Emmanuel Macron, all alone. (archives) – STEPHANE MAHE / POOL / AFP
- By boycotting the votes organized in the National Assembly and the Senate on the new health restrictions, the oppositions wanted to denounce what is for them an institutional problem in the management of the crisis.
- The President of the Republic would decide everything, on his own and generally in secrecy. But despite everything, this is the logic of the Fifth Republic, where the executive has a lot of power.
- Bruno Cautrès hopes that the end of the crisis and the 2022 presidential election will be an opportunity to draw lessons from the limits of the institutions. These are, according to him, not far from being reached in a kind of permanent crisis that does not date from the Covid-19.
Once again this week Emmanuel Macron spoke and restrictions on freedoms were imposed. Without any other form of trial. Parliament voted a government declaration on these new health measures against the coronavirus, but even a “no” from both chambers would not have changed anything: the decisions had already been taken. To protest against this state of affairs, the oppositions, en bloc or almost, boycotted the votes organized in the National Assembly and the Senate. In the latter, where macronists are very much in the minority, 87% of senators did not take part in the vote.
The oppositions, on the right and on the left, do not necessarily dispute the merits of the health measures, but denounce a major institutional problem: the President of the Republic would decide everything, alone and generally in secret. 20 minutes asked the Cévipof and CNRS researcher Bruno Cautrès if the health crisis acted as an indicator of the concentration of powers in the president.
Can we say that the health crisis is indicative of a solitary exercise of power in France?
Obviously, the management of the crisis is indicative of the dominant decision-making model in the French presidential system. If we compare ourselves to Germany, I believe that Angela Merkel only made a televised address and made her announcements to the presidents of the regions first. We, on the contrary, we had multiple speeches from Emmanuel Macron, and all the great media circus that precedes them where for whole days we make speculations on the state of mind of the President of the Republic … It reflects this presidential predominance and this concentration of public debate for a year on the modalities of the decisions of the Head of State, expected as oracles.
At the same time, we cannot totally caricature things. The executive decision-making apparatus is made up of multiple consultations with the scientific council, experts … The President of the Republic does not decide like that without having consulted the opinions of many people. So it’s not all white or all black. But it is when we compare the French executive to other European executives that the contrast effect clearly reveals the French particularity.
The executive basically does not go beyond the yellow lines, it finally goes to the end of the possibilities of the Fifth Republic, which gives it a lot of power …
Yes quite. This is why it reflects this presidential dimension of the Fifth Republic. This constitution is said to be “semi-presidential”, as opposed to the American regime. Here there is a prime minister, who depends on the parliamentary majority. This crisis management is in line with the Fifth Republic. At the same time, over the past year, we have repeatedly experienced the limits of this logic.
What are these limits?
The Fifth Republic was conceived in a crisis situation and for an exceptional man, General De Gaulle, of course. But our institutions must first and foremost ensure the functioning of ordinary democracy. This is where the tension is: just because we have such use of the Fifth Republic in times of crisis that does not mean that it must be ordinary. However, we did not enter into crisis in March 2020 but in November 2018 with the “yellow vests” and then with the pension reform a year later. I will even add to the origin the Benalla affair when Emmanuel Macron launches: “If they want a manager, they come and get him.”
These crises all put at some point in time the political model and the mode of decision-making in France. I think that at the end of the health crisis it will be quite inevitable that there will be reflections and proposals during the presidential election of 2022 on the question of institutions. This is how we must interpret the positions of the opposition, which organized a barrage against the solitary mode of decision of the President of the Republic.
Isn’t there an addiction to the concentration of power? The model can be appealing to an opposition party that can say, “If I win I can do pretty much whatever I want. “Difficult to reform under these conditions, right?
Unless after a while we draw the conclusion that we are going from crisis to crisis and that something will have to be done all the same. Imagine that in six months we see Emmanuel Macron unscrewing in the polls or even is not able to represent himself, we would still be in a succession of three presidents who only serve one term. If we do not draw conclusions about our institutions from this observation, it is truly hopeless.
The question of the French political model, of what is wrong institutionally, is the heart of the 2017 campaign. When En Marche knocked on 250,000 doors from the summer of 2016, it emerged that when we asked to people “what’s wrong in France” the answer was “the policy and the political model” not unemployment, insecurity or the hospital. Three of the four candidates who won the first round of the presidential election carried a major institutional reform project. The proof is that Emmanuel Macron’s first law is that on confidence in political life. This does not date from the health crisis or from Emmanuel Macron, but it is a latent question whether our political model can continue to be applied in the same way as sixty years ago.