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France in general is an half dictatorship where the president has power to block government out of whim like in the last elections where the left block won the elections but were still denied from forming an government. France is not the only country in europe which has similar "semi" presidental system but one of worst's ones and it's not democratic.
It's more complicated than that. Don't get me wrong, I voted for the left block and was pissed they didn't get to form a government. But it is more complicated than that.
The president has to pick a government that will be able to pass laws with the vote of the parliament. While the left block had the plurality, the rest of the parliament would likely not have voted their policies. Picking a government that would satisfy the rest of the parliament was the best move for stability and to have a government able to do something.
That's not anti democratic. And that's actually the system that is used in most representative democracies, in different forms, which always summarises to: Head of state picks a government that has the most chances to be accepted by the parliament.
In the Greek constitution, the president is obligated to give an "investigative mandate" to form government to the three top parties in order of their election results. So if you have plurality you get 3 days to try to form a government (striking deals etc) but you have to get a vote of confidence within 15 days. If none of the three leaders can successively secure a vote of confidence, it's elections again.
The French system is way too royalist in this respect, and I suspect that our constitutional framer, Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was basically a francophile gaullist, must have been trying to balance what he saw as an excess in his otherwise favourite political system.
Basically, France you can do better, and you guys need to reform.
Not every system fits every country.
France had republics before the current 5th that had the president as more of a ceremonial role. But it did not work for us, and both the third and fourth republics ended up with political instability and governments falling one after the other.
The 5th republic purposefully gave more power to the president, to remediate the political instability that France had seen with the previous systems. It works.
No democratic system is perfect. The one Greece has, per your comment, sounds great in theory. But the day where the 3 top parties can't come to an agreement, and the elections don't change the outcome, you'll have an extended period of instability where the government is unable to do anything. And that is absolutely awful for a country.
It is great that Greece isn't encountering these issues. But France has, and the current system is a fix to that. Let's not repeat bad History by reverting to a system we know does not work for us.
Of course. I specifically mentioned the Greek system because the role of the president was inspired by France, "with improvements" and maybe those improvements can be ported upstream.
By the way, I don't consider "instability" as a problem per se. Italy has traditionally had weak governments, but with a strong enough state apparatus, that used to not be an actual problem. And France has an even stronger civil administration than Italy.
Ultimately, a republic can only be as stable as le Peuple wants to be, there is no magic institutional workaround. The Greek idea of repeated elections is that the period of instability should be short and with tight deadlines, forcing the political powers to negotiate and improve their offerings to the electorate. But if le Peuple wants to blow it up, no institutional straightjacket is going to stop that.
Its neither a democratic more like a flaw in the legislation.
No, it's by design. Giving the government to the largest group doesn't always make sense.
If your largest group is 40%, but the other groups forming the remaining 60% all disagree with the largest group, how is it more democratic to give the 40% group the government? Then you have a givernment that only 40% of the parliament supports.
If you pick a government that satisfies the 60% remaining, you then have a government 60% of the parliament supports. How is that less democratic?