Can Macron Survive the Crisis He Created?

[Note: I wrote this article last week and it was published by The Critic a few days ago. Since then, Macron has indicated that he didn’t want the next government to rely on the votes of Le Pen’s party and he’s been trying to detach the Socialist party and other factions in parliament from the left-wing bloc, but I haven’t made any change to the article because I still doubt that he’ll be able to form such a coalition and even if he does I don’t think it fundamentally affects anything I wrote below.]

Most people commenting on the situation in France, especially abroad but not only, underestimate the depth of the political crisis that Macron’s decision to dissolve the parliament last June unleashed, mostly because of misleading comparisons with other European countries that have experienced crises in the past that on the surface look similar, but where the institutional and political contexts are profoundly different, which creates vastly different incentives.

First, unlike other parliamentary countries like Germany, Italy or Belgium, whose elections to the parliament are based on a system that is partly or fully proportional, French parliamentary elections are based on a two-round majoritarian system with single-member constituencies. This means that, in each district, the two candidates who obtained the most votes in the first round make it to the second round (it's actually a bit more complicated than that but we don’t need to get into that here), then whoever got a majority in the second round is elected.

This doesn't incentivize compromises, except to a limited extent between parties that are ideologically close (which sometimes create electoral alliances before the first round, so they don't run candidates against each other in the same districts and maximize the probability they'll make it to the second round), because this usually ensures that one party or alliance of parties that are ideologically close enough to form a coalition gets a majority of the seats in parliaments.

Perhaps even more importantly, unlike what is the case in other European countries (even in the UK whose first-past-the-post electoral system is even more majority-friendly than the French two-round majoritarian system), we have a very strong presidency and, as a result, French politics is entirely dominated by the presidential election. That's pretty much all every major politician is thinking about, all the time.

The president is also elected according to a two-round majoritarian system. In the case of the presidential election, however, first-round alliances are much less common even between ideologically close parties, because everyone wants a shot at the position that dominates French politics. Again, this creates powerful incentives against reaching across the aisle to make the sort of compromises that people need to make when there is no majority in parliament.

If you compromise with people on the other side of the political spectrum, your voters will punish you at the next elections, not only parliamentary but also presidential, making it harder for you to make it to the second round. This makes the collective action problem the parties need to solve to form a coalition government, when no alliance of ideologically close parties has a majority in parliament, much harder to crack in France than in other European countries.

In theory, this isn't a problem because our institutions were literally created to ensure the government will have a majority in parliament to support it, if only tacitly by not overthrowing it, but it also means that, when this doesn’t happen anyway, it's much more difficult to solve the problem than it would be in another European country where a situation in which constituting a majority in parliament to support a government requires compromises between ideologically distant parties. French political culture is deeply inimical to compromises.

Of course, as people who think the crisis will be easily solve often say, it's not as if French people were genetically predisposed to oppose political compromises. In part, this culture is a result of our political history, but for the most part that’s a product of French political institutions that, as we have seen, disincentivize compromises. This, so the argument goes, means that in the absence of a majority French politicians will adapt and start making compromises.

Except that not only does culture not change overnight, even when the conditions that created that kind of culture in the first place have changed, but moreover some and even most of the institutional factors that disincentivize compromises have not disappeared just because there is no majority in parliament. French politicians know that, no matter how this crisis is resolved, there will be new parliamentary elections soon and they also know that a presidential election will be held in 2027, if not sooner.

I also don’t think people realize how unlikely it is that any government will last very long in the current situation. Basically, the parliament is divided into three roughly equal blocs (the left-wing alliance, the centrist alliance and Le Pen’s party with a small ally that resulted from a split of the traditional center-right party), such that only two of them have enough seats to have a majority and form a stable government but no two of them will agree to create a coalition because they are too ideologically distant and any one of them that tries to form a government anyway will cause the other two to join their votes to overthrow the government in question.

