The French political system

(upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to this new episode of Comparative Politics One of the Universitat Autónoma, the Barcelona. My name is Margarita León, and in this episode, I will be introducing the French political system. I talk to Bruno Palier, Professor of Political Science, the Science Poin Paris and Senior Researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS. He's an expert in comparative welfare research, and he will be answering some questions regarding the French political system and the French welfare state today. (upbeat music) The French political system is known as a semi-presidentialist sort of hybrid model between parliamentaryism and presidentialism. It combines both a popular elected president and a parliamentary prime minister. This mixed system was created, it was presented as a guarantee of continuity and equilibrium of democracy. When, in May 1958, after the insurrection in Algeria, General Charles the Gold funded a government which was granted responsibility for drafting a new constitution. The constitution of the fifth republic, which was ratified by a referendum just a few months later. (audience cheering) The semi-presidential form of government aims at the political stability that was lacking in the third and fourth republic. The president is elected by direct universal suffrage and it is the head of the state. The constitution gives the president the power to appoint the prime minister and the council of ministers. It also has a special power, such as the capacity to bypass the parliament. By submitting referenda directly to the people and even to dissolve the parliament altogether. Under special circumstances, Article 16 of the constitution even allows for the concentration of all the powers of the state in the president. Although there are very severe conditions attached to this operation, of course. The president can also go to the constitutional court if he or she, so far, it has always been a he, has doubts over the constitutionality of a bill. So what form does the parliament has in France? The parliament is a bicameral legislator composed of elected members of the national assembly, the lower house and the Senate, the upper house. Is it the best of both worlds? So some critics point to a certain tendency for this semi-presidential system to be more presidential than consensual? That is a preference for majoritarianism. The last constitutional reform of 2008 introduced some changes to strengthen the role of parliament without modifying the main features of the Fifth Republic, but still the system maintains clear majority trends. In reality, the power of the president is tied to the parliamentary strength of the parties that support him or her, and that form a majority in the national assembly. It is, however, possible for the president's party to become a minority in the national assembly. And in this case, the president must appoint a prime minister from the majority part. This lead to a form of divided government called cohabitation. That is when the president and the prime minister belong to different parties. So welcome, Bruno Paliette. Hello, Bruno. Hello, Maga. So Bruno is a Professor of Political Science at San Spau in Paris, France. He's a researcher in the National Center for Scientific Research. And he's a very well-known expert on comparative welfare state. We have some questions to ask you that try to link the French political system with the way in which the welfare state functions. So my first question is that, as we've seen in class, French political institutions have a preference for centralization and uniformity compared to other European political systems. If we follow Leiphardt, France would perform worse than other democracies in continental Europe in terms of embracing the power-sharing logic of consensual democracies. But is this correct? Some authors say that, actually, this is a very simplistic explanation. So Lannan Ersen, for instance, in the paper, of French politics, the virtues of majoritarian democracy of 2003, they concluded that France is closer to proportional representation democracies when it comes to social spending. So this doesn't seem to feed Leiphardt's idea that majoritarian democracies engage less in social spending than consensual democracies. So where do you think the support for the French welfare state comes from? OK, so there is a first thing to be said. Is that France doesn't have a pure majoritarian electoral system because it's not a winner-take-all kind of system because we have aizer for the presidential election or for the member of parliament election, a two-round election. And this changes a lot of things because normally, as you know, a majoritarian system leads to a two-party system, whereas in the case of France, you have the majority winning, but only at the second round, which means that in the first round, you have a series of parties going for the election to be selected to be the two-lasting one for the second round. So this means that you have much more parties that you would have in a pure majoritarian system, like in the UK or like in the US, for instance. So this leads not to closer to consensual democracy. Clearly, the French political system is not a consensual one. There is really a position between two blocks, but these are blocks in the sense that you rarely have only one party on one side, but you have a series of parties on the two sides. So this has to be put forward as a difference with a majoritarian system. But still, the French system is not a consensual one. You don't have negotiation between parties to that lead to a coalition or government. You have one majority winning over and then leading the way. That's the first point on the leap chart and the other ones. The second point I wanted to answer your question is that we have to be aware that most of the social spending in France comes from social insurances, la Security Social. And these social insurances, they are not paid by taxes. They are financed by social contribution, levied on wages. And there is a strong legacy of social insurances being elaborated by the social partners, meaning the trade unions and the employers. And it's the kind of a demand-driven system where it's an open system in a way that when you need it, you will receive the money, you will be treated, you will be cared for. And only after that, you find the money for it. And this is not a state centralized tax finance budget as you would find in the British or the Nordic system. It's a social insurance which is separated from the state to give an example. The bodies managing the system are occupied by people working in the private sector. It's a non-profit private sector. They are not civil servants. So La Security Social Insurance System is different