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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
SERIES EDITOR: GIANLUCA PASSARELLI
Presidents,
Prime Ministers
and Majorities in the
French Fifth Republic
Edited by
Sergiu Mişcoiu
Pierre-Emmanuel
Guigo
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Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics
Series Editor
Gianluca Passarelli, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
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Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics publishes books on all aspects
of presidential politics. We welcome proposals for monographs, edited
volumes and Pivots on topics such as:
• Contemporary presidencies and presidential powers
• Presidential elections and presidential party politics
• Presidential relations with the legislature
• The media and presidential communication
• The administrative presidency and presidential advisers
• The history of presidential offices and presidential biographies
The series focuses on presidents throughout the world, including both
directly elected and indirectly elected presidents, both single-country and
comparative studies of presidential politics. It also includes volumes on
conceptual or theoretical aspects, such as how to measure presidential
power. Moreover, the series considers book projects on the reform of
presidential politics, e.g. the reform of presidential elections.
For further information on the series and to submit a proposal for
consideration, please get in touch with:
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com
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Sergiu Mişcoiu · Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo
Editors
Presidents, Prime
Ministers
and Majorities
in the French Fifth
Republic
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Contents
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Majorities in the French
Fifth Republic
Sergiu Mişcoiu
1
Charles de Gaulle: The Birth of the Modern French
Monarchy, the Fifth Republic
Bryan Muller
17
Georges Pompidou: Rooting the Fifth Republic
Olivier Sibre
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing: “France Shall Not Fall Back
into the Party Regime”
Alexandra Alina Iancu and Sorina Cristina Soare
François Mitterrand: The Last Republican Monarch
Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo
53
85
109
Jacques Chirac: The Failure of Social Gaullism, the Longest
Cohabitation and the Spectre of the Far Right
Bernard Lachaise
133
Nicolas Sarkozy: Voluntarism, Hyper-Presidency
and Contestation
Marius-Mircea Mitrache
155
v
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vi
CONTENTS
François Hollande: The Presidency at an Impasse
Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo
183
Emmanuel Macron: The Art of Casting
Fabrice Hamelin
201
Index
217
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Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Sergiu Mişcoiu is Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) where
he serves as a Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and as
Director of the Centre for African Studies (Cestaf). He holds a Ph.D. in
Political Science (Paris-Est University), a Ph.D. in History (Babes-Bolyai
University) and a habilitation in Political Science (Paris-Est University).
He is permanent member and Ph.D. tutor of the LIPHA Laboratory
at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, University Paris-Est Créteil (France).
He wrote four books, edited and co-edited 22 volumes and wrote 150
scientific articles and book chapters in English, French and Romanian.
His main research interests are populism, discourse theory, deliberation,
political conflicts, French politics, transition in Central-Eastern Europe
and Francophone Africa.
Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo is Associate Professor of History at the ParisEst Créteil University (France). He holds a Ph.D. in History at Sciences
Po (directed by Jean-François Sirinelli) and won the award of the National
Institute for Audiovisual (INA). He wrote four books, edited and coedited 7 volumes and wrote 50 scientific articles and book chapters in
English, French and Italian. His main research interests are history of
French and European politics, history of European socialism, political
communication and media history.
