By FREDERICO LYRA*
Authoritarian social and institutional reorientation does not necessarily require the far right in power
An electoral decision
At around 20:30 pm/21 pm on June 09, 2024, shortly after the official announcement confirming the victory of the far right led by Jordan Bardella, just 28 years old (for the first time someone who does not have the surname Le Pen), in the elections for the European parliament held that same day, President Emmanuel Macron decided to steal the scene and announce a surprising dissolution of the national assembly in which he nevertheless had a fragile majority.
A thrill gripped the vast majority of the population, including his closest allies and supporters. No one understood why he had made such a hasty decision; no one had imagined it was possible. However, everyone suspected that deep down the president did not know exactly what he was doing. The Paris stock market plummeted. Some felt the collapse with a shock similar to that felt when the lockdown was announced in 2020 due to COVID-19.
At the time, there was talk of war, and since then (or perhaps even before) society has been governed as if it were a war. Others immediately remembered the dissolution proposed by George Pompidou to Charles De Gaulle in the heat of the barricades of May 68, but they soon realized that there was no parallel with the insurrectionary situation of the 1960s. The only similarity, although the scale of the characters involved is quite asymmetrical, would be the desire of the respective leaders to maintain the appearance of being at the center and in control of the entire situation.
While it is true that the possibility of dissolving the national assembly had been mentioned in the press, there was no indication that the president would make that decision. Quite the contrary, the realization of the victory of the Rassemblement National (RN) in the election for the European Parliament indicated that the most rational thing would be exactly the opposite. The possibility of the extreme right obtaining an absolute majority in the national assembly had never been so great. Prudence and moderation, traditional traits for those who position themselves as centrist politicians, were required. It was necessary to buy a little more time.
However, Emmanuel Macron, erratic and impulsive, does not fit this profile; he is the one who best embodies what has been called the “extreme center”.[I] That is, a new type of authoritarianism, one of the faces of the restructuring of the government of global capitalism. The manner and timing of the announcement of the dissolution and the new electoral process brought with it a result that was taken for granted: the victory of the RN. Never before had the possible outcome of an election been so predetermined. This was the sewer lid that Emmanuel Macron suddenly opened with his radical decision to dissolve parliament.
Whether true or not, it is always good to remember that the European Parliament is ultimately perceived by the majority of society as an entity that fulfills a formal role within one of the least democratic institutions of global capitalism, namely, the European Union (EU).[ii] — something that most of the population understands well because, although increasing, the participation rate in this election was only 43%. As you will remember, when a referendum was organized in 2005 to ask the French population whether or not they wanted to adhere to the European constitution (the Treaty of Rome II), they democratically answered no.
Almost 55% of the French said no to the constitution, but since this was the wrong democratic option, the constitution was rendered unviable, as the Dutch also rejected it. establishment The European Union decided to change course and drafted another treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, which was democratically imposed on the member countries, but this time without any popular consultation, as there was obviously no risk of another wrong choice. Although a great enthusiast of the European Union, to the point of wanting to revive the old project of a European army, Emmanuel Macron is perfectly aware that the far right is already well-established within the international institution, and that, although it has not stopped trying, it has not yet managed to threaten its administrative structures and political orientation in a more emphatic manner.
Therefore, nothing pressured him to make such a decision. The argument that he had been defeated and that a crisis of legitimacy was opening up was not entirely false, but all it would take was one or two adjustments, one or two statements and the government would get back on track (although few can identify what they are) without any major setbacks. With the arrival of the summer holidays and the Olympic Games approaching, the population would soon forget the shock of the far-right's electoral victory in the European elections.
Everything would return to normal, at least until 2027, when there will be a new presidential election. It was a wait that set in. If society was organizing itself in anticipation of the Olympic Games with a mixture of support and repulsion, it was fear and optimism, depending on the political field, that began to prevail and, for a few weeks, took over the country. Never before had the future that was announced been so favorable to supporters of the extreme right.
A poll soon showed that the majority of Bardella voters approved Macron's decision. The dissolution appeared to be a decision by a single man, but it spread unrest, incomprehension and indignation throughout society. The crisis that the president had triggered had opened an unknown gap, suspending time for a short three weeks. As if triggering such confusion were not enough, the president had decided to give the shortest possible time to organize an election of such importance: the first round would be on June 30 and, a week later, on July 7, the second round.
