The Center Cannot Hold: the Strange Case of Suicidal French Politics

Why is the ruling class in Paris committing political suicide? In the first of a new series, our team brings you unique analysis you won't find anywhere else.

Emmanuel Macron, president of France and former darling of both the French and international media, has taken what looks to be a fatal misstep for his government. While Prime Minster Borne’s cabinet may survive—or even finish out Macron’s last term—it seems unlikely to make progress on any of its goals.

On March 16^th, Macron directed PM Elisabeth Borne to invoke Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which essentially allows the government to pass any law without having the legislature vote on it. But perhaps the most surprising thing about the invocation of 49.3 is not that it was used, but that it was used for a fairly inconsequential cause: pension reform.

In fact, this reform would simply raise the minimum age at which pensions are initiated. Not apolitical, to be sure, but not necessarily an extremely politically charged issue. And yet, the move is seen by the people of France as unnecessary—and the French labor ministry itself is unclear on whether these reforms are in fact “vital”, as Macron has put it—and the undemocratic enactment of the law is just the cherry on top.

These are merely the last gasps of a dying political center in France. Though President Macron is merely the undertaker, not the murderer.

First, some clarification: the center-left in France has traditionally been made up of the larger Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS) as well as smaller parties such as the Greens and the Radical Party of the Left (Parti radical de gauche, PRG).

The center-right has, for most of its history, been led by the same party, though it has adopted different monikers. From 1968 to 1976 it was led by General Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou and was known as the Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR). From 1976 to 2002, the party was led by Jacques Chirac as Rally for the Republic (RPR, until he merged it into the Union for a Popular Movement in 2002 (UMP). A much-weakened UMP eventually became the Republicans (LR) in 2015. Multiple name changes for one political collective.

Charles de Gaulle, from a era of Statecraft long gone

The Rightening of the Center-Left: Mitterrand, Jospin, and Hollande

The woes of France’s moderates began with the fall of the center-left, despite the fact that there have been only two center-left presidents of the Fifth Republic: François Mitterrand and François Hollande. Mitterrand is perhaps famous for reversing course on every policy position he claimed to hold before the election; Hollande is famous for being unable to achieve his stated aims at all. Lionel Jospin, the oft-forgotten middle child, occupied a position in between the two.

François Mitterrand was president from 1981 to 1995, and started as a fairly left-wing president, implementing policies such as increasing the minimum wage, institutionalizing the 39-hour workweek, and nationalization of key corporations. However, his policies were constrained by both external and internal factors, including an incongruous policy at the Bank of France, ending with the French franc being devalued and a stark shift to the right in Mitterrand’s positions, both economically and socially. The last major incident of his presidency was the funding of Rwandan paramilitaries which would go on to commit one of the largest genocides in history. Mitterrand’s presidency would essentially ensure that the left-wing proper would eschew center-left, but that if the PS ever lost its appeal, the center-left would actually collapse.

Lionel Jospin, the next standard-bearer of the French center-left, was prime minister of France from 1997 to 2002 in a “cohabitation” government, a government in which the president and prime minister are of different parties. He similarly abandoned his former left-wing credentials and instead leaned heavily into tax cuts, though he did work on building a strong foundation for the center-left by pushing relatively progressive healthcare reforms, as well as implementing the 35-hour work week. Yes you read that right. 35 hours a week. However, he would lose the 2002 presidential election, coming in behind even Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Finally, François Hollande was the Fifth Republic’s second center-left president. Unlike Mitterrand and Jospin, Hollande was virtually totally unable to enact any reforms that appealed to the more leftwing of his center-left party. Not only did he attempt to reform pensions as well—which was only slightly less unpopular in 2013 than it would be ten years later—he also pursued legislation reforming labor laws in favor of businesses rather than workers. Internationally, he was also a key backer in the disastrous NATO intervention in Libya. Hollande effectively reinforced the idea that the PS was no longer a center-left party, but merely a centrist one.

