Emmanuel Macron is deeply unpopular. According to surveys, 75 percent of French citizens consider him a “bad” president. The arrogance attributed to him since the beginning of his presidency has recently been joined by accusations of irresponsibility. In early June, against advice from all the top representatives of the state, Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly in a five-minute speech. After the snap election, the formation of a government then took more than two months, and France appeared ungovernable. As the political scientist Bertrand Badie recently put it, this contrast – five minutes of dissolution followed by a two-month struggle for a parliamentary majority – made the balance of power in France all too clear.
Macron, who since 2017 has been fond of referring to himself as “Jupiter,” was completely unknown to many French people just months before his electoral victory. However, his meteoric rise – without a party apparatus and against the Republican-Socialist duopoly of French politics – initially appealed to voters. Subsequent portraits of the new president emphasized Macron’s love for Stendhal: The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma… Stendhal’s heroes seem to have been role models for the young politician, embodying daring, risk-taking, and the promise of advancement. Macron seemed to be tapping into a certain yearning among his compatriots for just such figures, the likes of whom have repeatedly shaped French history.
Longing for a Savior
Much has been written about the French fascination with political saviors. In 2012, historian Jean Garrigues published what is probably the best-known book on why the French have time and again been attracted to charismatic leaders despite the revolution of 1789 and the fall of the monarchy. The author begins his genealogy with Napoleon Bonaparte, who abolished the republic after just over a decade and enlisted the French people in his imperial adventures. He was followed by a whole series of popular tribunes. In his book, Garrigues focuses in particular on Léon Gambetta, Georges Boulanger, Georges Clémenceau, Philippe Pétain, and the founding father of the Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle.
These figures are very different, yet a common thread unites them all: their rise would hardly have been possible without the French fascination with political saviors. Garrigues describes how an archetypal desire for such leaders has been retained at the heart of French democracy, fed by Christian eschatology and a nostalgia for the monarchy that continues to this day. So, did Macron fulfill this desire? Was his electoral success based on this distinctively French heritage?
Historical Continuity
It would, of course, be absurd to directly compare Macron with Napoleon. But there are indeed some continuities that Garrigues and others ascribe to French savior figures: for instance, the direct connection with those voters who regard the paliament as a potentially disruptive filter. Macron’s willingness to sacrifice many of his allies in the National Assembly by announcing a snap election indicates such an understanding of democracy. His dealings with parliament and the party system are fundamentally reminiscent of a typical motif that Garrigues traces in his book: the conviction of standing above parliamentary disputes and representing the best interests of the entire nation. His movement, as Macron has been repeating since 2017, is not on the left or right but simply in the right.
The approaching end of Macron’s second term reopens a whole series of issues. His movement, which never became a real party, is increasingly falling apart into its original left and right sections. The search for a successor therefore raises the question of whether the longing for saviors is a peculiarity of right-wing parties. Garrigues, for once, suggests precisely that, pointing out that skepticism about personality cults has always been greater on the left in France. Unlike right-wing charismatic figures from Bonaparte to Pétain, who promoted radical change, left-wing politicians like Gambetta or Clémenceau placed themselves in the republican-parliamentary tradition. François Mitterrand, then an up-and-coming left-wing politician, famously accused President de Gaulle of personalizing power and of a “permanent coup d’état” in 1964.
Not a Right-wing Phenomenon
But many years later, Mitterrand would suffer the same criticism. Long into Mitterrand’s presidency, the public intellectual André Glucksmann reminded him of an essay in which he had argued that “it took a Mitterrand to rediscover de Gaulle.” Mitterrand had indeed quickly succumbed to the theatrics and personality cult of the presidency. On the day of his election victory, he walked to the Parisian Pantheon, accompanied by hundreds of journalists, to lay roses at the graves of left-wing icons and thus show the tradition he saw himself continuing.
The question of how left-wing politicians handle presidential power was last discussed during the presidency of François Hollande. He had deliberately set himself apart from his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, who saw himself as the heir to great historical figures and was quickly dubbed the “hyper-president.” In 2009, journalist Alain Duhamel wrote that Sarkozy was reviving the (Napoleonic) consulate. But Hollande’s break with this style and his ostentatious “normality” were not rewarded. The main reason he refrained from running again in 2017 was that many French people felt he lacked the appropriate gravitas for the office. Hollande has processed his experiences in a recently published book, devoting much of it to the relationship of the French left to government power.