A catastrophic outcome was taking shape with the prospect of entering a new, dark world, hitherto unknown, in which the far right would once again govern France. Again, something that had not happened since the Vichy government (1940-1944) under the command of Marshal Pétain in partnership with Hitler — not to mention Macron in a dark gesture rehabilitated officially Pétain in 2018.[iii]
Minutes before the president's televised announcement, none of these expectations appeared on the immediate horizon of the French population. The possibility of a far-right government is real, but in three years' time. The president has set the clock forward.
Whether we would have had a completely different government, an institutional civil war, a new partnership between the president and his young prime minister, or even a more or less identical continuation of Gabriel Attal's brief government, we will never know. There were many who had the impression that Macron wanted to govern with the RN. Perhaps he thought he could control or wear down the far right in power.
However, the fatalistic certainty that embodied the expectations of French society that the time had finally come for the RN to take power was not fulfilled. After three weeks lived as a snooze in a countdown waiting for a catastrophic outcome determined in advance, to everyone's surprise, on July 7, the end of the second round, against all predictions and electoral polls, the left-wing coalition that had been formed at that time under the name of Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front — NFP), although far from achieving any majority that would allow it to impose a prime minister, secured first place and the largest number of deputies.[iv]
O Republican Front which had been formed with a makeshift alliance between the NFP and the Macronist forces of Together, managed to once again halt the rise of the RN. Macron, however, antidemocratic and a sore loser, pretended that there had been no election and, in an undeclared alliance with the RN, decided to appoint Michel Barnier, from the weak Republican Party, as prime minister. At the end of the election, the country seemed to be experiencing an institutional and territorial division that in a certain way updated the French fractures, and this is what we will mainly address here.
The French extended present
One cannot think about contemporary France without always keeping in mind the second round of the 2002 presidential election, in which another Republican Front was formed around Jacques Chirac to give him 83% of the votes — “a banana dictatorship result”[v] recalled the newspaper Ouest France on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of this event — against 17% obtained by Jean-Marie Le Pen, from Front National, who, in the first round, had left behind Lionel Jospin, the Prime Minister at the time, and favorite to win the presidential election for the Socialist Party (PS).
Since then, French institutional politics have turned to the right and are, in a way, dictated by the agenda and program of the far right. In a way, even though they have not yet come to power, it is the far right that has been guiding the paths taken by French civil society since the beginning of the millennium. On the other hand, this is only possible because society is objectively oriented towards the right. As we will see, Macronism's turn to the right was not only due to belief in the far right's discourse; it is also a position taken due to the rightward shift of society. One trying to catch up with the other, and vice versa.
The attacks on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan of 2015 accentuated and sealed the trend of this turnaround.[vi] There are many examples, but we can highlight the new immigration law voted in January 2024, and known as Darmanin Law, named after the interior minister, himself a former participant in the far-right movement Manif pour Tous.
Movement, which became an association in 2023, Manif pour Tous [Demonstration for all] was formed at the end of November 2012 around the fight against the Gay Marriage Law. Its main action was an annual national demonstration, from which its name comes. In addition to Minister Gérard Darmanin, the first police officer in France as he is known, we can highlight the momentary sympathy for the movement of normally unquestionable figures such as Simone Veil[vii], the former health minister under whose name the law granting the right to abortion (loi Veil) is known, immortalized by Macron in the Pantheon.
in your book L'extrême droite, nouvelle génération: survey au coeur de la jeunesse identitaire[viii] [Far-right, new generation: survey among identitarian youth], Marylou Magal and Nicolas Massol highlight, among many other things, how Demonstration for all was decisive in providing a space for the different tendencies of the French right to meet. The demonstrations were a laboratory where alliances, intellectual and emotional exchanges were created and became an organic meeting point for the organization of the new French far right, especially its youth.
According to the authors, young people are less shy about building connections that were previously forbidden to their political parents, that is, they more easily accept affinities between all right-wing parties, which consequently leads to a growing right-wing shift of the French right from their youth onwards. This is where, for example, the RN candidate, Jordan Bardella, came from.
The president who in 2017 promised to definitively neutralize the extreme right is, today, seen as the main person responsible for the growth of the monster that has been forming immanently in society and for the acceleration of RN's march towards power. In an interview with Le Monde On June 18, consultant Raphaël Lorca called the dissolution of the assembly a “psychic coup d’état.” That is, a political act of such destabilizing force that it is capable of provoking a mental neutralization, a feeling that what is being experienced is not real. Leading everyone to wonder if it was not a dream or a delirium.
On the other hand, he says, this type of performative act has a hyper-reality effect, because in a perennial situation, every decision of this type “is placed in the register of urgency”. Every transgression or future political decision will have this decision as a measure. Since from now on, most decisions will inevitably be perceived as less radical than these, the gaps left by them are immense.