from the state. That's quite important. And most of the social spending come from this non-state system. Thanks, thanks for explaining that very important differentiation. We indeed mentioned France as a semi-princedentialist system that sits in between the two big models. But of course, depending on the political scenarios, it can be more presidential than sometimes and less presidential than others, if depending on who wins, right? Absolutely. What I'm specifying is that the strengths of the president has been reinforced by an important reform in the early 21st century when the length of the presidency was shifted from seven years to five years, which correspond to the length of a member of parliament, which made a coincidence between the political majority and the president. And all the president really has big power in deciding and the MPs are much less in the capacity to resist or to think otherwise. And you know, another important feature that distinguishes the two big models of majoritarian and consensual democracies is this territorial configuration of the state. Although this axis in lifehards model is less clear than the other axis, the executive parties. But when we look at the territorial configuration of the French state, we see that France is amongst the more centralized countries in Europe. To lifehards, this is seen as a bit problematic, because he favors-- he tends to favor the consensual model. But what would you say? What do you think are the benefits? And what are the problems of having this centralized state? What are the-- how are the rights of national minorities respected? It's a centralized state. This is a discussion that, for instance, in Spain is in the political arena all the time between right and left. It's a centralized state seen as more efficient than a decentralized one in terms of governance, for instance. So the first thing to be said is that I consider a stand welcome to be the right author to understand the level of centralization or not of the system, you know, this is when the-- in the state building process whether or not the peripheries have been able to resist the centralization, the power of the center. And clearly, in the case of France, the central elites have been able to weaken the peripheries, the various types of peripherals, elites, so that everything is centralized. And France has pushed forward a model, a unitary model, where there is many things decided in Paris and in Costa elsewhere. There is also a model which is supposed to be egalitarian. The same treatment for all-- this is what we call the Republican model in France-- where everybody's supposed to be treated the same. And there is strong sense of equality behind this. And then the defender of this French Republican egalitarian model say it's better, including in the treatment of minorities. The parameter it creates is that we don't see the minorities, because we just, in the name of this French egalitarianism, we just don't see the minorities. We cannot measure whether or not you belong to ethnic minorities. And there is more and more discriminations going on that are not calculated, but that are most visible because of the absence in the elite on television, on the labor market, of the minorities. There are absence. So there are indirect ways to measure discrimination. And clearly, this very centralized, very unitary Republican egalitarianism in reality hides a lot of discrimination from a social point of view, from a labor market point of view, from access to housing, for many other things. And there are a lot of discussions now in France, whether this model is really providing a true chance to all and more and more sociological studies through that in reality minorities are highly discriminated. And this is partly because of this unitary uniformity system. So my following question actually relates to this Republican model that you're mentioning is this very strong notion of egalitarianism. So that the French political system is well known for a political culture where the values of civic republicanism is very strong, right? There is a very strong emphasis on inequality. That's for sure. Can you elaborate how this notion of equality, this emphasis on equality? How can we see this trade in the way in which the welfare state was designed after the Second World War? Compared to, for instance, Germany, where there was the need to build a welfare state after the Second World War, of course. But it wasn't done in the same terms because this notion of equality was not so present. It was actually quite stratified from a social perspective. And the role of the religious cleavage, I think, is very different when you look at Germany and France. Absolutely. So the first thing to be said is that our beliefs in equality comes from the French Revolution. As you know, in the French Revolution, the trade wars have been put forward behind the French republican ism, which is liberty, equality, fraternity, so freedom, equality, and fraternity. But this equality is a very liberal one. You know, the promoters of the French Revolution were mostly bourgeois people who wanted to have a better access to power because they did. So it was against the ancien regime, but they were not that egalitarian in the sense that they were thinking of lower classes that should be served many things. And actually, a lot of the French equality in reality means equality over the opportunity. You know, this is why I say it's a very liberal. So everybody should have the same chance, but not everybody should have the same. That's really the base. And this is very visible in education. So in the years of Napoleon, after the French Revolution, he has created a few a call, a "grandsacon", for which you have to pass competitive an exam. And there is a huge selection here. And only a few people get access to this "grandsacon", but this will be the French elite afterwards. You know, and this is still the case in economics, in politics, these people, the people who are running the country, they have gone through this highly selective process for the "grandsacon". So what is true here is meritocracy, you know, meritocracy, and not equality of everybody having the same kind of things, not even the same education. So what is true for education is also true in a way for social insurances. If you have a good way, you will have a good pension. If you have a lower way, you will have a lower pension. We have a highly meritocratic system. As far as education, as far as social policy is concerned, you mentioned the religious cleavage. And I think what is important here to understand what happened in France is that the French Revolution, the French Republic, has always fight food, sorry, against the Catholic Church. In 1789, clearly the French Revolution nationalized the roots of the Church. Then