Inherent to the System
So while political orientation does play a role in the French fascination with savior figures, it is not a decisive factor. It is therefore reasonable to assume that it is the French constitutional order that continues to produce such figures. This view is also held by constitutional experts and historians, such as Nicolas Rousselier, author of La Force de gouverner, a book on the power of the executive published in 2015. General de Gaulle, he writes, drew his historical legitimacy as the leader of Free France from his opposition to the Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime; this is what justified his vision for the constitution of the Fifth Republic. Today, the historian argues, this legitimacy is derived from the institution of the directly elected president.
According to Rousselier, France’s history since 1789 is in fact the history of two republics. The revolution and the subsequent republican tradition had the goal – later elevated to an ideal – of democratic representation. However, as Rousselier describes using individual outstanding historical figures such as Gambetta and de Gaulle, gradually, the state’s ability to act became more important than the basic democratic voting of the people’s representatives, often a lengthy process. Particularly in times of war and crisis, starting with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and continuing through the two world wars to the Algerian War, the executive has incrementally and subtly regained power from the legislature.
The President as Commander-in-Chief
To this day, the power of the president is most evident in foreign and defense policy, the so-called “domaine réservé.” The constitutional practice established since 1958 grants him a degree of power that is exceptional for a democracy. The president is the guarantor of “national independence [and] territorial integrity” (Article 5) and, as commander-in-chief, heads the “National Defense Committees” (Article 15). He also determines the broad lines of foreign policy, ratifies international treaties (Article 52), and appoints ambassadors (Article 14). Although the constitution stipulates that the prime minister is in charge of national defense (Article 21), in political practice he has little influence on French foreign and security policy.
Command of France’s nuclear weapons most clearly manifests the concentration of power in the hands of a single person. The corresponding doctrine has placed the president at the helm since 1964 and the beginning of France’s comprehensive deterrent: He has exclusive decision-making authority over the use of weapons. The credibility of France’s nuclear deterrent thus depends on the personal discretionary power of the head of state. This power is contrasted with the powerlessness of parliament, which is limited to playing a passive supervisory role in matters of foreign and defense policy. French constitutional lawyers and sociologists have been criticizing “parliamentary conformism” for years. The previously quoted political scientist Bertrand Badie sees in it the legacy of Jacobinism, which, contrary to the original ideal proclaimed, is also accompanied by the personalization of power: Especially in times of crisis, the parties rally around the government and the president in the face of the nation’s enemy in a “culture of esprit de corps.”
Time for Reform
The snap election and the looming paralysis of French politics are giving such discussions new urgency. Critics of the “presidential monarchy” see their views confirmed by Macron’s decisions and are calling for a reform of the “dysfunctional republic.” Some politicians want to discuss constitutional amendments and the transition to a Sixth Republic. One of the few demands that has cross-party support is a change in the electoral law for the National Assembly from a majority vote to a proportional vote. In his policy statement at the beginning of October, the new head of government Michel Barnier indicated that such a change was under consideration. It is becoming increasingly likely, especially since it could send a strong signal of the political system’s willingness to reform, while requiring little effort and only a simple majority. However, there is presumably another, more important reason behind the motion: the fear that Marine Le Pen could win the next presidential election and subsequently an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
There is great concern that Le Pen, backed by a strong majority in the National Assembly, could govern as she wishes. The current leader of the Rassemblement National group could invoke many precedents set by her predecessor such as the repeated use of Article 49.3 of the constitution, which enabled Macron’s governments to pass laws without parliamentary votes, for example, on the highly controversial pension reform. These decisions are part of the political legacy that Macron and his governments will leave behind. In the context of the difficult economic situation, the heated discussions about immigration and internal security, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, Le Pen may be tempted to present herself as the people’s savior beyond her term in office and to use her great institutional power – in the knowledge that she would be responding to a long-standing French desire.
The historian Pierre Rosanvallon has called this desire for vertical decision-making processes and uncompromising solutions a “French cultural deficit.” Will reforms lead to a new political culture, or will the French once again be enchanted by a charismatic leader? Only time will tell.
