The allocation of key posts in the National Assembly has highlighted the dawn of an unprecedented era in French politics following President Emmanuel Macron’s unexpected decision to dissolve the Assembly last month and the outcome of the subsequent elections. It has underlined the fact that there is no longer any majority in the Assembly, even for the largest bloc, and also shown that alliances are being formed on the Right at the expense of the Left. This is despite the fact that it was the latter who were the main architects of a concerted effort by mainstream republican politicians to thwart the far-right in the elections, and despite the fact that the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) leftwing alliance won the largest number of seats in the second round of those elections on July 7th.
Jean-Marie Denquin, emeritus professor of public law and author of '1958: la genèse de la Ve République' ('1958: the origins of the Fifth Republic' published by PUF in 1988) and 'La Monarchie aléatoire' ('The Random Monarchy' PUF, 2001), analyses the new phase that has just begun in a regime that for decades has functioned with “majority rule”. For an indeterminate period, he explains, we are now in a “parliamentary system where it is the elected [MPs], rather than the voters, who choose the rulers”.
Mediapart: In the recent parliamentary elections, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) led in the first round, while the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) leftwing alliance came top in the second. But on Thursday, a member of the Macronist camp was re-elected as president of the National Assembly, the post she had previously held until those snap elections. Do you understand how, as far as citizens are concerned, this is incomprehensible?
Jean-Marie Denquin: Of course, from the perspective of public opinion the situation is somewhat paradoxical and bound to provoke some emotion. But this can be explained by the fact that we've changed systems, although it's uncertain how long this situation will last.
Until now, we've lived in a presidential-style system with a majority vote held over two rounds in which the voters chose the rulers. Now we're in a parliamentary system where it is the elected [MPs], rather than the voters, who choose these rulers. And this is through alliances that have not been predetermined by the voters.
This is something that came as no surprise to people under the Third or Fourth Republics [editor's note, from 1870 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1958 respectively]. Let's remember that even when the Popular Front won in 1936, having formed its alliance before the elections, the right wing of that coalition changed sides after a year, and [prime minister Léon] Blum was overthrown. In 1956, people thought they were voting for Pierre Mendès France, who had overseen the decolonisation of Indochina, but they ended up with Guy Mollet as President of the Council [editor's note, prime minister]. This might still have shocked people, but it was consistent with the rationale of the regime.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In 2024 the situation is linked to the fact that the two-round majority vote did not produce a majority. This was true two years ago, too [editor's note, in 2022 when Macron's centre-right alliance lost its absolute majority in the Assembly but remained the largest single bloc] but is even more so today. Unsurprisingly, this favours majorities in the centre because votes can come from either the Right or the Left. When you're positioned to the far-left or far-right of the Assembly, it's less easy.
Mediapart: You've coined the notion of a “random monarchy” to describe the workings of the Fifth Republic. What does it mean, and how does it shed light on the current situation?
J-M.D.: I started from the widespread notion that the president of the French Republic exercises a monarchic type of power. It is also a reference to the 1974 essay on 'La Monarchie républicaine' by jurist Maurice Duverger.
That the regime has become presidentialised is undeniable, and it means that, in a normal period, if one can put it like that, the head of state governs with even greater power than that of the president of the United States, as he has the support of the Assembly, whereas the latter does not have that of Congress.
The caveat I have introduced is that this depends on there being an absolute majority in the National Assembly. If this majority turns against the president, many aspects of actual power fall away. This is what we saw during periods of cohabitation [editor's note, when the president and the majority in the Assembly are of different political persuasions]. But in a way, that was a case of “reversed presidentialisation”, as the prime ministers involved - Chirac, Balladur, and Jospin – [editor's note, Jacques Chirac and Édouard Balladur were centre-right prime ministers under socialist president François Mitterrand, while socialist Lionel Jospin was prime minister under President Chirac] also had an absolute majority at their disposal.
The complication of the current situation is that there's no majority at all. We find ourselves with three minority blocs whose sizes are not equal but close, and who do not seem, at the moment, capable of building a majority coalition.
No electoral system is perfect, otherwise every democracy in the world would have already adopted it.
Mediapart: The situation is made all the more striking by the fact that the “monarchical” aspect of the presidency had been reinforced with the move to a five-year term – a president's term of office used to be seven years - as has often been highlighted over the past twenty years.
