Transcription
Just when it seems that all hope was lost, the leaders of France have found a way to make their political predicament somehow even worse. Last week, we here at Political Fronts brought you the latest on the collapse of the French government after Prime Minister Sebastian Leono proved unable to form a winning government and watched his choice for a cabinet fall apart after just 14 miserable hours.
But now, despite trying his damnedest to hand in his resignation, French President Emanuel Macron has forced Laorno to remain in power and try again. According to Macron, there will be no snap elections, no compromise with the left or the right, and Sahur, how dare they ask for his resignation. But plainly, France's ongoing political crisis isn't coming to an end anytime soon.
But at a certain point, it's worth asking whether France's political crisis has passed a point of no return, and whether the nation's current political system is even worth salvaging. Right now, France is built into a system known as the fifth republic. And as that name would suggest, the nation has a rich history of dismantling its own political systems and just starting again. This ongoing catastrophe just keeps getting worse and worse.
But French history provides the ultimate escape hatch, and murmurss are growing across Paris that it might finally be time to take that step again. Faced with unending, metastasizing chaos, the answer may be the French Sixth Republic. The Sixth Republic.
Now, there are some episodes here on political fronts that we simply have to start with a bit of a history lesson. And today, the opening question is simple. What is a French Republic? And branching off of that, what would it mean? and what would it take to start a sixth one?
In essence, a new French Republic is defined by the establishment of a new constitution in which each successive republic has laid out a new political system in order to try and address the shifting needs of French society. The first republic was founded during the French Revolution and ended when Napoleon Bonapart declared the French Empire. The second republic was a short-lived affair, occupying the four years between a revolution against monarchy and the start of another empire. The third republic lasted 70 years from the overthrow of that prior empire until the fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940. The fourth republic lasted 12 years and came apart due to a massive political crisis mostly centered around the question of Algerian independence. And the fifth French Republic, the one that France has now, is about 67 years old, just a few short years away from becoming the longest live republic in French history.
Now, every new French Republic has reimagined the way that French governance works, at least to some extent. For example, compared to the Fourth Republic, the Fifth Republic vests far more power into the nation's presidency. In fact, a large part of the Fifth Republic's political potency lies in the president's ability to take unilateral actions, at least to a certain extent, in a similar way that the presidents of other nations can act in ways that cut through the delay and debate of a typical parliament.
But even from the earliest days of the Fifth Republic, some prominent French figures have argued that it's far from an improvement on the system that came before. In a nation that's known for a deeply politically involved population and a population known for the ease with which it tends to become indignant toward its political leadership, the Fifth Republic isn't the foremost punching bag at their disposal. But it is a punching bag nonetheless.
For decades, the Fifth Republic has been maligned for its centralization of power in the presidency, taking power away from the far larger group of leaders that the French people elected and tasked with forming their government. French affairs have become more centralized and the Fifth Republic's political culture has become far more technocratic and centrist, forming a bureaucracy that's lethargic at best and an absolute nightmare to deal with at worst.
Quoting Simon Cooper writing in the Financial Times in 2023 in an argument to dissolve the French Republic. Quote, postwar France's governing philosophy became a sort of French Confucian rule by the cleverest boys in the class plucked from all ranks of the population. Typically at G7 summits, the leader with the highest IQ and broadest hintterland beyond politics is the French president. And while rule by the smart is a rather popular idea among the French intelligencia, it's led to a political system that's overly complicated, inaccessible, and at times actively fights against populist leaders who are looking to represent the will of the people.
The powerful French protest movements of recent history have in part been an artifact of just how sheltered France's leaders can often be. With the people forced to take to the streets in massive numbers for extended periods just to get their leaders to hear the idea that something isn't working as intended. Prominent opposition parties have long advocated the idea of a sixth republic as well as the importance of weakening the president's executive powers and granting more autonomy to French regions and overseas territories. In 2023, protests over a deeply unpopular pension reform took on the rallying cry down with the fifth republic after Macron used his presidential powers to force the reforms to become law.
Spin the clock forward to 2025 and the situation in France is more dire than ever. The nation's parliament is split into thirds with no side able to govern effectively. Four governments have collapsed in the span of the last 2 years. Both the French left and the French right are pledging to censure the new government as soon as it's announced. And each of them are expected to batter what remains of President Mccron's political coalition next time elections take place. Ex-president Nicolas Sakosi was just sentenced to a 5-year prison term. Prominent opposition leader Marine Le Pen has been banned from seeking public office in any future elections. And the nation is facing down a debt crisis that could prompt direct intervention from the International Monetary Fund. Macron's approval rating sits below 20% nationwide. And in one poll this past September, a full 90% of French respondents agreed that the nation's political class is not up to the task of running the nation.
