Why the French Do Democracy Differently (Spoiler: They’re French)

The French system of allocation of power is pretty strange: despite the very first article of its constitution stipulating that “Its organisation is decentralised.”, France is one of the least decentralised countries in the democratic world, even for a unitary state. The current political establishment was set up in the middle of the Algerian War of Independence to ensure utmost political stability so that they could keep fighting in Algeria. De Gaulle, one of the major contributors to the Constitution and President at the time, realised that it was perhaps slightly unwise to concentrate so much power in so few people, and so designed the constitution in such a way as to ensure pretty moderate centrists always got said power; rather than actually spreading the power in a safer and more even manner.

So how does this system work? It’s very complicated. Let’s start with the President. To become a presidential candidate you need five hundred signatures from elected officials (Mayors, European Parliament Members, etc), which for a long time stopped political extremists from standing for office. Then there’s the actual election: it’s like a first-past-the-post vote, but if there isn’t a majority for one candidate in the first round, there’s a second round with the two highest scoring candidates. While this system theoretically gets rid of the problems to do with tactical voting in first-past-the-post, since it’s basically first-past-the-post but with another round, that isn’t the case. In practice you need to vote for one of the three leading candidates to ensure that they get into the second round. Another way to swing things your way is to just not run if you aren’t in the top three, that way you avoid splitting the vote between you and similar candidates. This famously didn’t happen in 2002 when the left-wing votes were so splintered that Jean Marie Le Pen got into the second round. He then lost the biggest loss in French history after the entire nation united to keep him out (and actually voted instead of abstaining). 

So once you’re president what can you actually do? Well to start with the President is head of state and head of the executive, shares executive power with and chooses the Prime Minister and government (but the Prime Minister and Government can be overthrown by a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly). The President is also chief of the Armed Forces, chooses certain members of the Constitutional Council, can order nuclear strikes and many other things. Plenty of things also require the President’s initiative or cooperation too, such as referendums. The President is also meant to be the guarantor of the constitution, treaties, the continuity of the State, proper functioning of public authorities and a few other things. 

The unbelievable power vested in France’s president is, in my opinion, one of the biggest problems with French democracy. One of democracy’s greatest strengths is its stability, because the people in charge have inherent legitimacy thanks to elections and because the people have a say in things and so don’t need to resort to other means to exert political power.  At the moment France is failing in these respects. Having so much power concentrated in one person (and the Government they choose), means it is very unlikely the people get properly represented. One person can’t represent a whole country, you need a whole parliament to get just an approximative picture, so a person selected with a shoddy voting system is even worse.

The current French political landscape is a great illustration of what can go wrong. The three biggest candidates (who are the only ones with a hope of winning) are: Le Pen, far right and hated; Macron, centre and hated; and Mélanchon, left and hated. Of course they aren’t hated by everyone, they each have a decent chunk of the population behind them but are disliked by a majority (the other two combined, along with everyone else). This results in everyone compromising on Macron despite a lot of French people disliking him. In a parliamentary democracy this wouldn’t be a problem, but because he holds so much power, this results in most people being discontented with the way the country is run.

This is part of what’s behind France’s huge abstention rate, people are forced to pick between three candidates they don’t really like just to avoid the ones they really don’t like getting in. Therefore French democracy is currently not providing as much legitimacy as it could, nor the stability. A good way of picturing it is to imagine every thing that holds power as a pixel, and elections as a camera: when you take a photo the camera transforms the infinite complexity of the real world into a good approximation. Elections are meant to get a properly representative photo out of the complexity of society, in France, the entire photo is one enormous pixel, in a limited choice of colours. 

Some of you might currently be thinking: “A-hah! How about they just give more power to the National Assembly!”. That would be a great idea except for two big problems: firstly, the French struggle with change management; and secondly, they elect their MPs with the same voting system as the President. The only difference is that this time each candidate with at least an eighth of the vote moves to the second round, or the two highest if that isn’t applicable. In the recent legislative elections this system formidably demonstrated its flaws by getting loads of far-right candidates into Parliament despite no one wanting them there. This was admittedly due in large part to abstinence and the electoral system can’t take all the blame, except if you consider that the abstinence is largely caused by the electoral system. This system can be cheesed by deliberately voting for someone unelectable in the first round to make it easier for your preferred candidate in the second, among a multitude of other ways.

This voting system is almost the opposite of preferential voting: if your favourite candidate doesn’t get in, you have to vote to exclude your least favourite. Ultimately I think French democracy’s dogged and stubborn pursuit of stable moderate rule has resulted in elections that, rather than being a mechanism with which to represent the people, are perhaps more accurately described as a system to prevent the people making the “wrong” choices. The goal of the Vth republic’s constitution was to ensure that France would have the governmental stability to survive a crisis like WW2, which it notably did not have in WW2. In this regard it has been very effective: surviving the Algeria crisis, the Indochina war (first Vietnam war), the Suez canal crisis, and a whole host of other crises. One of its major flaws stems from this though: in its quest for stable moderate rule, France gets jammed whenever it is faced with a problem which requires transformative change. For France to get past such roadblocks, the problem needs to become mainstream.

Despite all its flaws the French Vth republic’s democracy has been remarkably successful in its stability, especially by French standards, since it usually does ensure political stability and moderate rule, no matter the cost. It has also guaranteed that the French presidency has never lost respect or credibility on the international stage (in contrast to many other world leaders). However, this system has its limitations and comes at a price. In the coming years, France may come to discover what that cost is.