L’Express put some questions to me about the current crisis, and I answered them. A shortened, edited French version was published online today but is behind a paywall. Here is the original unexpurgated version in English:
1) “Prime Minister François Bayrou stood on a chair and placed a noose around his neck, calling for a vote of confidence in his government on Sept. 8”, you wrote recently. You don’t seem very optimistic… If you think this move is doomed to failure, what political or institutional logic could have guided it?
I have been pessimistic about Bayrou’s government from the beginning, because the current division of the National Assembly into three broad blocs–left, right, and center–which refuse to cooperate makes it very difficult to achieve a majority. Furthermore, the prime minister himself has never demonstrated a great deal of flexibility. In fact, he prides himself on being a man of principle and makes a virtue of rigidity. This combination of structural impasse with rigid leadership did not inspire hope for a successful dénouement.
Despite this, the Prime Minister’s threat to resign unless he has his way on the budget was not necessarily doomed to failure. Indeed, there is considerable agreement across the political spectrum that the deficit has been allowed to grow out of control, and both the markets and the EU are demanding action. But Bayrou acted without first attempting to determine how he might win the backing of potential allies in the parliament. He did not consult either the Socialists or the RN despite knowing that if both voted to censure his government, he would lose. His excuse: “It was August, and they were on vacation.” Such an attitude suggests either incredible arrogance or utter lack of political sense.
2) If this government were to fall, Emmanuel Macron would see his fourth prime minister since 2022 disappear. Beyond the immediate context, how do you assess his record, and what lasting legacy can he leave to French democracy?
Emmanuel Macron came into office as the bearer of great hopes for reform of a political system that had grown increasingly dysfunctional. He brought considerable gifts to the post: great intelligence, vast energy, rhetorical skill, modest experience in both the private and public sectors (though without having been elected to anything previously), and a certain independence from the legacies of the then dominant parties, with powerful connections to both: he was a protégé of François Hollande until he betrayed him and had served on the Attali Commission under Sarkozy. But he also brought defects that were in a sense the complement of his gifts: impatience with people who disagreed with him, overconfidence in his ability to persuade, and a tendency to treat the challenges of governance as technocratic problems with an optimal solution rather than as political problems requiring the patient building of trust and coalitions. He never really recovered from early missteps, and after the Gilets Jaunes uprising he increasingly relied on support from the right and abandoned any pretense of an overture to the left, leaving him vulnerable to the rising strength of the RN among the parties of the right. His ten-year presidency will end with few accomplishments–a somewhat more favorable business climate and a still bitterly contested pension reform–and a political system even more dysfunctional than it was before. His calls for greater European unity have been eloquent but ineffective, although Europe during his time in office has moved slowly toward greater centralization under the combined impetus of the war in Ukraine and the threat of Donald Trump.
3) The possibility of dissolution is being discussed more and more. The RN is openly aiming for a majority, but is still far from achieving it. Which scenarios do you think are most realistic, and what social and political dynamics could work in favor of or against the RN?
In my view, the RN’s strength has receded somewhat since the first dissolution, when it seemed on the verge of taking power. It fell short, however, and then Marine Le Pen’s conviction on charges of misappropriation of public funds and sentence of ineligibility (currently under appeal) created an air of uncertainty. The specter of populist authoritarianism in the US under Donald Trump has made many people in Europe generally and in France in particular wary of what the party of Marine Le Pen might do. But the RN could well make a comeback if the collapse of the Bayrou government leads to widespread public disorder.
4) The forces of the New Popular Front are still demanding that a prime minister from their camp be appointed. Could François Bayrou’s departure bring them closer together?
No. Mélenchon’s intransigent leadership has made the LFI untouchable for the other parties that used to constitute the New Popular Front. For the time being, I regard the left as hopelessly divided.
5) How do you analyze the persistence of calls for “Bloquons-tout” (Let’s block everything) type mobilizations, even though institutional instability could lead to a change of government? What does this reveal about French society today?