Things in France are really bad right now. And perhaps more important than the dysfunction itself, the root causes for the dysfunction seem to stem from the way the Fifth Republic functions. Whether you're in the camp that says the current dysfunction is due to fundamental flaws with the Fifth Republic itself, or you're in the camp that would say that the Fifth Republic's ideals were compromised or even abused by its latest collection of leaders. The core of the matter is the same. The Fifth French Republic, as it exists right now, is not working for the French people. Maybe the answer is down with Macron. Maybe the answer is down with the whole system. Burn it all.
Now, here's a tip for anybody watching at home. If you want to overthrow a government, then it's a good idea to take the time to make a list of pros and cons before you do. It's really the bare minimum when it comes to regime change. In that spirit, it's important to start asking some clarifying questions about a hypothetical sixth republic. What would be the benefits? What would be the costs?
On the side of the benefits, perhaps the most obvious would be that in transitioning to a new republic, France would transition to a new constitution, allowing the nation to fundamentally rethink the way that it wants to operate. If you're going to throw out the old rules and usher in the new, then you've got a critical window to think about what the new rules should be based on the lessons learned from the better part of a century spent living under the old order.
For modern France, the new rules would almost certainly center on redistribution of power away from the presidency, the sprawling executive bureaucracy, and the distinct French political class that it created. Some calls for a sixth republic have called for a transition to an Americanstyle system, getting rid of the title of prime minister, who has basically turned into a chosen executor of the president's will. The legislature would likely be made stronger. Power may be shifted away from Paris and toward regional capitals or even municipal leadership, and France's overseas territories could gain far more of a voice as well as a measure of increased self-determination.
While those changes wouldn't solve many of the immediate problems facing France, they would shift something much more fundamental, creating a system of governance that's better empowered and more willing to act in service of the French public. Advocates of a sixth republic argued that in a better political system, it wouldn't be so difficult to balance the books or navigate international affairs or improve public policy. Instead, the best ideas from the best leaders would stand a better chance at standing out even when they didn't come from within that enduring political class. Politics could be made far more representative by placing the responsibilities of leadership into the hands of hundreds of people who the French public elected rather than into the hands of one elected official who can then delegate responsibilities to bureaucrats the nation has never heard of. Citizens could be empowered to demand change through referendums. They could better elevate leaders who actually have something to say, and they could see their political decisions through elections bring change faster and more consistently than is currently the case.
But for every potential benefit lies a potential drawback. For one thing, it's not a small matter to just toss aside an entire political system and draw up a new one. France does not exist in a vacuum. It is a critical part of the European Union and an important player on the global stage. It's not possible to simply take France offline for a little while and do some software updates. Instead, any process to overhaul the French political system would foster real instability both at home and all across the world.
The move would almost certainly be opposed by the French political class whose deep ties to economic, financial, academic, and media leaders would help to sway public opinion back in favor of the status quo. Any new sets of rules would have to be agreeable to a wide majority of French society. And in today's starkly divided political environment, that's a difficult outcome to imagine. And perhaps the greatest drawback of all is that if France is going to transition into a sixth republic under a new constitution, then somebody's got to write that constitution. And right now there is nobody in France who's up to the challenge.
Macron would be the obvious unifying figure except that his public approvals are so far in the toilet that they're making their way to the Sen. Not to mention that he's a tied in the wool institutionalist with a clear preference for the status quo. France's three-way divide includes a hard left and a hard right that are practically equal in their powers but diametrically opposed on just about every issue. And if one of them were to try and write a new constitution, the other would almost certainly be bitterly opposed to it.
Maybe in our wildest dreams, those two powerful populist coalitions could hammer out a new constitution using their few fundamental points of agreement about how French politics should work. But that would be like them living in the cheesiest and least believable episode of the West Wing that Aaron Sin ever composed. But reality is very unlikely to match up, no matter how nice that outcome might sound.
For France to transition to a new sixth republic would actually be fairly straightforward, at least in a procedural sense. After crisis and deadlock, the National Assembly would create a so-called constituent assembly with the sole purpose of drafting a new constitution. French leaders would likely try to foster grand public debates and discourse over just what a new constitution should be as the people express their collective will through a series of referendums eventually culminating in a final voice to either accept or reject the document that should guide the sixth republic into the future. It would take a while. It would be loud and controversial but on balance it wouldn't be all that complicated. After all, France has five historical examples to study, and its leaders could probably find their way through to a resolution.
But in order to make that happen, somebody would have to lead the process, and France's political leadership would have to be far less polarized and far more capable of working together than they currently are. The French Fifth Republic is in a period of deadlock, unable to undertake the important work of governance, and transitioning from the fifth republic into a hypothetical sixth would be a far more difficult challenge than anything that France's leaders are even attempting to do. Perhaps a sixth republic really is the answer. Perhaps it's not. But until France can get its together well enough to engage in basic acts of governance, we're probably not going to find out. Thank you for watching.