The idea of a new type of coup d'état had already been noted by Alain Badiou. According to the philosopher, the 2017 election had already been the result of a plebiscitary vote with a “systemic bombardment campaign saying: if it’s not him, you’ll have the far right”. What actually happened in this election, he says, was a “democratic coup d’état”.[ix] — an update of Bonapartism as it had been identified by Marx — which brought to power a new alliance of a broad political, media and business spectrum that Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini called the “bourgeois bloc”[X].
That is, Macron would represent a recomposition of the political and business spectrum that was organized with the aim of governing and rapidly restructuring France, making it, so to speak, capable and prepared to participate in the rapid transformations of globalized capitalism and, above all, to contain the growing dissatisfaction of the population and the riots that would multiply against the acceleration of such reformatory processes — which in fact happened.
This bloc, politically led by the president and the group of parties gathered in the Together, maintains much of its legitimacy and perpetuation in power due to the fear that they loudly propagate of being the last civilized bastion available against the rise of the extreme right. It remains to be seen whether this electoral barrage will have an effect forever, or whether in 2027, on the occasion of the next presidential election, the prophecy that has been postponed for more than twenty years will finally be fulfilled.
Center, left, far right
It was three weeks of intense campaigning, punctuated by almost daily events. The day after the assembly was dissolved, Macron met with the leaders of the three parties that make up his group. Together: Stéphanie Séjourné (Reinaissance), Edouard Philippe (Horizons) and François Bayrou (MoDem). The latter even suggested that the campaign should distance itself from the president, hiding his image, at the risk of sinking completely due to his low approval rating; an idea evidently rejected by his boss, since the president remained omnipresent in the media, saying that he would give three television appearances per week.
At the beginning of the campaign, still in shock due to the decision taken by their leader, the Macronist camp found themselves desperately looking for allies. They found very few willing to talk. The president's decision coincided with a time when his political camp was at its most fragile. The result of the European elections had been one of the worst that a presidential majority had ever obtained in a legislative election. Many were already imagining themselves jumping ship.
His former ally, the remnant of May 68, Daniel Cohn-Bendit did not mince his words for the La Tribune : “Macron has put nonsense at the heart of France! He thinks he’s Jesus, imagining that his kind word will solve everything.” “It’s the Titanic,” said others within the government, unsure whether to resign, break with the presidential camp, join the campaign, found a new party-movement or just wait. Not by chance, a possible ally, former president François Hollande[xi], who surprisingly presented himself as a candidate for deputy for the PS, went so far as to say that the presidential coalition was dead. At one point in the second round, the newspaper Le Figaro stated that “in the name of the 'front républicain', Macronia risks being erased”.
There was an atmosphere of the end of a kingdom. There were many who tried to leave the bloc as soon as the ballot boxes were opened and the votes were counted. The restlessness reigned especially among those who had no certain fate after the election. At the end of the election, however, the Together survived by obtaining a good result of 165 deputies (although this means 73 fewer than in the previous configuration of the parliament). Although it lost the relative majority it had and became the second force in the congress, for a few weeks the group feared the worst. Everything indicated, and the results of the first round reinforced this, that the president's base would literally be wiped off the French political map.
It was thanks to the left and the Republican Front that not only did this not happen, but the defeat suffered was numerically minimized. The demoralization, on the other hand, was great, but it remains to be seen whether this still matters. In any case, it is a fact that although the total disintegration of the presidential field did not occur, its real possibility was experienced intensely by everyone, as if it were imminent.
Macron's big bet to try to win or minimize a possible electoral defeat was the apparent impossibility of a union of the left. However, on June 13th this impossibility was already counted, and an agreement had been made. In fact, the president had reasons to bet on a new fragmentation of the left, given the tough campaign for the European parliament, full of accusations and mutual attacks between the Insubordinate France (LFI) and the PS — headed this time by a rising figure from what was formerly called left caviar, renamed by Thomas Piketty , the left brahmane: Raphaël Glucksmann.[xii]
Shortly after the announcement of the dissolution of the assembly, the latter declared that it was impossible to build any alliance with Jean-Luc Mélénchon, leader of the LFI, and that the most natural move for the PS would be to close ranks with the government. He was quickly disavowed by the rest of the party, which stitched together an agreement and sealed an alliance with the PCF, LFI and EEVL (Europe Ecology The Greens) which, with clear nods to the glorious past of the French working class, took the name of Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP).
Despite its name, the alliance had everything, although it was not that popular, as it lacked people; we will return to this later. For now, the most important thing is to know that, despite everything, there was a hegemonic dispute between the so-called “left of rupture” embodied by the LFI and the more institutional left led by the PS (interestingly or not, the French Communist Party is currently closer to this pole).
In a similar way to the problems that the president brought to his group, Mélénchon was the figure to be contained in the NPF. “Every time he says he will be prime minister, he makes me lose a few votes,” said François Ruffin, candidate for the Somme, a devastated industrial zone and a leading figure in the LFI, who will definitively break with the party at the end of the election. It was thought that this alliance was a way of building a force capable of minimally slowing down the RN government, that is, it was the way found to contain the institutional damage that everyone took for granted. However, against all expectations, the NPF obtained 178 deputies, coming in first place in the election. Within the group, although second in number, the PS was the big winner.
The party, which had almost disappeared in the 2022 election when it obtained only 27 deputies, now has 65 representatives, six fewer than the LFI. Under normal conditions, the new prime minister would come from the NPF. It is worth insisting that the regression and shift to the right in Western democratic societies is so great that what a few decades ago would appear as a traditional social-democratic program is today considered to be radical left — some, coming from the left and apparently with their feet off the ground, even say that it would be a left of rupture (rupture gap).[xiii] It is true that among the proposals presented for the 2017 election, the LFI defended the radical refounding of the French Republic, that is, the foundation of the 6a Republic, but that has completely disappeared from the scene.
On the far right, the process was experienced as a transition from euphoria over the real prospects of power to relative disappointment. Although it obtained an unprecedented and significant 148 deputies in the assembly, the real possibility, which did not materialize, of a massive victory in which the dawn of July 08 would mark the arrival of a young man from its ranks to the post of prime minister of the fourth nuclear power on the planet was experienced as a cold shower.
Until he appeared as the leader of the RN party for the European elections, Jordan Bardella was unknown to the general public. Although he has been a regular user of Tik Tok for a long time, a social network that he prefers to X (Twitter), especially to communicate with young people. It is important to note that around 30% of young people between the ages of 18 and 34 voted for the RN (the Macronist group has less than 10% of voters in this age group). Bardella represents a new generation of voters and party cadres, whose point of radicalization, as we have suggested, should be located in the experience of the 2015 attacks and in the manifest for all.
The most radical call for a truly French identity and do not hesitate to say that they suffer from “anti-white racism”. In addition to the influences of new right, whose main representative is Alain de Benoist, is the theory of “grand remplacement” (great replacement) that brings together young activists of the French far right. Popularized by Renaud Camus in a best-selling book on political intervention released in 2015, “grand-remplacement” is a conspiracy theory that preaches that due to low birth rates, the French will soon be replaced by Arabs and blacks, and will become a minority in their own country and territory.
The fight against this specter is what has guided the far right, and contributed to the resonance of these ideas among the youth and the underprivileged classes. After her young party colleague obtained around 33% of the valid votes in the first round, Marine Le Pen stated, without hesitation, that her voters had voted against the project of contempt for the people that had already lasted seven years. In the end, the RN is now the largest party in the French assembly, but it will not govern. At least not directly.
The most ridiculous event of this election occurred when the party split The Republicans (LR). There were those, led by party president Éric Ciotti, who wanted to build an alliance with the RN and those who preferred to maintain their relative independence. Mediated by tycoon Vincent Bolloré[xiv], with whom he maintains a close relationship, Ciotti secretly negotiated an alliance between his party and the RN. As soon as they discovered this intrigue, the party council considered it unacceptable and voted to impeach the president.
He, not accepting this outcome, rebelled against the party, invading and literally locking himself in its headquarters and occupying it illegally. Ciotti even gave statements to the press through the window of his office while refusing to leave it, which became known as a bunker[xv]. Valérie Pecresse, president of the Île-de-France region in which Paris is located, came to the rescue and, together with a colleague who had a copy of the keys to the party headquarters, had to intervene firmly to negotiate a way to evict him without having to break into the party headquarters and, above all, to invent a way to manage the picaresque split of what was the latest mutation of the former party of ex-presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
It is essential to note that this would be the first time that a major party, if its legal authorities validated this project headed by its president, would engage in a national coalition with the RN, breaking the traditional cordon sanitaire against the extreme right. Ciotti and his dissident allies crossed this Rubicon together, although they were unable to take the entirety of their party with them.
At times, it was very reminiscent of the PSDB leadership that in 2018 was divided between those who were ambiguous about their choice in the second round between Fernando Haddad and Jair Bolsonaro, and those who fearlessly supported the Captain explicitly. Ciotti did not disappoint and remained faithful to his radical positions during the weeks of negotiation, mystery and confusion surrounding the election of the new prime minister, having called more than once for an alliance of the right-wing parties around the RN. It was from within the ranks of this party that emerged diminished and almost imploded in the electoral process that, with the more or less implicit approval of the RN, the name of the new prime minister emerged: Michel Barnier.
At present, at least in France, observes Gilles Richard[xvi], the traditional divide between left and right seems to have taken a back seat. Since 2002, with society's shift to the right, the main divide seems to be different. It is as if there were an internal division on the right, guiding society with one side "globalist" and the other "nationalist". Although France is in fact one of the last countries to have a representative institutional left, these, being outside this fundamental division, basically respond and react to its guidelines and agendas (and thus are moving to the right in the process), without being able to propose a new configuration in which they can actually have some voice and political strength.
The disintegration of the LR, the former traditional right, says Gilles Richard, would respond to this logic. We would have on the one hand an orientation towards North American Atlanticism and Macron's Eurocentrism, and on the other, the nationalism of the RN. Although it is no less true that we can find clear elements of Eurocentrism in the latter (although little Atlanticism) and nationalist traits in the former, Together. This approach meant that a significant portion of Macronist voters and the traditional right, with the latter having melted away, often chose the latter without hesitation when it came to choosing between the NFP and the RN. After all, as the Brazilian example clearly demonstrates, there were many who thought it would be better to undertake a completely new experiment with the far right in power than to repeat the old reformist and “spendthrift” formula of the institutional left.
Election (1)
“The extreme right” on the threshold of power. The challenge of the republican front”, read the headline of the Le Monde on Tuesday, July 2. The second round would take place in a few days and the main urgency until then was to form a New Republican Front capable of bringing together, even if provisionally, the left and the Macronist center, after the RN's demonstration of strength in the first round that had taken place two days earlier and the prospect of a landslide victory that was announced. The NFP quickly declared that it would withdraw from the race any of its candidates who were in third place in favor of a government candidate in the constituencies led by the RN.
This gesture did not receive a symmetrical response from the presidential camp, which remained largely ambiguous. Macron, although he continues to insist that he is a fighter against the far right, counting on the automatic support of the left for anything that was positioned against the RN, took a long time to explicitly engage in this truly decisive battle, feeling entitled to not speak out clearly due to the barrage of the far right. It was even suggested that he was showing ingratitude to those who twice activated this sociopolitical device that allowed him to be elected president in 2017 and 2022.
In his field, not everyone was in favor of composing a Front with the left. It seemed that part of the presidential camp would not hesitate to collaborate, in one way or another, with a possible RN government. Some, like Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, said that no votes should be given to the RN, others, like Bayrou, said that no votes should go to the RN or the NFP. This ambiguity, so to speak, was justified by these actors in response to the hegemony that the LFI and especially Mélénchon held in the left-wing alliances.
At the same time, it was difficult for Macron and company to back down from all the accusations made against the NFP during the European elections and in the first round: anti-parliamentarism, violence, separatism, economic terrorism. Taking advantage of the vacuum of the genocidal massacre that Israel is committing in Gaza, and of the fractures that the conflict has caused to emerge in French society after the October 7 attacks in Israel, accusing Mélénchon and the entire left of being anti-Semitic has become a common practice. While it is difficult to deny that there are indeed traces of anti-Semitism in part of the French left, these are nevertheless residual. Anti-Semitic, by definition, is the extreme right, regardless of its guise, but this necessary determination is made by the media and the Together they speak little or nothing.
If it weren't for the left, there wouldn't be Republican Front. However, if in 2002 the bloc Republican Front had been relatively solidly established, the 2024 demonstration did not hide its provisional nature. The June 15 demonstration was attended by 250 people across the country, while in 2002 1,3 million people attended a historic May Day. There was little enthusiasm in either the NFP or the Macronist camp. Fatalism reigned, as if there were no reason for existential engagement in the face of the enemy's certain victory. Many lived through days of nightmares and absolute paralysis.
More than anything, a new Front it was a necessity for survival. At the end of the first round, with the RN's victory certain, it was a matter of minimizing the damage. Above all, preventing them from obtaining an absolute majority in parliament. It was a political as well as a moral task. In any case, in its editorial of the same day, Le Monde called for the “Urgency of the republican front”. The situation that was emerging was “fueled by political distrust, by the rejection of immigration, by the increase in security concerns. The wave is not specific to France, but in a country that was believed to be better protected than other democracies by its republican tradition, by its institutions, the shock is immense”.