J-M.D.: Yes. In 2001, the five-year term and the inversion of the electoral calendar [editor's note, the timing of parliamentary elections was moved to just after the presidential election, effectively ensuring the new head of state had a parliamentary majority] were adopted to throw the key to the bottom of the well: in principle, everything was decided once the President of the Republic had been elected. But as I have pointed out, this temporarily-achieved goal was unattainable in principle.
It couldn't last forever. The potential for a lack of a parliamentary majority or of an opposition majority remained possible. And this is what happened to a degree in 2022, and in spectacular fashion in 2024, following a dissolution.
Mediapart: You have written an entire book on the origins of the Fifth Republic. Where do we stand today with regard to the intentions of its Gaullist founders, and the promise of stability and modernisation? Has the regime become distorted?
J-M.D.: That promise has been kept, relatively speaking, for many years. No regime since the French Revolution has lasted as long. It's this fact that makes the current, unprecedented situation seem shockingly like a step backwards. In a way, we're seeing the reconstitution of the mindset of the Fourth Republic [editor's note, a parliamentary system] within the Fifth [editor's note, a presidential one].
Can the system function in this new configuration? It would require political leaders to agree to play by the rules of a parliamentary regime. This possibility isn't prohibited by the institutions, but it's never really been explored until now.
Even a new presidential election might not solve the problem of the drastic lack of a majority we are currently faced with. And an agreement between [political] blocs will also leave many dissatisfied. Either because they will still be excluded, or because their preferences will be diluted by it.
This brings us back to a trivial observation: no electoral system is perfect, otherwise every democracy in the world would have already adopted it. A majority [editor's note, or first past the post] system has the disadvantage of representing the diversity of citizens less accurately than proportional representation, but it has the advantage that the citizens directly choose the rulers (except when it breaks down, as at present). Proportional representation translates votes into seats more accurately, but it is the parliamentarians, with the cards they are dealt, who play the game by choosing the rulers.
The most likely outcome, which isn't what I personally consider the most desirable, is an alliance against the Left.
Mediapart: In spite of everything, isn't this the time to push for institutional changes to free up the political process?
J-M.D.: If we're talking about constitutional reform passing through the Congress of Versailles, in the short term this seems illusory. It would require the agreement of the Senate [editor's note, the upper chamber of the French Parliament], which would then seek to increase its power, and I don’t think this corresponds to society's expectations … More generally, I'm a bit wary of the belief that everything would change by changing the Constitution. We saw what happened when we moved from the Third to the Fourth Republic [editor's note, the latter was noted for its instability with 21 different governments in its 12 years].
In any case, we need a government that's viable at a parliamentary level. And the tragedy of the French Left, which is unhappy at the turn of events, is that it can only hope to govern from the centre. We may regret this and perhaps draw a conclusion about the need for a different strategy to change society, but in the new system we're now immersed in, it's an objective fact.
Let’s take the example of the Popular Front of 1936: the French Communist Party (PCF) supported but did not participate in the government, which made the Blum government viable for a certain time, with radicals within it who had long oscillated between the centre-right and the centre-left. It's hard to imagine Jean-Luc Mélenchon [editor's note, founder of the radical-left La France Insoumise which is the single biggest party in the NFP] agreeing to step back from such a set-up.
The most likely outcome, which isn't what I personally consider the most desirable, is therefore an alliance against the Left. But even in this case, there aren't enough seats for a majority without the RN [editor's note, the far-right Renaissance National]. This brings us to another problem, which is not institutional but gives a distinctive character to this period, namely the place of the RN.
Mediapart: What do you mean by that?
J-M.D.: Under the Fourth Republic, the PCF was excluded from the government but played a “tribunician function” [editor's note, in others words like that of a tribune from Ancient Rome]. The other parties took into account, to some extent, the interests that it represented. This resulted in progress for the welfare state.
With the RN, it’s different. Entire sections of the population voted for a far-right party that is fortunately excluded from power, but there are no policies corresponding to their material interests (the crisis of public services, declining rural areas...), and it would require breaking with fundamental principles and international treaties to satisfy them in terms of national preference [editor's note, the idea that French citizens should get preference over non-citizens when it comes to state benefits etc] or immigration policy, which is neither realistic nor desirable.
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- The original French version of this interview can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter