Following his party’s decisive loss to the far-right National Rally in the European Parliament election, French President Emmanuel Macron shocked everyone by dissolving the French National Assembly and calling a snap election.
He has justified his decision by saying that an election would “clarify” the political situation, but his compatriots do not share this view.
Even those who do not fear that Macron’s gamble will bring the far right to power are anxious about the chaos that might ensue.
Illustration: Mountain People
The president has needlessly “killed the presidential majority,” said former French prime minister Edouard Philippe, who served in the position alongside Macron from 2017 to 2020.
A hung parliament with National Rally as the largest party is considered the most likely outcome. Still, Macron’s decision has clarified one thing: His strategy to create a powerful centrism in France has failed. Other European leaders should take note.
Legend has it that the first question Napoleon would ask about a military officer was not whether he was talented, but whether he was lucky. When Macron triumphed in the 2017 presidential election, he was extraordinarily lucky. The incumbent was so unpopular that he did not even bother to run for a second term, and the likely conservative winner was felled by a scandal. Macron seized the moment to offer what one might call a Second Coming of the “Third Way.”
Just like former British prime minister Tony Blair, Macron held that the old ideological cleavage of left and right was outdated, and that centrists should simply pick the policies that “worked best.”
Macron appealed to socialists and conservative Gaullists, on the assumption that all reasonable people could unite happily in the moderate middle. Anyone who rejected the invitation was, by definition, an unreasonable extremist.
For a while, this approach had traction, because Macron’s seemingly ever-expanding center was flanked by Marine le Pen’s National Front (now National Rally) on the far right and by firebrand Jean-luc Melenchon’s France Unbowed on the far left.
Yet the technocratic approach — “if you’re not with us, you’re unreasonable” — ultimately failed to transform the political landscape.
The far right, far left, center left and center right each still tend to win at least one-fifth of the vote in the first round of French presidential elections, on average.
However, the center-right Republicans have been hemorrhaging votes to National Rally, prompting Republicans leader Eric Ciotti to endorse an alliance with the far right. This matters, because Macron’s overwhelming support in the second round of the 2017 and 2022 elections — when he was facing off against Le Pen — was largely due to voters’ hostility to the far-right, not enthusiasm for Macron-style technocracy.
On the contrary, technocracy tends to provoke a backlash, because it creates an opportunity for populists to argue — reasonably — that there are no uniquely rational solutions to complex problems, and that democracy is supposed to be about choice and popular participation, not elites decreeing that there is no alternative.
Macron’s haughty style — already in 2017, he let it be known that he wanted to rule like “Jupiter” — certainly did not help. Right or wrong, it has made him an exceptionally hated political figure.
Yet quite apart from the personal failings of a man who fancies himself a philosopher-king, a centrist project aimed at taking the best from the left and the right was always more likely to alienate both than to harmonize their opposing agendas.
Once Macron lost control of the National Assembly in 2022, then-French prime minister Elisabeth Borne heroically tried to cobble together ad hoc majorities to advance the president’s agenda.
However, on more than 20 occasions, she resorted to constitutional shortcuts to ram through measures that clearly lacked popular support.
Macron’s centrism not only looked increasingly authoritarian; it also acquired a rightward tilt. Hence, his hardline interior minister went so far as to accuse Le Pen of being soft on Islamism, and Borne introduced an immigration law that seemed to legitimize what the far right had been saying all along. If you are constantly tacking rightward, you eventually reach a point where you can no longer blackmail voters with the argument that you are the only thing standing in the way of right-wing extremism and the end of the Republic.
Some commentators speculate that Macron wants the National Rally to govern until the 2027 presidential election, on the grounds that it would prove itself incompetent and set the stage for a triumphant shift back toward the center.
Yet this kind of quasi-pedagogical project — with the headmaster showing his pupils that the substitute teacher does not know how to do the job — is misguided for several reasons.
For starters, not all far-right populists have overly simplistic policy ideas or are amateur administrators. Even in cases where they do show themselves to be incompetent, their fortunes can recover.
When Austria’s Machiavellian Christian Democratic chancellor, Wolfgang Schissel, brought Jorg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party into government in 2000, the populists did descend into infighting and revealed their incompetence and corruption.
Yet after splitting up and licking its wounds, the Freedom Party sailed to victory in last month’s European elections.
Moreover, as the French system allows for “cohabitation” — when the president and the prime minister belong to opposing parties — a governing party that appears incompetent can simply blame the other side for tying its hands.
Wielding the extraordinary powers of the French presidency, Macron would doubtless find an outlet on the international stage, but it is sobering to see that his vision has been downgraded from a “revolution” in 2017 to a “renaissance” in 2022 to what it is today.
Macron failed to transform the movement he started into a proper political party that is not dependent on a charismatic leader. With his charisma gone, the center’s prospects for 2027 look bleak indeed.
Jan-Werner Mueller, professor of politics at Princeton University, is the author, most recently, of Democracy Rules.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The US Department of Defense recently released this year’s “Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” This annual report provides a comprehensive overview of China’s military capabilities, strategic objectives and evolving global ambitions. Taiwan features prominently in this year’s report, as capturing the nation remains central to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” a goal he has set for 2049. The report underscores Taiwan’s critical role in China’s long-term strategy, highlighting its significance as a geopolitical flashpoint and a key target in China’s quest to assert dominance
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
The Legislative Yuan passed legislation on Tuesday aimed at supporting the middle-aged generation — defined as people aged 55 or older willing and able to work — in a law initially proposed by Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Wu Chun-cheng (吳春城) to help the nation transition from an aged society to a super-aged society. The law’s passage was celebrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the TPP. The brief show of unity was welcome news, especially after 10 months of political fighting and unconstitutional amendments that are damaging democracy and the constitutional order, eliciting concern
Following a series of suspected sabotage attacks by Chinese vessels on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea last year, which impacted Europe’s communications and energy infrastructure, an international undersea cable off the coast of Yehliu (野柳) near Keelung was on Friday last week cut by a Chinese freighter. Four cores of the international submarine communication cable connecting Taiwan and the US were damaged. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) dispatched a ship to the site after receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom and located the Shunxin-39, a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship operated by a Hong Kong-registered company and owned by a Chinese
RSS