vii
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viii
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Contributors
Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo Paris-Est Créteil University, Créteil, France
Fabrice Hamelin LIPHA & Institut d’Etudes Politiques de
Fontainebleau—UPEC, Paris-Est Créteil University, Fontainebleau,
France
Alexandra Alina Iancu Faculty of Political Science, University of
Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Bernard Lachaise University of Bordeaux-Montaigne, Pessac, France
Sergiu Mişcoiu Faculty of European Studies, Babes, -Bolyai University,
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Marius-Mircea Mitrache West University of Timisoara, Timisoara,
Romania
Bryan Muller Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Villetaneuse, France
Olivier Sibre Institut Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Sorina Cristina Soare Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali,
University of Florence, Florence, Italy
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Presidents, Prime Ministers and Majorities
in the French Fifth Republic
Sergiu Mişcoiu
In his 1970 book entitled Institutions politiques et droit constitutionnel,
Maurice Duverger coined the term “semi-presidential” to define the
nature of the French Fifth Republic’s political regime (Duverger, 1970,
227). According to the French political scientist, the most relevant feature
of semi-presidentialism is that the president is directly elected by the
people and possesses powers that are greater than the ones of a president
elected by parliament. Later, in his 1978 study Echec au roi (Duverger,
1978), he used the French system as an archetype of semi-presidentialism
in a comparative survey of several other European states. Two years later,
he offered a more detailed definition of semi-presidentialism:
A political regime is considered as semi-presidential if the constitution
which established it combines three elements: (1) the president of the
republic is elected by universal suffrage; (2) he possesses quite considerable
powers; (3) he has opposite him, however, a prime minister and ministers
who possess executive and governmental power and can stay in office only
S. Mişcoiu (B)
Faculty of European Studies, Babes, -Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
e-mail: miscoiu@yahoo.com
1
S. Mişcoiu and P. Guigo (eds.), Presidents, Prime Ministers and
Majorities in the French Fifth Republic, Palgrave Studies in Presidential
Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44664-1_1
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2
S. MIŞCOIU
if the parliament does not show its opposition to them. (Duverger, 1980,
166)
Several authors have criticised Duverger’s ambiguous description of
semi-presidentialism (Baranger & Murray, 2013; Elgie, 1999; Reestman,
2006). Some of them, such as Marie-Anne Cohendet, have argued that
it would be more appropriate to refer to the Fifth Republic’s regime as
“bi-electoral”, underscoring thus its quintessential feature, namely the
election of both the president and the lower legislative chamber by
direct popular vote (Cohendet, 1993). Moreover, Duverger’s insistence
on the pivotal role of the French model has also prompted criticism,
some scholars claiming that, compared to other systems, France is a atypical or semi-marginal kind of semi-presidential republic (Elgie, 2009).
Objections against the centrality of the French post-1962 regime became
more salient after the fall of communism and the emergence of new set
of semi-presidential republics in Central and Eastern Europe. However,
whether one believes that the French system is a pivotal, exceptional or
simply banal case of semi-presidentialism, it is clear that the way the Fifth
Republic was perceived and understood has played an important role in
building and modelling most other semi-presidential republics (Duhamel
et al., 2009).
This might have happened for two reasons. Firstly, one should take into
account the historical importance of France as a “Great Power” and as an
exporter of the ideals of the French Revolution and republicanism worldwide. France has created expectations among numerous other countries,
which have, to varying degrees, embraced some elements of the French
cultural model. The Hexagon tends to be perceived as a model shaper
by a plethora of ruling elites around the world, not only in France’s
former African colonies, but far beyond, from Latin America to SouthEast Asia. And secondly, intense efforts have been made to promote the
Fifth Republic as the turning of a new page in French history and as an
effective way to retrieve the “Grandeur” lost during the Second World
War and the traumatic wars in Indochina and Algeria. The admirers of
the regime founded in 1958 stress the legitimacy of the directly elected
president of the new Republic—particularly given the formidable reputation and personality of General De Gaulle, the first holder of such an
office—and the efficiency of the new decision-making system. The success
of this model was amplified by the context of the Cold War, when both
the Western camp, led by the United States, and the USSR and its allies
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PRESIDENTS, PRIME MINISTERS AND MAJORITIES …
3
saw an opportunity in the rise of a Fifth Republic dominated by De
Gaulle: while the Americans hoped that a stronger and stabler France
would efficiently halt the spread of communism in its former African
colonies, the Soviet Union and, more generally, anti-Americans hoped
that De Gaulle’s “sovereignism” would distance France from the US and
split the capitalist bloc (Mitrache & Mis, coiu, 2023). All in all, given these
cultural-historical and strategic reasons, the “legend” of the French Fifth
Republic’s model spread like wildfire, forestalling other semi-presidential
systems from gaining attention and traction outside very limited academic
milieus.
