I have had well-educated French acquaintences telling me for a decade that France is ripe for a new system of government; the 6th in its history.
Many current problems stem from the fact that post-war mechanisms written into the governmental system are abused by the president and elected leaders. E.g. presidential overruling of parlamental votes.
> I have had well-educated French acquaintences telling me for a decade that France is ripe for a new system of government
First, this is not "well-educated French acquaintences" so much as it is supporters of Melanchon's LFI political party, who explicitely campaign on the idea of ending the 5th republic to start a 6th where all problem would be magically solved.
Second, the reason I hate his proposal, is because he explicitely refuses to give any specific detail on what the 6th republic would be. He claims it would be "decided by the public" but there is no reason why a pre work couldn't be done BEFORE. In effect, he pretends to be saying "we will end the 5th for a better 6th", but what he's actually saying is "let's end the one we have now instead of fixing it, and replace it with something I will have the power to decide, you must accept to throw it away without knowing what you will get in exchange or how it will be made but trust me it will totally be better and I will totally let the people decide".
Our 5th republic might be flawed, but I'm not putting it in the trash without any idea of what we will get in return, that's brexit referendum level of flawed.
And I will always be weary of someone who claims to have a simple solution to a complex problem, on the condition that I give him power over me, especially if another condition is that I cannot know what said solution is before making my decision.
Third,
> the 6th in its history
Would be the 6th republic sure, but absolutely not the 6th "system of government", it would be like our 25th or something ?
Given that out of the dozen or so "main political parties" he is the only one who wants that, and that when asked about their priorities for the change of France no group of frenchmen put that in their top 5 besides voters of LFI ...
You're absolutely right that there are definitely some people who want a 6th republic but do not vote or agree with LFI, but for the sake of generalized conversation like we're having now they're mostly irrelevant. If it were to happen, it would be through him and his "vision", and as such I maintain my critics.
Beware of what you want for you might just get it.
I’d add that the mentioned acquaintances apparently aren’t calling for a 6th republic.
Just believe that the country is "ripe for it" because of repeated abuses of the, exceptionally large for a western democracy, presidential powers.
But people have been dissatisfied with that ever since the last constitution was enacted. Including, famously, Mitterrand, who despite his many earlier criticisms (describing the 5th republic as "Le Coup d’État Permanent" [1], which could be translated to "The Continuous Coup") was prompt to fully enjoy those powers once elected himself.
I’m sorry but it’s more than the left. Even right and centrists people who were ok with the retirement reform are saying that they don’t accept how it have been forced on the parliament.
It was one of the most important and most protested reform of the last decades and the president / government used every constitutional breach they could to avoid any vote from people's representatives.
Charles de Courson, who tried to force the vote by proposing an abrogation of the law to the parliament is not really a leftist, he was even going to vote himself in favor of the reform.
We, the French, elected a parliament where Macron didn’t have the absolute majority and Macron tries everything he can to avoid the parliament when he know he will not have enough votes. It’s a democracy crisis wether you are from the left or from the right because Macron is interpreting the constitution like he can dismissal the parliament when he wants although most French didn’t vote for his party.
We celebrate the revolution and throwing out the king while basically electing a new one every five years that will magically solve all of our problems.
We celebrate the revolution while ignoring it went terribly, being in terms of rights, economy or basically anything else, and we happily put an emperor on the throne less than a decade later
I wouldn't say it went terribly in terms of rights, necessarily. The French Revolution was a massive influence on every other post-enlightenment democracy that came after it. Without the French Revolution (and yes, that includes its failures), we very well could all still be living in different versions of feudalism.
The French Revolution paved the way for just about every pro-worker reform in the modern world.
> we happily put an emperor on the throne less than a decade later
to be fair, the emperor climbed on the throne pretty much on his own; I think he had support across broad parts of the population, but it's not as if he was elected (and he didn't even start as an emperor, that came a few years after his coup)
> I did not steal the crown. I found it lying in the gutter, and I picked it up with the sword. But it was the people who placed it on my head.
The man was massively popular with the populace [1] [2] and he got elected emperor with a referendum [3] to which 7 million people were called. By modern standard that barely qualifies, but for an emperor in 1804 ...
A common misconception was that the revolution was to remove the all powerful head of state. It wasn't, the people just wanted a competent one and improved living conditions.
I assume they were alluding to the fact that the current French state is called the “Fifth Republic” but there were various non-Republic regimes as well so it would actually be more than the 6th “system of government”.
The fifth republic is the result of a coup by a military leader (De Gaulle) that was in talks with commanders of tank divisions to drive to Paris should he not be instated president and allowed to write his own constitution (written by Pierre Debré, a friend of his).
