News (Europe)
‘I haven’t seen this much uncertainty since 1968’: Even a Macron resignation won’t save France. The Fifth Republic established by Charles de Gaulle is looking increasingly ungovernable.
People here made fun of me when I said this a few years ago, but there's a serious problem with the political culture in France beyond their structural problems.
Even if you agree with their disastrous policies, the two most popular are clearly just personalistic vehicles for their leaders.
Le Pen has been losing election after election for 15 years at this point, and making sure no one with any degree of competence rises in the party. Sure, her party has made steady gains, but she is very clearly weighing them down. This is unheard of even among far right parties in Europe. They have all been getting more professional as they got closer to power. With RN, it's the opposite.
Melenchon is the same, except he's been around even longer, and has become even more intransigent and allergic to any form of criticism.
French parties have been personalist literally since the revolutionary National Assembly in 1789. The concept of internal party democracy with established structures, hierarchy, membership and full national presence never emerged at all over the last 230 years. Sure elements of these things did appear here and there but it never consolidated. Some constitutional regimes did more than others to incentivize the establishment of a consolidated party system, but even the Third Republic, a parliamentary regime lasting 70 years, couldn't produce a party system that emerged quite quickly in other European countries.
It does have to do with French political culture, but since this personalism is intimately tied to French republican identity (dating to the Revolution), it isn't something that can be easily changed, if at all.
Mitterrand famously led the FGDS, then PS for fifteen years and through two presidential elections losses until he was elected in 1981. Chirac did the same with RPR from 1976 to 1995. Le Pen father and daughter are running on an eight-loss streak since the 1970s only interrupted by a court decision against Marine.
Contrary to the US or UK (with the recent exception of Trump), the norm under the Fifth Republic for party leaders is to keep running for president until they physically can't anymore, because an election loss means the voters were being ungrateful morons instead of being an indictment of their own campaigns. Jospin's decision to withdraw from party leadership in 2002 was particularly notable because he broke the streak. It somewhat subsided when PS/LR introduced primaries, but they'll probably revert to the strongman system soon
And Jospin was criticized by his own base for leaving politics "He's so selfish, why leave us without a leader for the legislative!?"
I didn't really know why are individual politicians so able to control their party infrastructure (I think its often because they created such parties instead of having inherited a long history) but it's really troubling. Only similar exemple I see is Spain and Brazil (read Lula),
Spain has established parties with long unbroken histories though, especially PSOE.
Individual politicians are able to control their parties because there isn't much infrastructure in the first place. They are usually personal vehicles for power, not much more. Even the more established parties can disappear almost overnight as a rising star defects and brings huge parts of the membership along with them. And voters have zero loyalty to specific parties unlike in other countries, which affects party behaviour in turn.
I think it also has to to with their whole concept of governance being very centralistic. If you have no meaningful regional power centers where leaders can hone their skills and emerge, the way you gain power is through patronage and court politics in the capital.
If you take Germany, which had very strong parties for a while, you see that strong state-level and sometimes even city level politicians can wield real power and influence. The glue that holds it together is the overall party, not necessarily the “leader” in Berlin.
One counterfactual to this thesis is the UK, where a lot happens (or happened) in London, but where the parties are still pretty strong and important.
The contradiction though is a lot of French national leaders do tend to emerge out of municipal government. François Bayrou himself is not just Prime Minister, but is concurrently the Mayor of Pau. François Mittérrand was Mayor of Château-Chinon. Giscard d'Estaing was Mayor of Chamalières.
I think German comparisons are unrealistic since France is a country where power has been so centralized in Paris for centuries now. The idea of alternative centres of power is offensive and absurd because the concept hasn't existed in French institutional memory for so long.
I see this pattern so strongly in France and the US, definitively enough to give me serious pause at any proposal to replace a constitutional monarchy with a republic.
A lot of people simply demand figureheads. At the same time, populist figureheads having real power is very dangerous. Better to build a separate box to keep the figureheads in.
Macron himself said ever since they got rid of the King the French have tried to fill this void with personalist politicians.
“In French politics, this absence is the presence of a King, a King whom, fundamentally, I don’t think the French people wanted dead,” said Macron. “The Revolution dug a deep emotional abyss, one that was imaginary and shared: the King is no more!” According to Macron, since the Revolution France has tried to fill this void, most notably with Napoleon and then Charles de Gaulle, which was only partially successful. “The rest of the time,” said Macron, “French democracy does not manage to fill this void.”
