Michel Barnier, 41, the Gaullist regional leader who organized the successful Winter Olympics in Albertville and hoped to use it as a political springboard, practically drool with envy over the relatively open door for younger American politicians such as Clinton and Gore.

Like Clinton, governor of Arkansas, Barnier, president of the general council for the Savoie region of southeast France, has a regional base. Like Gore, a senator from Tennessee, Barnier, a member of the National Assembly representing the moderate right-wing Rally for the Republic party, has a national power base.

Also like Gore, the handsome young French politician has an avid interest in environmental issues and recently wrote a book listing the world’s major environmental problem zones. Not wishing to disrupt his future political chances, Barnier is cautious in his public criticism of the slow-moving political system.

“France is not the United States,” he said in a telephone interview. “You have to be careful about making comparisons. But looking at the French system, it’s clear that the institutions need to be modernized.” For one thing, Barnier and other impatient young politicians would love to see France adopt some form of the American electoral primary system where talented, little-known candidates can emerge earlier from the pack.

“With the primary system in the United States, you often have a candidate like Clinton who imposes himself on the party. The party itself doesn’t really select him,” Lacorne said. “In France and other European countries, it is still an atmosphere of ‘smoke-filled rooms’ where the party has a lock on candidate selection.”

As with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, America’s turn toward a youthful savior will likely add to the frustrations of young politicians across the Atlantic.

According to some observers, such as sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, warden of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, the mood for generational political change is in the air and will overcome the obstacles set up by the various political systems.

“This is part of the process that is going on in the entire Western world,” Dahrendorf said. “People are voting the heroes of the ‘80s out and turning toward a somewhat more socially aware policy.”

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Tyler Marshall in Berlin, William D. Montalbano in Rome and William Tuohy in London and researchers Petra Falkenberg in Berlin, Janet Stobart in Rome and Sarah White in Paris.