For those who can read French and who would want to learn more about this I heartily recommend the recently published Gouverner la France [1] (Governing France), a collection of books written by Michel Winock as part of the prestigious Quarto Gallimard series.
It includes titles like L'Agonie de la IVème République (Agony of the Fourth Republic), La fièvre hexagonale : les grandes crises politiques de 1871 à 1968 (Hexagon Fever: Major Political Crises from 1871 to 1968) and a pretty good biography of de Gaulle. It's from that book that I learned of all the craziness of 1958, the one that involved general Salan (who would be sentenced to death a few years after that for trying a coup against de Gaulle) and all.
Calling it a coup is highly debatable and debated. It happened outside of the scope of what the 4th happened, and it happened because the 4th had broken down and was not working anymore.
It should be noted that some of the main people who called to view it as a coup were people from other parts of the political spectrum who had other ideas of how it should happen and who should end up in power, including Mitterand (who ended up president of the 5th in 1986). These people however were also for the end of the 4th.
The military guys from Algeria had already put their hands on Corsica, plus, the iminent threat of the landing on the shores of Southern France (or via an aerial operation, can't remember exactly) of said military forces was heavily used by de Gaulle during the negotiations that got him into power.
yup. thats why some folks love to call the current political system a "presidential monarchy", due to the overreaching executive powers granted to the president of the republic.
Yep. But this is not exactly new. The Macron government is now using "anti-terror" legislation that was passed by both left and right-wing governments over the past 20 years or so.
I'm really curious as to why Macron govt is looked up to by a lot of Americans. American citizens, with all of the country's flaws, tends to have a lot more inherent civil rights than most of these governments.
You always get only a really tiny window of information, selected by your medias, about foreign countries. (It doesn't matter which receiving country you are in, it is a general principle, not just about the USA).
In France, we almost only hear about other countries politics when there is a chance for a far right party to gain something. As far as all other domains are concerned, we may from time to time get a funny/shocking miscellaneous news item, and that's it.
Also, images/stereotypes about a country last a long time, long after they have stopped being true.
Ironically, perhaps the only emitting country that differs a bit is... the USA, for probably most countries over the planet are flooded with information and contemporary culture from the USA.
For example, to get back a bit to the original subject, people may know the American police and justice system better than their own. Like, French people when they are arrested would believe that they have enforceable rights and that rigorous processes are respected. Ah!
Once, in custody, I even had the impudence of requesting a lawyer as I was allowed to. LOL, no way. And it is not simply a problem of a rotten police: the prosecutor, the judges, they are all covering this up, it is the whole police+justice system which 'works' like this.
I think France is generally perceived here to have more progressive social policies regarding labor, education, healthcare and the environment. The limited media coverage I've seen about French elections seemed to paint Macron as the candidate more representative of those values.
Macron is not a fan of theses social policies, he is right leaning.
His governement reduced labor protections, butchered educations, worsened public healthcare, and do nothing for the environment.
Economically right-leaning but culturally left-leaning, he's let in tens of thousands of migrants, does not expel them (cf. the "OQTF" stories pretty much every day), and on top of that, uses taxpayers money to fund them throughout the country.
You are mixing up stuff to fit your scenario.
OQTF stories are up to police incompetence, not lax imposed by the governement.
Culturally left-leaning if very bold given the recent pension reform debacle, bypassing any democratic recourse.
Also very bold statement given the police repression of mosts of the protests.
There is nothing Macron that is left leaning, relative to France politic spectrum.
>> Interesting. Right-leaning governement (if not "far-right" according to some), but has no control over illegal migrants routinely roaming around committing crimes. I thought a key marker of "the right" was being (too) strict on order and ruthless implementation of the law.
Im not arguing the point. It's a sad state of affairs. But Le Pen was painted here as a female version of Trump. So that's why Macron was perceived as representative of French progressiveness.
The vote (for president) still came down to, "Guy who thinks protecting the workers is the end of the world" or "Lady who seems way too comfortable with actual nazi parties", so americans just had a lot of empathy.
Macron, as so many French leaders before him, is in fact obsessed by transforming France into the US.
Sarkozy, his most alike predecessor, used to wear a t-shirt that said "NYPD" while jogging, as he was president of France; and later renamed his party "Les Républicains" as an hommage to US Republicans (!!?!)
This was 9 years ago, so right before Trump happened. At the time, 53% of party members thought it was "too American" but they accepted the change nonetheless.
Macron pushes through "liberal" reforms (liberal in Europe means the opposite as in the US: liberals here are free-market proponents) because he thinks it will make France great again, I guess.
I think it is more about fear silences sane people. Not that support for shady things increase. E.g. at work like 2 or 3 out of 20 are phsycotic war mongers to different degrees. There is always this implied "we will shoot you as a traitor if you disagree" if things turn to shit when you deal with that kind of people.