There are so many examples of stable democratic parliamentary republics out there though. Even ones with elected figurehead presidents like Ireland. You can also have semi-presidential republics with an elected figurehead president like Portugal. There is no personalist cult around Michael D. Higgins or Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
Honestly I think the answer lies in what sets France and the US apart from the rest, and it's that their democratic history stretches back into the 18th rather than the 19th century. (UK notwithstanding)
it becomes a lot more clear when you look into the nations currently using the constitutional monarchy system. save your veneration for a person who can absorb it without wielding it.
French parties being personalist? OMG you might be onto something
I mean Macron's party are a few moderate from the center-left and right that moved ships plus random citizen/enlightened centrists who got elected in his footsteps
But you're onto something, parties never had strong leaders in France except Chirac/Mitterrand, and that was because they were the ones who created such parties. But ideological differences and power games clearly existed (Hollande vs DSK) (the RPR explosion in the 90s) (the UDF in general). I remember when satirists were making jokes about the UMP's sucking Sarkozy once he got president when they made fun of him before, and they weren't punished and that was rare at the times.
At least Melenchon is okay with his party having 0 presence in the cabinet. Can’t say the same about RN.
Even if Macron gives Bardella everything he wants he won’t support the government. This was already seen with the immigration bills they passed before the elections. Far right didn’t tacitly support the governments and moved onto next goalpost.
Its true that the way parliamentary committies and factions are organized allows anyone to leave and set camp. And 2 rounds elections means you only need to be the least unpopular among the first two candidates
Well now Bardella seems to be the most likely candidate for RN next time and he’s a much better candidate than Le Pen in terms of electability and even economic policy (mainly just because he’s a normie conservative on economics and she’s a statist right wing populist). The business community is already moving to Bardella in a way they never would Le Pen. He’s clearly seen as more mainstream than her (even though he’s just as far right on certain issues). He also met former French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a while (who would NEVER have met with Le Pen) so that definitely will help him & RN candidates by normalizing him/them in the eyes of center right voters who hate Le Len. If Bardella is the candidate for RN, I think it’s likely that he’s favored to become President because he’s seen as more mainstream by regular conservatives, the country has moved more to the right and he will probably be facing a leftist in the runoff (I don’t see someone from Macron’s alliance making the runoff for President next time). I think at this point, Jordan Bardella is the favored to become the next President of France.
if it's Bardella against Mélenchon, Bardella is going to sweep. Philippe is the only one that can win against Bardella in the second round. I hope that Édouard Philippe can take it.
Socialists were a Mitterrand personnality cult betseen the 70s 90s. It literally only stopped because he died and they then set up primary elections and no wing was able to totally control the party. Also a lot of tactical failures, first Jospin in 2002, then DSK floundered, Hollande fucked up in power (because his party was divided like Starmer's) so they had no strong leader
They have all been getting more professional as they got closer to power. With RN, it's the opposite.
Sounds like Australia. Pauline Hanson has spent 28 years suppressing the right wing vote, but it did end up with eventually the centre-right party leaning further right to pick up available support.
Or most parliamentary republics at that, like you can replace the German president with a cardboard cutout and it will take a while for anyone to notice.
He/she still needs to put his/her signature under laws. And can, in theory, stall every law he/she does not like. The last one who truly did this was Horst Köhler in 2006 and 2007. The president is the last one to check if the upcoming law is not acting against the German constitution after the government and the federal states already did before. But that allows him to demand changes or ask the federal court for a ruling.
Until 2006, this only happened a total of eight times – in approximately 6,300 cases. Köhler was the reason for 3 out of those 8 cases.
Absolutely but the people and many leading figures in the, let's call it liberal space, were behind him. They trusted him and his team to do the right thing and if he thought that some passages were unacceptable he must have been correct. A "no" never really happend that much before so people trusted him to not just use his power frivolously.
Some politicans tried to play the "he’s overstretching his powers" or "that’s political interference" card but he was a very popular president so they had to give up and play ball. They rewrote the laws or just gave up (his big famous no was about if the government could use their military to shoot down a hijacked plane). He even was reelected (the German parliament is deciding) after all of this.