the reversal to Monarchy blooded back to the Church. But once again, the late 19th century, when the third Republic really installed the French Republic, there has been huge fights between the Catholic Church and the Republic over education. But in a way, also over health, over who's taking care of the poor, who's taking care of the invalid, the very elderly people. So let us say education and social assistencies. And each time in France, it's the Republic who bombed the fight. If you think in rebellion term. In each time it's the French Republic who say, I will now take care of the kids in education. I will take care of the sick, I will take care of the poor. And this is very incontrast to Germany. In Germany, it is the Christian party who won the culture camp so that the who's taking care of education, of the poor, of health, remained and the land level. So here you clearly have a difference in who wins the fight, if you wish, in the organization, but the organization of what? Of education, of assistance, of healthcare, mostly, but not social insurances. Social insurances are organized aside from the state by the social partners in both countries, in Germany, as well as in France. Really, really fascinating. So let's just move to the last question now. And let's try and reflect a little bit on the French politics today. So asking so many other countries we have a far-right party that's sort of contaminating the political agenda in many different ways. So can you give us your view as to what are the most salient cleavages or tensions or conflicts shaping French politics today? Yes, I think that many of the political cleavages are reorganized around what is happening on the labor market, which is job polarization. So not a job polarization is a theory saying that's because of our automation. You have the emergence of two types of jobs, the very well-paid ones, which are occupied by highly qualified people. And in France, it's creating quite a lot of these kinds of jobs. So we have a high level of education for some part of the country, as I said, very selective ones. So are relatively difficult to obtain, but you have more and more of this job. You also have creation of low-paid jobs, very precarious, in the services to other kind of jobs. And you have the erosion, the sletening, of mid-skilled jobs, routine-based jobs. And I think that we see political cleavages reorganize around that. The winners of globalization of European integration of the educational society, with the educational competition, there are still center-states around which political coalitions are organized these days. And typically, Macron is starting from the educated new-beater class, the winners. And they believe in globalization. They believe in European integration. They believe in technological progress, education, et cetera. But this is what Bruno Amabra has called bourgeois coalition in the right-wing center, something like that. You don't have really organization, political organization, of those who are now having more and more jobs that more and more very bad jobs, precarious ones, in the services to others. They usually don't vote less than the other ones. And it's very difficult to organize them. However, you have the capacity to organize very vocal losing ground lower middle class. I sometimes have written with Thomas Carr, a paper called shouting and shrinking. These are the lower middle class who were central stage in the 40th era, who have lost ground progressively, but are very vocal, because they don't want to lose their open-ended contract job. They don't want to give up with certain elements they have in their life, but they see their future to be darker and darker and they protest. And they protest mostly in the radical right. So so far, there has been coalitions around this center, new educated middle class, so that the central, the radical right cannot win the election. But we see the number of people voting for this radical right, being more and more numerous. And actually, it is also because it's a political strategy by the center, and especially Macron. But this was the case of Viteron before. To do a job, to do a story to do again, as if there was the center and the radical right. So no other possibilities, if you wish, either for the green, either for the left, that would represent these new precarious jobs. And this, of course, creating in a majority and system, even if it's in two rounds, you do as if you were the only potential alternative from the radical right. But by doing that, you also give even more importance to the radical right. And if you combine the electoral system and this political strategy, which is to say, it's us or the radical right, this explains a lot the increasing importance of the radical right. And the fear, of course, is that in a majority, in the majority and system, because as I said, in the second round of the election at the end of the day, you have a party winning, a group winning. It may one day be the radical right. You are finishing on quite a scary note. Yes, of course. Yes, it's a scary note. But I mean, this is the danger of this political strategy, which is based less on convincing people on their program and more on creating fear. I am the one that would avoid you to be forced to be run by the radical right. The prime is that, in the first round of the election, Macron doesn't make more than 22% of the vote. And in the second round, he won the election just because we didn't want you to have a Le Pen. But the prime is that this doesn't mean that you create a coalition, you create a program that really would mean that you gather a majority, a positive majority behind you for building things. You just create a negative majority to avoid the radical right. And this is the problem of a majority and system, which is not a programmatic system. What France shares with South and Europe, I would say, is that you have a relatively particularistic kind of political system. And this is very visible for the first round of our election. And this doesn't mean that you are able to create really programmatic gathering that is so typical of consensual democracies that we are still lacking of in France. Right, that's true. Yes, I would ask so many more questions. This is really interesting. I think we have to leave it here. We'll make available this paper. You mentioned this ranking and shouting. Yes. It's a great title, by the way. So thank you. Thank you very much, Bruno. Thanks a lot for all your insights and detail answers. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Manga, for asking me this wonderful and interesting questions. Thank you, bye. Bye. This is it from us today. Thank you very much for listening. I'm Margarita Leone, and hopefully see you in our next episode of Comparative Politics One. [BLANK_AUDIO]