At the same time, although scholars are generally sceptical about the
pertinence of approaching semi-presidentialism through the lens provided
by the French Fifth Republic’s structure and operation mode, several
political scientists agree on the importance of a particular point raised
by Duverger in relation to a third characteristic of semi-presidentialism
(Roper, 2002; Sartori, 1994). In his analysis of semi-presidentialism,
Duverger emphasised the major impact that cultural and historical
contexts could exert on the foundation of such regimes and on the
ongoing dynamics of the relations between presidents, prime ministers
and parliamentary majorities (Duverger, 1986). Nevertheless, subsequent
literature preferred to concentrate on several key aspects of the typology
of power relations within this top political “triangle” and, with some
remarkable exceptions (for instance, Roussellier, 2015), tapped to a lesser
extent into the fluid and difficult-to-apprehend influence of the sociohistorical contexts on the nature and evolution of the relations between
these three main political actors (Raunio & Sedelius, 2020, 1–14). Two
of the approaches that have been recently examined in a quasi-exhaustive
review article (Åberg & Sedelius, 2020) appear to be more relevant for
our present endeavour.
The first significant line of inquiry engages with the very nature of
constitutional arrangements and, more specifically, the prerogatives of
presidents and prime ministers, insisting, in some cases, on the capacity
of each of these actors to control or decisively influence parliamentary
majorities (Baylis, 1996; Carrier, 2016; Poguntke & Webb, 2005). This
has led to the identification of two sub-types of semi-presidential systems:
presidential-parliamentary (where the head of state has the upper-hand
as he/she is in control of the parliamentary majority) and premierparliamentary (where, on the contrary, the main source of power derives
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4
S. MIŞCOIU
from the prime minister’s capacity to rely on a solid majority in the legislature) (Shugart, 2005). Other authors have introduced a third sub-type,
the presidential-premier semi-presidential system (Elgie, 2005), where the
leading duo effectively (but not necessarily evenly or harmoniously) holds
all power while parliament is “sidelined” and its prerogatives are reduced
to overturning the government via a hypothetically successful vote of no
confidence.
The second relevant approach focuses on the (in)stability of semipresidential regimes, laying emphasis on inter-institutional conflicts that
may occur regularly or sporadically, as presidents sometimes clash with
their prime ministers and as one or both, may develop at times strained
relations with the legislative majority (Gherghina & Mis, coiu, 2013;
Skach, 2005). Such tense relations have far-reaching consequences not
only for the smooth functioning of the institutions, but also for the
overall organisation of political life, including the political party system
(Passarelli, 2015; Samuels & Shugart, 2010; Sauger, 2009). While literature shows that there is no magic recipe for avoiding constitutional crises
in semi-presidential regimes, it also points out some recurrent factors that
may lead to the escalation of inter-institutional conflicts, such as a weak
democratic tradition, a limited social penchant for accepting consensual
mediation, a lack of hyper-formalised instruments of negotiation, a generalised absence of political trust and the perceived bias of the constitutional
courts (Brunclík & Kubát, 2019, 99–131).
These two sets of concerns are relevant because they highlight the
complexification of theoretical efforts to understand the nature and functioning of semi-presidential systems. They also show how far the initial
research compass has expanded since the first inquiries into the French
case. In addition to this, they indicate two promising avenues for reanalysing the evolution of power relations during and across several
successive presidential terms in office.
As regards France, there is a rich literature addressing a few major
topics: the general political-historical developments that impacted the
mandates of the Fifth Republic’s presidents (Bell & Gaffney, 2013;
Bernard, 2008; Demossier et al., 2020; François, 2011; Grossman &
Sauger, 2010; Sirinelli, 2018; Stevens, 2003); the evolution of political
leadership either throughout the Fifth Republic or during the terms of
specific presidents (Cole, 1994a, 1994b; Drake, 2020; Gaffney, 2010;
Hayward, 1993; Sawicki, 2003); the peculiar ways in which the political system was organised during certain presidential terms (Décaumont,
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PRESIDENTS, PRIME MINISTERS AND MAJORITIES …
5
1979; Duhamel, 1980; Raymond, 2013; Redon, 2014; Winock, 2016);
the extent to which the power relations between the president, their prime
ministers, the other government members, the parliamentary majorities and the leaders of the opposition influenced the policy-making
processes (Lazardeux, 2015); the political parties’ dynamics (Mis, coiu
et al., 2009); and the electoral results (Cointet et al., 2008; Lewis-Beck
et al., 2012; Magni-Berton, 2023). And yet again, as several authors
have rightly observed, there is still much uncharted ground (Cheibub,
2007; Raunio & Sedelius, 2020), especially concerning the impact of
the changing historical micro-conditions on the evolution of relations
between presidents, prime ministers and majorities.