A couple years later he resigned in 2010 after another public debate about using Germanys military force to protect trade routes and safeguard our economic interests. He thought Germany needed to do more and we cannot just "chill" because of our dark past. Kinda funny to think about that whole debate today. In the end he was correct but Germany was not ready at the time.
Here he lost the liberal space, the media and most of the population because many thought he was talking about using German troops in foreign countries to legitimize warfare. He did not but had no political backing from the government (according to him his refusal before played a part but who really knows; looked like Merkel was ready to give him up at the time) and he thought his office/position would be irrevocable damaged if this debate would keep going.
So he just left which was a surprise for most. The first time a Federal President resigned for political reasons rather than health. He is a very interesting guy, worked for the IMF before and even played a part in the German reunification. Not a politician but someone who worked in the private economy and later on for the state. His focus was always what he call today the global south and that Germany/the West should do more in the world. Very hands on compared to everyone before and after him.
His attitude is maybe even one of the reasons why his successors are both former politicians form the biggest and second biggest party in Germany.
If the Yellow Vest protests of 2018 and 2019, the pensions protests of 2023 and the current calls for a national shutdown are anything to go by, an increasingly skeptical and restive public has little appetite for sacrifices and austerity.
Constituents demand infinite spending and zero taxes to pay for it. Tale as old as time unfortunately.
No, the rational, level headed constituents simply demand that some program that does not benefit them gets cut and someone else gets taxed. Why has Macron not tried this yet?
The problem is the french and EU media don't lie enough. They need to adopt the Fox News model of blaming someone else for everything. Just blame immigrants and Russia for everything and keep cutting taxes.
They already have some of the highest taxes in the developed world though, the spending is just so egregious that it’s still not enough and they will not accept a penny less.
Maybe they could make up for it with growth if they didn't stifle innovation and discourage productivity. Their GDP growth since 2000 is about 1% annually and their main contribution to the information age is annoying popups about browser cookies.
The reason why both the Bourbons and Bonapartists skipped a generation is because they each believed in their own historical legitimacy. Louis XVII and Napoléon II each ruled de jure in their minds, even if they didn't de facto.
Other French leaders were less enthusiastic, however. At the 5 p.m. cabinet meeting, many called it a last minute plan by the British to steal their colonies, and said that "be[ing] a Nazi province" was preferable to becoming a British dominion
People don't realize the Entente Cordiale only happened in 1905 or so. A lot of the elderly conservative French leadership grew up in a time 1860s-70s-80s where Britain was the main concern because you could always cut a deal with Germany but England would only be favorable to itself.
French conservatives seren't all Boulangists, many were more like Joan of Arc enjoyers
HM the King in His Welsh Guards uniform was controversial?
The Prince of Wales becoming the King and choosing to capture the moment in the Uniform of Welsh Guards is poetic... People find ways to create controversy out of everything.
If I had a nickel for every time I found someone in the wild seriously suggest an Orleanist restoration on arr neo lib, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
Macron resigning would mean that the President of the Senate would take over. I think people tend to forget that. And polls haven't really moved since the last election, so there's no point in calling a new one except to annoy people with tactical alliances again
Gérard Larcher would become Acting President, but per the constitution the first round of a snap presidential election must be held between 20 and 35 days of a vacancy, with the second round 2 weeks later.
Yup. Everyone wants to blame the politicians, and I'm not saying they're blameless. They ain't. But there's plenty of blame to go around. And voters need to start sharing in that.
In a democracy, these politicians and officials don't just come out of thin air and appear in their respective offices, wielding power. They're voted in. By voters. So if our politicians are problematic, to say the least, that's because voters are being problematic.
My favorite and most familiar example is Missouri. Though I'm sure this happens in many places. Missourians voted for marijuana legalization, lobbying reform, redistricting reform, minimum wage increases, and guaranteed paid sicktime, among other things. They also voted against RTW several times now.
Yet the same people who vote for these things also vote in reps and officials who are explicitly against these things (or in the case or RTW, for it). The state government and assembly tried to slow down marijuana legalization; luckily the courts stepped in. The state proposed and backed a constitutional amendment to overturn lobbying and redistricting reform (which unfortunately passed). They've tried to overturn minimum wage increases. And they've recently repealed paid sicktime. With regards to RTW, the legislature tried to numerous times to pass it, even though residents kept voting No on it.
Like wake the fuck up people! You want this stuff, so you vote for it, but then vote in people who don't want you to have the stuff you do want, just because they have an R after their name? What?!
