"♪ Oops, I did it again! I played with AN. Just lost a PM, oh bébé bébé ♪" - Macron
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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Magique merci!
Yeeeeeah, so it's a really bad time to have another fascist in power in the EU, so maybe let's not have another fascist in power in the EU?
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?
Maybe France should just make a betting rack on how long their prime ministers last and use that money to reduce their debt?
Maybe Macron should start selecting ministers from the parties that actually won the elections, for a change. If not getting his governments toppled repeatedly is the goal, that'd be a good start.
That would be democratic.
I mean, you can't have that. This government would never last more than a few months, it would be too unstable... (/s)
Good riddance. Hope Macron falls soon too.
If it were a democracy, Macaron would listen to the people.
I don’t understand. Why is it so hard for France to have political stability? What are people’s expectations? Can their demands ever be met, or will they be stuck in a perpetual political instability?
The kind of stability that you advocate for means "quietly suffer under a bad government that does not represent the will of the people".
First step of getting a better government is to kick out the old government.
But that’s what I’m asking. What IS the will of the people? It just seems like everyone in power has, is and might be thrown out.
Who do people want in power? Le Pen? It certainly doesn’t seem like it and I’ve read some pretty nasty things about her and her russian connections.
Edit: at this point it seems that the whole of Europe is crumbling upon itself and fascists are getting warmed up on the sidelines. Europe needs unity now more then ever, not constant division and petty disputes, offering ourselves up on a platter to the likes of Putin.
France is heavily centralized, has deep rooted corruption, favors the rich with tax exemptions and loopholes while dismantling social security and basic opportunities for the lower and middle class, believes itself to be a global power and maintains a military accordingly, but fails to secure its post-colonial resource exploitation more and more. Add to that a catastrophic strategic blunder in focusing on more nuclear power as the primary energy source, instead of developing much cheaper renewables, which will probably cost the country hundreds of billions if not trillions over the next century.
While Macron was hailed as some sort of "center alternative" to Le Pen in many media outlets outside of France, he actually is a hardcore neoliberal that set out to pillage the country in favor of the rich even more and blame it on the immigrants, further helping the Fascists gain momentum.
For reference how bad the corruption in France is. Former president Sarkozy and his crownies are currently under investigation as they have been bankrolled by the former Libyan dictator Gaddafi.
So it is basically what we see in many countries around the world right now, but the decline is more advanced. France used to be able to mask its internal economic decline with its resource exploitation.
Basically there are three large coalitions one the left, center and right. Those are then made up of individual parties. All three are roughly the same size and Macrons centrist are calling the shots. As obviously the right and left have less they agree on and Macron is president. However both of those groups want to be president and the individual parties want more power for themself as well. So every once in a while the parliament gets blown up, due to the three coalitions fighting.
Add to that a culture of protests and rather strong unions and voila you get hard fights. The good part is that the French rich are genuinly worried about loosing their heads.
My understanding is that the left is strong, so the center has to cozy up to the right for power. I mean, what other option could the center possibly have? 😑