Again, this isn’t supposed to happen with our institutions and is largely the result of the fact that Le Pen’s party continues to be quarantined by the other parties, but this is no longer tenable when it gets 1/3 of the vote and the only thing the other parties can agree on is making second-round agreements to prevent it from getting a majority of the seats in parliament, without being able to make a more positive agreement to form a coalition government. The only hope of creating a stable government is to somehow convince part of one of those three blocs to detach itself from its bloc and join another to support a coalition government. It’s very hard to see how this could happen or, if it does happen, last very long.

Nobody in the left-wing bloc will ever form a coalition with the far-right bloc, so we can eliminate that possibility at the outset. A lot of people expect that the Socialist party, which is part of the left-wing bloc, can be detached from it and convinced to support a centrist government. I guess that’s not impossible, but I don’t think it will happen, because the socialists have very strong incentives not to form a coalition with the centrist bloc.

Indeed, you have to understand that, before Macron unwittingly gave them a second life by calling snap elections last June, the socialists were on the verge of extinction. Why would they take the risk of going back to the previous situation by making a deal with the centrists? They know that, no matter what they do, there will soon be new parliamentary elections. Making a deal with Macron would likely preclude a renewal of the left-wing alliance next time, in which case the socialists would be wiped out in the first round almost everywhere.

There is also a strong left-wing culture in France in which, mainly for historical reasons, the myth of the "union of the left" is very powerful. If the socialists made a deal with Macron to support a centrist government, left-wing voters would see that as a "treason of the left" and severely punish them at the polls when new parliamentary elections take place. Moreover, the Socialist party is actually pretty distant from the centrist bloc ideologically, which would make a deal very complicated.

In particular, to form a coalition with the center, the socialists would almost certainly have to accept Macron's reform of the pension system, which is very unpopular on the left. This is only conceivable if people in the centrist bloc make important concessions to them on other issues, but then it’s center-right members of parliament, another essential part of such a coalition, who would threaten to leave.

Moreover, the socialists alone wouldn’t be enough, centrists would also need to detach the greens and the communists from the left-wing bloc, while keeping the center-right on board, to reach a majority. So maybe this will happen, but it’s a tall order and, even if they can somehow pull it off, I don't think it would last very long and would certainly not be a stable government by any stretch of the imagination.

Another possibility, which I think is more likely, is that Macron will appoint another center-right Prime Minister, with a similar arrangement as what allowed Barnier, the Prime Minister whose government was just overthrown, to govern for three months. Le Pen's party will not enter the government, but she also won't vote with the left to overthrow it right away. She would constantly have a gun to the Prime Minister's head and would be able to pull the plug on the government at any moment for any reason.

But this also doesn't seem very stable and frankly it's not even clear how such a government could get a budget through parliament, because the government would have to make concessions to Le Pen even more openly than Barnier did and the left wing of the centrist bloc would strongly oppose that. It’s not even the nature of what is offered to Le Pen that matters to them, but the mere fact that something is offered to her and her party, because those people originally come from the Socialist party and consider Le Pen’s party the literal devil or at least have to pretend they do if they want to continue to be invited to dinners by their friends in Paris.

So while I think that scenario is somewhat more likely than a coalition in which part of the left-wing bloc supports a centrist government, it wouldn’t be a stable government and it's not even clear that it would be able to vote a budget. But we need a budget somehow. Frankly, when one looks at the current situation, it's very difficult not to reach the conclusion that France is ungovernable and that something will have to give to resolve the crisis. Maybe we'll be able to somehow vote a budget and limp along until next summer, when Macron will be able to dissolve the parliament and call new elections again, but that's hardly obvious.

Even if that happens, it’s not impossible, there is no guarantee that new parliamentary elections would not result in another hung parliament, in which case France would remain ungovernable as no stable government could be formed. While people often make comparisons with Belgium, which remained without a government for more than a year recently, France is not Belgium. Not only is Belgium a federal country, which means that although it lacked a federal government the regional governments, to which most powers are devolved, were up and running, but it's also the most important country in the EU with Germany and if there is no government for a long period it will prevent any major decision at the EU-level.