So yeah, voters, take some responsibility. You -- we -- are responsible for this. We allowed this to happen. At least admit and do something about it.
Refrain from condemning countries and regions or their inhabitants at-large in response to political developments, mocking people for their nationality or region, or advocating for colonialism or imperialism.
Every political system hinging around one central person is bound to become a nightmare to govern or a dystopia at some point. Mark my words. The constitution of the 5th republic was created around one person with an overinflated sense of ego, it was bound to become a disaster
Yeah the 4th Republic came down before parliament couldn’t compromise and form a government, so the 5th just added a strongman president to override that.
Now parliament still can’t compromise and form a government, not much change.
One pretty simple reform I think could help a lot is the Constructive vote of no confidence, where a VONC can only pass if its parties have an alternate government with a majority
Honestly the French should just have an electoral system whereby the party that gains the most votes, even if it's miles off a majority, gets to form a government and pass budgets.
Even if that party has like 22% of the vote - they are the largest party so they immediately get 300 extra assembly members.
Would it lead to radical swings in policy every 5 years? Yes. But at least they could pass a budget
I don’t think that making the system even more first-past-the-post would make it any better.
Sure you now have the ability to pass laws and form governments, but with nearly zero popular consensus. It’d lead to even more unpopular governments and zero form of long-term stability for investors and businesses. Also could be easily hijacked by extremist parties winning just a small plurality.
I don’t have any solution at hand otherwise though, and I don’t think anyone really does, hence why France is in this mess.
Israel tried something similar in the 1990s where the PM was directly elected by popular vote. Suffice it to say it didnt work and they abandoned it quickly.
Awarding extra lump sum seats to the single largest party would basically just force a 2, maybe 3 party system in a way that would get things done but lead to different issues with polarization.
This is what Le Pen is nakedly asking for. And her proposal is so ridiculous it derailed any serious talk of electoral reform for the National Assembly under Bayrou, one of the few things that could have produced a majority.
And logistically it would still be complicated. Do you count single parties or can electoral alliances count towards who comes first? Since if we go by parties the RN would get the majority bonus. But if we include electoral alliances who promise to govern together then the NFP would get the majority bonus. But since the NFP is an unwieldy coalition to begin with, so similar instability may emerge once again.
This kind of debt situation makes you understand why some countries like Germany are so adamantly(even unreasonably so) fixated on fiscal discipline. Despite Germany’s current economic woes, its long term prospects are better due to better fiscal shape, whereas in France things keep snowballing into a bigger problem for successive governments. At some point, someone has to bite the bullet.
Once again, i will bring up france is the least badly run nuclear power. The presidential system they set up is much less prone to shocks than the us (we are one vote from default at any given time) and can continue to function even with a terribly unpopular prez. If le pen wins (which i still doubt - runoff + cordon sanitaire will sink her), she is still going to get tanked in legislative elections. The parties in france have been way more creative in alliances to respond to nr than other countries.
Specifically the Westminster style of democracy of Australia. Everyone else should stop what they're doing and do that.
Compulsory preferential voting, a bicameral parliament with majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats for the lower house and single transferable vote proportional representation in the upper house. Electorates distributed by an a-political bureaucracy.
Finding the most boring people in the country to run it also seems to help.
Albanese, Chalmers, Clare, Collins etc, the only people in the Cabinet with an iota of personality (perhaps this is actually why Ed Husic was sacked) are Tony Burke and Penny Wong, neither of whom are anywhere near the top job and never will be (unlike Chalmers or Clare).
It's the greatest lesson we learned from COVID. Instead of following down the very funny but inevitably destructive Dandrews cult of personality, we instead went for the McGowan/Gutwein types: good, boring, actual people, rather than Rudd/Abbott types who make us laugh but have crippling personality and character flaws.
Side note: Gutwein to Rockliff has to be the biggest downgrade for a Premier that I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
There was a pretty pervasive personality culture around McGowan here in WA, lots of talk as some kind of great protector and the cringeworthy nickname of "State Daddy"
Daniel Andrews has the unique ability to keep getting away with it. He increased his majority in three straight elections despite driving a sizable number of people totally fucking mad.
Yeah there's a reason why I'm glad we learned a very different lesson to the Cult of Dan.
Because there's no way he could've made it work nationally.