Corruption and Crisis: Chirac and Sarkozy

Interestingly, the problems that faced the center-right in France were not primarily due to their political positions, unlike the center-left. Rather, a series of damaging corruption scandals steadily eroded the power of the French center-right, as well as the decreasing strength of Catholicism. Additionally, the relative weakness of the center-right’s stance on the refugee issue during the peak years of the crisis contributed further to the perception of the center-right as ailing.

The most pressing issue that has contributed to the center-right’s decline is probably the corruption scandals that the RPR and its successors have found themselves embroiled in. Jacques Chirac is notable for several, including bribery in a privatization scheme, as well as embezzlement during his time as mayor. Although he was not actually convicted of any corruption while he was president, this tied the center-right to venality in a very obvious way, and his successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, only strengthened that tie, associated stories running the gamut from nepotism to accepting illegal cash from a billionaire heiress. Later allegations that Muammar Gaddafi helped finance his campaign did not help his case, and in 2021 Sarkozy was indeed convicted of corruption.

The other issue that faces the center-right of France is the decrease in the political power of Catholicism. Polls have shown that the proportion of Catholics—the main center-right voting bloc—is steadily declining. While Catholics still reliably vote for the center-right, their power has been diluted to the point where LR, the leading party in the center-right faction, has just 42 out of 577 national seats, compared with 170 for Macron’s party. François Fillon, widely regarded as the center-right candidate to beat, received just 20% of the vote in the first round of the 2017 elections.

Finally, the center-right has had to contend with an increasingly bold right wing. While Jean-Marie Le Pen garnered only 18% of the vote in 2002, twenty years later, his daughter Marine received 41%, and this level of support seems likely to rise.

The center-right has been viewed as being too lenient on major questions of the day, especially with their support of pension reform and relaxed stance on immigration, and so their voters have either failed to turn out to vote or even switched their votes to the RN. Despite the traditional popularity of the center-right with Catholics, RN (at the time called FN) received 22% of the Catholic vote in the first round of 2017, compared to the center-right’s 28%.

The hub of power in France, the Presidential Elysee Palace

A False Promise of a Centrist Alternative

Macron certainly has his own role in all of this; he is, indeed the figurative undertaker for the French center. While his popularity has not reached the low of Hollande’s—a mere 12% approval—he is not far from there either, polling at around 20% himself. Macron has assembled a Frankenstein-like coalition of moderate centrists that is too ideologically diverse and under attack to hold together. The reason why is not especially hard to discern.

Macron has relentlessly pursued unpopular “reforms” even at the cost of his own electoral coalition, and even at the cost of established democratic practice. This in and of itself is not especially surprising; despite the unpopularity of his first term’s policies, Macron proudly declared that he would embark on the same program which made him so unpopular in his first term. What is surprising is how willing he is to sink any chance of remaining popular.

During his first term, Macron embraced a wide-scale “reform” program which all sides of the political spectrum, including those in Macron’s own party, decried as benefiting the rich and hurting the poor. These were met with the famed gilets-jaunes (yellow vests) protests, which still continue to this day. Though originally about an increase in gas taxes, the protests have blossomed into a call for less corruption, more transparency, and more citizen involvement in government.

The gilets-jaunes rocked France, so it is difficult to see why Macron would do the same thing again, and now over something even more minor.

The French jealously guard their pensions, and pensions are negotiated per industry, allowing each worker to work roughly the same amount of years, rather than unduly favoring graduates by allowing them to collect pensions after fewer years of work.

It is not surprising, then, that only 18% of French people believe that Macron and the centrist coalition he has attempted to cobble together are in touch with the common Frenchman. This is compared with a whopping 58% for the RN, by contrast. This is worsened by the fact that Macron’s party is just that—Macron’s party. It is correctly viewed by practically everybody as a mechanism for getting Macron to the presidency. But Macron is term-limited, and there will likely not be a strong successor for the centrist coalition.

The only remaining question is whether the left or the right will win the elections of 2027, because the center cannot hold.