The potential for the politics of the street is always present in France. But like the Gilets Jaunes movement and the Bonnets Rouges before it, Bloquons Tout is too amorphous and ill-defined to become the nucleus of a real movement for change. The September 10 demonstrations could, however, become an occasion for undisciplined violence from various quarters, and a too aggressive response by the police could lead to a social explosion. I think the risk of this happening is low, however.
6) As a specialist in Tocqueville, how do you view prolonged parliamentary instability: is France facing a more profound democratic fragility than at other times in its history?
Democracy is always fragile. At the moment it seems to me more fragile in the United States than in France. Tocqueville would be pleased to see that the French have resisted the imposition of technocratic solutions to their problems, and he would be happy that the imbalance between the executive and legislative power inherent in the structure of the Fifth Republic has been rectified to some degree, but he would also acknowledge that a weakened executive combined with a deadlocked legislature is a recipe for dangerous governmental paralysis.
7) François Bayrou is banking on dialogue with the parties. But in your opinion, are the French still capable of dialogue and compromise? From the perspective of French political culture, do the conditions for compromise still exist? And what might Tocqueville have to say about this difficulty?
The conditions for compromise always exist, but with only two years remaining in President Macron’s term, the parties are already jockeying for advantage in the 2027 presidential election. This makes even moderate politicians less willing to compromise than they might otherwise be. Bayrou himself still has presidential ambitions–unrealistic in my view–and this is part of the explanation for his maneuvering.
8) The Élysée is concerned about the speed with which some are calling for the president to resign, a sentiment echoed by part of the public. Do you see this as a symptom of a structural weakening of the presidential office, or a temporary episode? Do you think he could resign?
Any presidential system tends to be more robust when the president’s party also controls the legislature. Macron now has almost zero support in the AN, and that has flipped the script on the Fifth Republic, which used to be a regime dominated by the president to an unusual degree but has now been rendered rudderless. Macron is in a difficult position, but it would take a political earthquake to cause him to resign.
9) In your opinion, are we on the brink of a crisis of the regime in the traditional sense of the term, or is it primarily a crisis in the functioning of the institutions of the Fifth Republic?
It’s an institutional crisis in the sense described in my previous answer.
10) Do you think the causes of this crisis are primarily circumstantial (linked to Macron, Bayrou, the National Rally, Bloquons-tout) or structural (specific to institutions and French society)?
I think there is a broad crisis afflicting most Western democracies. There are multiple causes to this crisis: the globalization of the economy, the rise of inequality, the end of US hegemony and the advent of a multipolar world, the emergence of China as a great power, changes in the media, including social media, innovations in propaganda techniques, and so on. The list is long. The French crisis shares many of the features of this more general crisis, but it also has distinctive elements of its own. One of these is what some scholars have called “hyper-republicanism,” which refers to the republican idea that citizenship requires citizens to shed their “particular” identities (ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, etc.) in order to abide by “universal” norms. Hence it has been particularly difficult for France to adapt to recent patterns of immigration, even though the proportion of immigrants in France is lower than in some neighboring countries. The regional pattern of industrial change over several generations has weakened the solidarities that once sustained the mainstream parties. French political parties are suffering from an acute identity crisis. Mélenchon, for example, is a Trotskyist without a working class who has therefore been forced to turn to the suburban underclass in search of a base, following the teachings of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The Socialist Party became a party of government by absorbing a generation of technocrats and énarques. Some of its cadres were therefore initially attracted to Macron, while others never trusted him because of his background in the financial sector. The party of Chirac also had its technocratic elements, such as Juppé, but Sarkozy turned it in a populist direction which ultimately led to a split, with technocrats like the Juppé-protégé Philippe heading in one direction and anti-immigrant populists like Ciotti and Mariani heading in another. The biggest disaster has been the fate of Macron’s En Marche! through its many changes of name as well as identity. The great irony is that the ex-Macronist party is now led by Gabriel Attal, une créature of Macron turned Macron enemy no. 1. Is it any wonder that the public is confused by all these rapid changes of party identity?