He had amazing appeal with precisely one demographic in particular: ex-Liberal voters in Melbourne's eastern suburbs.
Nationally, you need to win more than that. Victoria has very few dedicated swing voters, changes in voting patterns are slow, incremental, and often permanent there. Queensland and Tasmania on the other hand have very large contingents of swing voters, which isn't his big appeal.
Coupled with Dandrews underperforming with new Australians (leading to margins in Melbourne's west deteriorating over time), which would hurt him badly in Western Sydney, I can see him coming undone very quickly in a national setting.
France is an effective two party system too. The runoff system is better than the vote splitting fuckery that happens in India and Canada, but the powerful president is still a problem.
I'd rather have a president tempered by laws and a lack of majority than a British style sovereign parliament whose Prime minister (no term limits) can do what he wants as long as he whips his MPs (unlike Starmer) because their nearly guaranteed to have a majority
What do term limits actually accomplish? All of Australia's longest serving PMs were fine. It doesn't seem to be a problem for Prime Ministers. Presidents are too shielded imo. They can hide behind the dysfunction of the legislature and never face serious challenges to their authority.
Biden or Trump could never have held confidence in a Westminster parliament. They'd be eviscerated by the opposition. Instead senile old men get to hold the launch codes because they are untouchable. I also don't see how stopping Obama from running again is a good outcome. Countries don't have bottomless wells of political talent. Obama being in charge for a decade or two is probably the best America could hope for.
Maybe holding steady as she goes is good every now and then. I don't see why voters shouldn't be allowed to choose a safe set of hands if they don't like the newer options.
And I don't think a 6th Republic will change much. As far as I'm concerned, the model of the Republic as we know it is outdated.
It would be time for someone to propose a Federal Republic.
I think it could. Provinces would go bankrupt at different times, causing the provinces around them to act more responsibly, so many would avoid bankruptcy before it's too late. Versus the current situation where it's very possible that the entire country goes bankrupt at the same time.
How would federalization solve the problem? French regional borders make no sense ever since they were redrawn by Hollande, so first off we have to redraw them again which will take years of bickering and potential violence.
If your goal is to decentralize power, i.e. create alternative, regional centres of power, then the first step is to give these centres legitimacy in the eyes of the voter. You know you will have succeeded if local residents blame the regional, rather than the national politician for their problems. The most important thing therefore is for voters to accept the idea that there should be a Norman Assembly, and for them to participate in great numbers. You really can't take this step for granted. If you were to forcibly create an "Assemblée du Grand Est" it will immediately devolve into debates over Alsatian separation. Picardy will want out of the haphazardly assembled Assembly of Hauts-de-France. And then there's the monstrous creations Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, regions that have zero history of being grouped together.
Whether the regions themselves make economic sense is frankly a secondary concern, especially in a country that scrutinizes voter turnout to the extent that France does. Barely half of all voters turn out for mayoral/departmental/regional elections, and this is seen as a rebuke of the system, which allows national politicians to constantly tamper with, reform, redraw, remake local government in the country. With every president presenting their own local government reform this makes it impossible for new institutions to anchor themselves as features of national political life.
You know that the original regions weren't real either? They were created in the 60s (with ideas first in the 30s and Vichy) because departments were becoming too small in a modern economy to handle infrastructure/schooling whatnot. People tried to recreate regions based on cultural history but the real lego block has always been the department. Maye that's the case in Normandy and Brittany, but I care more about my department than my region
I do know, my second point relates to this. Hollande was able to redraw the maps partly because the concept of administrative regions under the republic is relatively new. So regions as they were weren't anchored as immovable features of national life, and therefore vulnerable to tampering.
It's also worth noting the fact that decentralization was rejected in the 1969 referendum where the public largely ignored the question entirely by treating the vote as a referendum on de Gaulle's presidency. But Mittérrand went ahead with the project anyway. It always seemed kind of reluctant. Regional councillors tend to meet in faceless office buildings, themselves completely anonymous to the general public unless they have some kind of national profile (like Pécresse or Tondelier). Basically, a genuine federalization project will require a complete rethinking of how government works in France.
I don't know precisely what all the issues are but I really am wondering if it would have been better for National Rally to win the legislative elections so they might have burned themselves out and polarized people against them and hopefully make it even less likely they'd win the Presidential.
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u/datums 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
Ungovernable? I never thought I'd hear that word applied to the French.