The following Sunday, July 7, everyone (or almost everyone) breathed a sigh of relief after a failed march to power. The alarm had sounded with unprecedented volume. The previous week, at the end of the first round, however, the urgency was to form a new Front to stop the far right. At this moment, given the gravity of the situation and the real risk of institutional change, the Le Monde, a newspaper that strives to maintain a republican appearance, stated in its editorial that any ambiguity would be “unforgivable.”
Election (2)
A matter of Le Monde of June 18th entitled “Dissolution: récit de ces heures où Macron auvert la boîte de Pandore“[Dissolution: report of these hours in which Macron opened Pandora’s box] highlighted the president’s isolation and authoritarian commitment. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, like other members of the government, had advised postponing the dissolution until early September, when he returned from vacation. At that time, in June, the risk was high, especially due to the low popularity and growing distrust that the population has towards the president.
The announcement had barely been made when the ministers were already entering the world that was approaching, such was their certainty of RN's victory. Reports say that some were in tears during an emergency meeting shortly after the dissolution. Others said that it was a case of "Belgian roulette", a variant with six bullets instead of just one in the cartridge. The state apparatus partially went into stand-by. Ministers who are also deputies abandoned their positions and cancelled their agendas to each engage in their own campaign. The risk of a worsening economic crisis increased, as the market generally seems to prefer stability.
Macron loudly declared that the RN and NPF programs were unrealistic, but investors were wary of the future, as everything indicated that he would lose and would have to make deals with one or the other. Officials feared that they would soon have to hand over confidential information about the tax and treasury administration to the far right.
Anticipating the RN's victory, the president was quick to appoint allies to key positions with the aim of equipping the state to better resist a possible far-right government. This was the case of the French commissioner to the European Union, criticized by Le Pen, but who helped renew Ursula von der Leyner's mandate. Macron also appointed her chief of staff, as well as the new commander of the air force, in addition to police chiefs.
Post-election
On September 09, exactly 51 days after the second round of the elections and even after the sacred return from vacation, Macron decided to appoint, against all initial expectations, Michel Barnier from the old guard of the LR as prime minister. A former MP and former foreign minister under Jacques Chirac, he recently headed the European Commission group responsible for organizing relations with the United Kingdom in the immediate post-war period.Proposed referendum on United Kingdom membership of the European Union. His long political resume also shows that he was one of the deputies who in 1981 voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality in France and proposed building a wall on the eastern European borders.
Two months after the NPF came first in the elections, the elected prime minister is linked to Sarkozy and is on the right of the Republican Party. That is, although he is not linked to Ciotti, he is someone not far removed from the positions of the RN. Aligning the center with the right, with the support of the far right (since it is known that during this long wait in an attempt to find a candidate, Marine Le Pen was personally consulted by Macron several times) was the only way the president found to continue governing an increasingly ungovernable country.
Some people are talking about a masterstroke, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The automation of the process means that those who already have some power in their hands can lead it or readjust it to the detriment of others, although always provisionally, as if they were postponing the outcome. Everyone was once again surprised by this choice, including their allies and the bosses. In a clear reversal of terms, the party that came in fourth place in the election was given a prime minister as a gift. In contemporary democracies, the loser often wins. In any case, such a gesture further discredits the electoral process and democratic institutions and in the short term should further exacerbate the crisis in the country.
Seeing the turnaround on the horizon, LFI even proposed that the assembly impeach the president. Although impossible, and something that initially seemed like a symbolic and desperate gesture, Macron’s impeachment would be supported by half the population, at least according to polls released shortly after Barnier’s appointment. Furthermore, three-quarters of French people say they are against the appointment of the new prime minister, preferring Lucie Castets (PS) or Bardella instead. “The election was stolen from the French people, the message was denied,” Mélénchon immediately said. Just as in 2005, the election result was turning into its opposite.
The left (Nouveau Front Populaire) came first in the election, but it was a very fragile alliance and, above all, it was necessary to build an even more fragile alliance for the second round, Republican Front, this time with purely electoral objectives, in order to defeat the extreme right. If on the one hand, the French democratic system had established the practice that the party or group that came in first place is the one that appoints the next prime minister, on the other hand, this is practice, but it is not the norm.
From the outset, it was clear that Macron would be all for the NFP. Or rather, all for the LFI? On 23 July, in an attempt to turn its modest majority into a victory, the NFP proposed Lucie Castets as its candidate for Prime Minister. A civil servant trained at the best French and international administrative schools, she is now a fiscal advisor to the Paris city council and belongs to the moderate wing of the PS. In other words, she is close to Macron's political position before he was elected in 2017.
