France is a monarchy that undergoes a succession crisis every five years, by way of an election.
It is by design. Under France’s current constitutional arrangement, the so-called Fifth Republic, the sole real seat of power is the office of the presidency. It is therefore unsurprising that all civic and political life would revolve around it.
The great historian Marcel Gauchet observed in a recent radio interview that the immense powers of the French presidency were specifically tailored for a man, De Gaulle, of equally immense legitimacy. De Gaulle drew his stature from his leading role in the resistance against the Nazis during World War II. Even his most acerbic critics, among them François Mitterrand, acknowledged not only De Gaulle's foresight but also his actions. He had been on the right side of history and then he had willed and organized the resurgence of France almost out of nothing. In a sense, only a character as epic as De Gaulle was big enough for the monarchical institutions of the Fifth Republic.
“JE VOUS AI COMPRIS!” De Gaulle in Algiers, June 4 1958 (the bespectacled fellow on the right is anthropologist, spymaster, politician and De Gaulle’s pal Jacques Soustelle)
De Gaulle himself had thought up the election of the President by popular vote. In its first 1958 version, the Fifth Republic Constitution entrusted the election of the President to a college of about 80,000 electors (“grands électeurs”), made up of all of France’s elected officials. On December 21st 1958, De Gaulle became the first and only French President ever designated by such a scheme, and with a Soviet score I might add (78,51%).
To his credit, despite having grown up in a monarchist milieu, De Gaulle believed in democracy. He just did not believe in parliamentary democracy. Throughout his life he had held a dim view and an abiding suspicion of the legislative branch. After all, back in 1940, the Parliament had voted full dictatorial powers to the ignoble Pétain and thus sold the République away to the Nazis. De Gaulle considered, rightly or wrongly, that legislative bodies were too fickle and too chaotic, and even worse: they were amenable to be taken over by Communist majorities – and who would want that?
In 1962 De Gaulle had another problem on his hands: his legislative majority, although enormous, was an unwieldy and unreliable alliance. His own party, UNR, did not control parliament. He had opted for a referendum to ratify the Évian accords with the Algerian Provisional Government, in part because he could not trust right-wing MPs on the issue of peace and Algerian independence.
The final conclusion of the Algerian crisis promised a return to the more regular state of affairs, where Parliament would reassert its sway and its full powers of nuisance. It was the end of De Gaulle’s de facto free rein. It became apparent to De Gaulle that the rowdy and splintered legislators were not keen to follow his lead. The Constitution of 1958 had failed to solve the quandary that had brought it into existence in the first place: government weakness and instability stemming from a fractious parliament.
In late September 1962, De Gaulle went on the offensive. He announced yet another referendum, this time to modify the Constitution to allow the election of the President by universal suffrage. It was like a bomb went off inside both chambers of parliament. To this day, the legality of that referendum remains highly dubious. Gaston Monnerville, the President of the Senate and definitely not a radical firebrand, accused De Gaulle of “forfaiture” (an abuse of power) and hinted that he should resign or be arrested.
Gaston Monnerville (1897-1991), the grandson of a slave, hailed from Guyane
You might wonder: why would electing the President by popular vote be such a big deal? After all, this is how things are done in the United States (at least technically). The key difference of course is that in the US the President cannot dissolve Congress at his or her leisure. The legislative and the executive branches are co-equal. In effect De Gaulle’s constitutional reform aimed to neuter, if not destroy, the legislative branch. It did keep Parliament alive but in name only, as an empty shell.
MPs were fully aware of that. And for the only time in the history of the Fifth Republic a vote of no confidence passed (the motion de censure), leading to the fall of the government on October 4th 1962. It was the last time a French parliament truly exercised its powers, on the cusp of losing them all. For reference, the right wing held a majority of 489 in a chamber of 576 members.
The government fell but De Gaulle won his referendum. And so began the second Fifth Republic, or what some have called the post-Algerian Fifth Republic.
“How can you govern a country that sports 258 varieties of cheese?” De Gaulle had once quipped. The quote may be apocryphal but it captures the essence of the Général’s theory of governance. It points to the fragmentation and to the centrifugal forces that stirred in French society. In his experience, if the myriad of local and class interests that make up France were given legislative representation and power, nothing could ever get accomplished. At heart, his was a pessimistic view of France’s political culture and civic life, but one that was not necessarily unfounded. Don’t forget, parliamentary rule had failed not once but twice in the span of two short decades, in 1940 and in 1958. Both times De Gaulle had ridden to the rescue (in somewhat ambiguous circumstances in 1958, but that’s for another post). Say what you will about the tenets of Gaullism, but the man had a point.
His solution was elective monarchy. It was the only logical way to maintain democratic legitimacy and democratic institutions while curbing the parliament’s proclivity to internecine chaos and gridlock.
That not-so-minute tweak fundamentally reshaped France. The office of the presidency grew to become a monstrous, shimmering astral object that sits at the center of it all and orders the motions of the lesser bodies around itself. In France the President truly is the Roi-Soleil, the Sun-King, just by virtue of what you may call political gravity. There is a reason why the often petulant Macron calls himself Jupiter. It rings somewhat ridiculous and orotund. It also happens to be correct.
Three Kings