This is why I think people underestimate the probability that Macron will not be able to finish his term. When I say that, the typical reaction is that it will never happen, because nobody can legally compel Macron to resign. (There is an impeachment procedure in France, but the bar to complete it is almost impossibly high.) However, nobody could legally compel Biden to withdraw from the presidential election in the US either, yet he still ended up doing it.

During his address to the French people after the overthrow of the government, Macron insisted that he would finish his term and would not resign under any circumstances, but he may feel differently in a few months and the mere fact that he felt the need to talk about that possibility arguably shows that he feels vulnerable. I think that, if even people in his own party start calling for his resignation, it will be psychologically very difficult for him to withstand the pressure, especially if people start going in the streets to demand his resignation, which is another thing that may happen.

I think people who say he would just ignore the pressure have a very unrealistic model of the psychology of politicians. They are not supermen who are insensitive to pressure and everyone has their limits. It's not actually easy to ignore millions of people asking for your resignation when your favorability ratings are at 15% and even your political allies are asking you to leave. So for me the real question is whether it will get to that, not whether Macron would eventually resign if it did. I think there is no question that he would. He can't just stay in that situation for more than two years, that's just not tenable.

Right now, only the far-left party is openly asking for his resignation, while Le Pen avoids the topic for tactical reasons, but already some voices can be heard on the right and even in the center calling for it. That even people from Macron's own party might eventually ask him to resign seems unimaginable at the moment, but if we can't vote a budget or the parliament keeps overthrowing the government (it will be our fourth Prime Minister in one year when Macron replaces Barnier), I think what now seems impossible will suddenly become possible. In my opinion, should this happen, it will be a case of "gradually, then suddenly", with a slow deterioration of the situation and then a rapid preferences cascade leading to Macron's resignation.

It could also happen if Macron manages to hold out until next summer, but the new parliamentary elections fail to result in a majority again. I think that, if this happens, it will also be very difficult for Macron to last another two years in those conditions, as more people will start calling for his resignation on the ground that he put us in this mess, which he did.

People say that it would not solve the issue, because even if he resigned and another presidential election took place, the new president would also be unable to dissolve the parliament again for a year (meaning not until next summer if Macron resigns for that and not until the summer of 2026 if he resigns after next summer), but many jurists think that's false because the Constitutional Council would let a new president do it and people may ask for Macron's resignation not because they think it would fundamentally resolve the issue but to satisfy their ambition or simply because they're angry at him.

Frankly, that's also the logic of the institutions, De Gaulle and the people who wrote the Constitution would never have imagined that a president in Macron's position would not resign. The president is the most important person in the French political architecture. He has far more power than any head of state in any other democratic country, but that's mostly because the Constitution gives him the tools to dominate the parliament and Macron is obviously no longer able to do so.

Ordinarily, if the parliament overthrows the government, the president would use his constitutional powers to dissolve it and call for new parliamentary elections, but Macron can't do that anymore because the Constitution only allows the president to do it once a year. Even if he could, as I noted above, it's not clear that it wouldn't result in another hung parliament and it's absolutely clear that it would not result in a majority for Macron's party and its allies.

Frankly, the best case scenario for Macron would be that he somehow manage to last until next summer, at which point he'd dissolve the parliament again and Le Pen's party would get a majority. Again, it’s hardly obvious that it would happen since it’s quite likely that the next parliamentary elections will result in another hung parliament, but should it happen Macron would be safe.

Indeed, he could pose as the guarantor of the French institutions against the (totally non-existent to be clear) fascist threat posed by Le Pen and, as her popularity and that her party would probably drop because for the first time they'd be responsible for the situation, his would probably rise and in any case the calls for his resignation would subside. Her party is the only party or alliance that can realistically get a majority in parliament, hence making a stable government possible until the end of Macron's term, so paradoxically that's his best hope.