In a very skillful and impressive manner, since many thought she would remain in the shadow of Mélénchon and other NPF leaders, Castets managed to assert herself and spent days traveling around the country and, above all, in the media. Day after day, she gave interviews and showed herself to be a very credible candidate, even for the center-right media. Feeling pressured, Macron signaled, however, that he would not accept appointing a government that included LFI ministers. In response, and against all expectations, Mélénchon announced that his party was willing to not be part of a possible government led by Castets and that in this way, Macron would only need to follow the usual procedure and everything would go well.
That was not the case, as Macron soon confessed that, deep down, he did not want to govern with someone from the NFP, regardless of whether or not they were from the so-called radical left. Castets did not give up and continued to present himself as a credible option until the end. Several names were circulated as options before Barnier was appointed, as the government, in a classic strategy, began to circulate dozens of possible names every day to confuse the debate and, above all, to wear down the population that could no longer stand so much procrastination. Deep down, the president did not really know who to choose, but he already knew who he absolutely did not want.
As noted, like other Western democracies such as Germany, Belgium and Spain, France has finally entered the hall of the countries that now need to form bizarre alliances in parliaments in order to continue functioning at least minimally. While this was not happening, the country continued for more than a month in automatic mode, but not that much. The difference with other countries, however, is that the guarantor of the new government is the extreme right. Without it, it cannot sustain itself.
In a way, the curious thing about this point of arrival is how a party and a traditional social-democratic program like the LFI (it is true that it is led by a figure totally incompatible with the way that contemporary institutional politics has been moving) would, in reality, be absolutely compatible with the original Macronism of 2017, the one that presented itself as a rejuvenated renewal of liberal progressivism, but which, even so, scares the neoliberal establishment much more than the RN.
After the election, the then Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, acted as the norm and immediately handed in his resignation. The President, however, asked him to stay on in office for a while longer to ensure a smooth transition and to ensure that things continued to function normally during the Olympic Games and while he searched for a new occupant for the post.
The press christened this new eccentric figure embodied by Gabriel Attal as the resigning prime minister [“premier minister resignation”]. Unprecedented in this proportion in France, but already relatively common in other countries, the prime minister, as well as his entire cabinet, although no longer officially a minister, acted as such. Paradoxically, he occupied and did not occupy the position for fifty-one days. Since the pen did not stop moving, it became clear that a provisional prime minister is not so different from a permanent one. Acting as if he owned the ball, and even more so as if he believed he owned the playing field, everything pointed to a personal choice by the president for the prime minister. And
It was necessary to find someone who would appear to be conciliatory, but who would continue the accelerated pace of reforms demanded by French employers and required by the European Union. Everything indicates that Barnier will simply invert the equation embodied by Attal and will in reality be a “permanent-provisional” prime minister (many are already talking about the possibility of a new election in a year’s time if the crisis of ungovernability worsens). Given the fragility of the minister and the president, there is a real risk of paralysis in the assembly, which would obstruct any possibility of reforms or adjustments — and even the vote on the 2025 budget — through these normal democratic channels.
However, this may not be a big problem for the president, because although he had a narrow majority in the previous assembly configuration, he could not easily approve anything. As a way out, he has long been governing by urgent measures that legally bypass parliamentary bodies. In Brazil, these legislative measures are provisional. In France, what would seem at first glance to be analogous to Brazilian provisional measures, the famous article 49-3, is not, because there it is in force permanently.
The law is established after a simple deliberation by the council of ministers and the text is considered adopted if no motion of censure against the government is voted on, which would require an absolute majority of the opposition in parliament. Without an absolute majority, but without the possibility of the opposition blocking the measures, the government is governed by permanent measures. Elisabeth Borne, prime minister between May 2020 and January 2024, resorted to this legal provision more than twenty times, including to approve the controversial pension reform.
There seems to be a strong tendency for power to be concentrated in the executive branch to the detriment of the other two branches of government. Many people are concerned about France's authoritarian tendencies. As elsewhere, this social and institutional reorientation does not necessarily require the far right to be in power.
*Frederico Lyra is a teacher in the art and philosophy departments of the University of Picardie Jules Verne (France).
Notes
[I]As David Adler noted in an article for the New York Times It is not the extremists but the so-called centrists who are most hostile to democracy. Anything goes in an attempt to block what is now seen as extreme, including authoritarian and impulsive measures. A lot has changed since 2018, but what seems certain is that the center of the political spectrum has followed society and has been moving rapidly to the right. See: Adler, David, “Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists”, May 23, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html
[ii]For this see chapters 4 to 7 of How will capitalism end? (London/New York, Verso, 2016) by Wolfgang Streeck in which various facets of the institutional structure of the European Union are discussed in detail.
