What is Happening in France?

A Short Analysis

Non-French readers may have heard some echoes about the French political situation. I’ve the impression that the information circulating is sometimes sloppy and yesterday Tyler Cowen linked to a tweet suggesting that what was happening was a kind of a coup orchestrated by Macron. This is an exaggeration, to say the least. So here are some cold-minded remarks to clarify things.

Let’s start with a quick summary of the previous episodes. After the results of the European elections at the beginning of June where the far-right won a third of the seats and the governing coalition fell to 15%, President Macron decided to dissolve the national assembly and called for a snap election. These elections saw again the Rassemblement National (Le Pen’s far-right party) dominating the first round. However, the rules of French legislative elections are such that is very complicated for MPs to be elected in the first round (they need to receive more than 50% of the votes of the members of the constituency). Moreover, as the turnout was relatively high, in many constituencies (more than 300 over the 577), three or even four candidates were qualified for the second round (for that, you needed to receive at least 12,5% of the votes of the members of the constituency). However, in more than 200 hundred constituencies, agreements were negotiated between centrist and leftist candidates to leave only one candidate against the far-right candidate. This “Republican” strategy proved effective as, in the end, the Rassemblement National won only 143 seats, far from the 250 or even 300 they were hoping for. No clear winner emerged overall. The left coalition ended short of 200 seats and the governing coalition won 163 seats (see here for an analysis of these results). The outcome was a kind of political stalemate. Still, shortly before the start of the Olympic games, the left coalition came up with a proposal for a new prime minister, Lucie Castets, an “énarque” virtually totally unknown to the public.

Macron used the Olympic games as an excuse to postpone any decision and started last week a series of discussions with the leaders of the different parties. Now, the President has announced that he would not nominate Castets since, he claims, it’s almost certain that any government led by her would be censored at the first attempt to pass a law. As discussions continue, Macron has virtually excluded the possibility that any government emanating from the left coalition will be nominated.

Now that the background is settled, some remarks:

1)     Until now, nothing that has been done by Macron infringed on the Constitution.[1] The President is the one who nominates the prime minister and nowhere it is said that the prime minister must be from the party or the coalition that has the most seats in the national assembly. Nor is there any requirement regarding the delay for the nomination to be made. From this perspective, Mélenchon’s call for starting a procedure of destitution is not only cheap talk (there is virtually no chance that it will succeed) but also constitutional nonsense.

2)     To use game-theoretic language, the political problem is that the “core is empty.” That is, there is probably no stable configuration where a government emanating from one of the main coalitions in the assembly has a decent chance of not being censored in the short run. Moreover, it is pretty clear that agreement between two main coalitions to form a government is unlikely – the far-right is de facto excluded, the right doesn’t want to work with what was the governing coalition, and the latter is ready to work only with the center-left part of the Nouveau Front Populaire.

3)     Many commentators in France have imputed this problem to the French political culture. Because the 1958 Constitution created a presidential regime without a proportional system in the Parliament, French politics has not developed a tradition of consensus-building as it’s case in parliamentary systems. This is partly true. But part of the problem also comes from the political landscape that has significantly changed since 2017. For most of its history, the Fifth Republic has seen two main political forces fighting for office. This configuration is favorable for what I would call “majoritarian politics” – it’s almost certain that one of those forces has the absolute majority in the Parliament at any point in time. There are now three main blocks, on top of which comes the fact that in France, as elsewhere, politics has largely polarized over the last decade. The new situation is inimical for majoritarian politics.

4)     That said, if Macron’s refusal to nominate Castets is not unconstitutional or “undemocratic,” it is probably a political mistake. If the current situation benefits anybody, it is to the far-right populists. They are not involved in the bargain since nobody wants to govern with them. But now it will be easy for Le Pen and Co to argue that the “elites” have conspired to make sure that the RN would not take office while not having any constructive program to propose. The mess that results only strengthens the far-right’s narrative that they are not only legitimate to govern but also the only ones able to do so. It does nothing to lessen the resentment that led a significant part of the electorate to vote for the far-right. Better would have been to give a chance to Castets and see what happens. At least, if it didn’t work, Macron could still have shown his willingness to make compromises. Now, he appears as someone who created a situation he’s unable to cope with and whose stubbornness only contributes to making it worse.

5)     What’s next? It’s hard to imagine anything else than the nomination of a “technical government” whose role will be to make the necessary daily decisions to make sure that the country is running. This is however something that is completely alien to the French political practice, contrary to other countries. The biggest question mark is the coming vote on the budget in Autumn. Beyond that, the most likely scenario is that Macron will again have to dissolve the National Assembly next June and call for new snap elections. This time, don’t expect any Republican strategy to emerge. The chances that the far-right populists claim an absolute majority of the seats are very high. My bet is that Bardella (or someone else) will have his revenge in 2025. As we say in French, what happened this summer has been “reculer pour mieux sauter.” Not sure all this has been in our collective interest.

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[1] One aspect of the situation goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution though. Though Attal’s government has resigned, it’s still in place. Seventeen of its members, including the Prime Minister, have been elected at the National Assembly. This is in obvious contradiction with the separation of powers.