[iii]Cf: https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/2018/11/07/25001-20181107ARTFIG00121-macron-petain-a-ete-un-grand-soldat-pendant-la-premiere-guerre-mondiale.php
[iv]Roy, Iva, “Un répit salutaire mais sans majorité pour le Front Populaire, Basta!, July 8, 2024. Available at: https://basta.media/Un-repit-salutaire-mais-sans-majorite-pour-le-Front-populaire
[v]Cf: https://www.ouest-france.fr/elections/presidentielle/histoires-d-elections-a-la-presidentielle-de-2002-le-seisme-le-pen-suivi-du-raz-de-maree-chirac-278297b6-ab50-11ec-a913-f0dff1800d5e .
[vi]One of the first to forcefully diagnose this particular turn of events in France was Alain Badiou in a lecture given on 23 November 2015, a few days after the attack, and later published in book form. (Cf. Notre mal vient de plus loin. Think about the tueries of November 13, Paris, Fayard, 2016).
[vii]Cf: https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/actualites/article/manif-pour-tous-simone-veil-a-salue-les-manifestants-contre-le-mariage-gay_13943.html
[viii]Cf: Marylou Magal, Marylou and Massol, Nicolas, L'extrême droite, nouvelle génération: enquête au coeur de la jeunesse identitaire, Paris, Denoel, 2024.
[ix]Badiou, Alain, Praise of Politics, Paris, Flammarion, 2017, p. 115-123.
[X]Amable, Bruno & Palombarini, Stefano, L'illusion du bloc bourgeois: Social alliances and avenir du modèle français, Paris, Liber/Raisons d'Agir, 2018. In a 2022 article published in Sidecar, Serge Halimi already identified a deepening and an even more rightward turn in this bourgeois bloc on the occasion of Macron's re-election. (Cf: Halimi, Serge, “The Bourgeois Bloc, sidecar, 30 June 2022. Available at: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/the-bourgeois-bloc ).
[xi]Many suspect that Hollande's surprise candidacy disguised his ambition to return to the center of the political arena as prime minister. It is quite possible that this is real, but so far this intention has not produced any effective results.
[xii]Raphaël Glucksmann, son of renegade Maoist André Glucksmann, is a rising figure in the PS. He was the party's top candidate in the European elections. A potential presidential candidate in 2027, the man who is nicknamed the “man of the plural left” is close to Lionel Jospin, Hollande and Macron, representing the right wing of the party and positioning himself against the growing hegemony of Mélénchon and the LFI within the French left. In 2008, at the same time as the Russian invasion, Glucksmann was working in Georgia as an official advisor to the then neoliberal and close-to-the-United States president Mikheil Saakashvili. This fact led to accusations by Bardella that he was unfit to hold state office because he had worked for foreign state interests that were different from and, according to him, often in competition with the French. The MEP is married to one of the most important French journalists and television presenters: Léa Salamé. The author of Powerful Women (Powerful Women), bestsellers of “liberal feminism” (Nancy Fraser), has already had to change channels so as not to interfere with her husband’s rising career. It is rumored in the land of equality that, despite everything, she may have to give up her brilliant and more than promising career at the risk of compromising her husband Glucksmann’s political ambitions.
[xiii]Durand, Cedric; Keucheyan, Razmig and Palombarini, Stefano, “Construire la gauche de rupture”, setback, July 22, 2024. Available at: https://www.contretemps.eu/construire-gauche-rupture-nouveau-front-populaire/
[xiv]The tycoon Vincent Bolloré is an important figure in the French political and media world, assuming there is a separation between them. One of the main businessmen and with major interests in what is known as France-Afrique, he plays a role similar to that of the American Roger Ailes (part of Fox News) as the owner of several media outlets and mainly of the television channel Cnews, similar to the American one, which serves as a platform for the mass and daily dissemination of far-right discourse and ideas. For some years now it has been the main channel in the country, not so much because of its audience but because it is able to set the tone and content of the agenda and debate in other media outlets and in national politics.
[xv]Cf: https://www.ouest-france.fr/politique/eric-ciotti/un-forcene-dans-son-bunker-la-video-deric-ciotti-seul-dans-son-bureau-decryptee-par-un-expert-a2095efe-2982-11ef-96d1-fdb7d737b711
[xvi]Richard, Gilles, “Les Républicains sont voués à devenir un partit croupion”, Le Monde, 18 2024 June.
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