Perhaps the most important of these discussions revolves around the
magnitude of a series of tensions that built up between the Fifth Republic’s institutions. There is a debate about whether the way in which the
French semi-presidential system was initially conceived inevitably led to
subsequent inter-institutional conflicts or these conflicts were the result of
a cumulative set of incompatible practices adopted in an otherwise functional institutional setting. While the attempt to offer a straight answer
to this question would be a risky endeavour, one cannot miss the far
too numerous competing and often contradictory readings of the semipresidential system—suffice it to think of the incongruous interpretations
that Charles De Gaulle and Michel Debré, the first holders of these
positions, gave to the president’s and the prime minister’s roles (Guigo,
2020a).
To that effect, the wording of Articles 5, 20 and 21 of the Constitution relating to the powers of the President of the Republic and the Prime
Minister is ambiguous, to say the least. As Article 5 stipulates, “the President of the Republic (…) ensures, through his arbitration, the regular
functioning of the public authorities and the continuity of the State”.
But according to Article 21, “the Prime Minister directs the action of
the government”, which, under Article 20, “determines and conducts
the policy of the nation”. This arrangement was most certainly the result
of a political compromise between parliamentarists and presidentialists.
Described as a “dilatory compromise” by some scholars, with echoes
of Carl Schmitt’s discussion of the Weimar Republic (Schmitt, 2008
[1928]), this solution was deemed “acceptable to the actors at the time,
but concealed contradictory understandings that, by tacit agreement,
were postponed for future settlement” (Avril, 2008). For the parliamentarists, this meant that the Fifth Republic’s government remained
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6
S. MIŞCOIU
an emanation of the legislature and was therefore accountable to the
National Assembly, while for the presidentialists and, in particular, for
Charles De Gaulle, this government was to be appointed by the president.
Moreover, the issue of these three institutions’ legitimacy is still on the
table. Because they are directly elected by the French citizens through
universal suffrage, both the president and the National Assembly can
claim that they legitimately represent the nation (François, 2010). Given
the difference between the length of the president’s term in office
(seven years) and the mandate of the National Assembly (five years),
the legitimisation contest between these two institutions often took a
dramatic turn from 1958 to 2002, especially during the three periods
of left–right cohabitation (1986–1988, 1993–1995, 1997–2002). The
president’s prerogative to dissolve the legislature and prompt thus early
elections could be perceived either as an indicator of the president’s
“hyper-legitimacy” (as the dissolution is conducted “in the name of the
people”) or, on the contrary, as a sign of an imperative need for the president to acquire legitimacy (against an institution that claims to be “the
people’s supreme representative body” but cannot constitutionally retaliate with similar measures, except for the rather exceptional and restrictive
impeachment procedure). The most recent, albeit “failed” dissolution of
1997, when President Chirac dissolved a legislature in which he had a
large majority only to see the election of an opposition-dominated one,
suggests that the second interpretation—that of the president’s active
search for legitimacy when in direct conflict with the legislature—is not at
all entirely far-fetched. As for the prime ministers, although they appear
to have a form of derived legitimacy—considering that the holder of this
office is appointed by the president—their place in the institutional system
still offered some fertile ground for acquiring and consolidating political
legitimacy, especially when the seat is occupied by a leader of the opposition or a prominent politician within the presidential majority (Dulong,
2021; Guigo, 2020b, 2023).
There are at least two patterns of the Fifth Republic’s evolution in
terms of the relation between the president, the prime minister and
the National Assembly. The first relies on the president’s pyramidalhierarchical control over disciplined parliamentary majorities and highly
loyal prime ministers. This pattern tends to work following the election of a new president whose party also secures a clear victory in the
subsequent legislative elections, as was the case with François Mitterrand
in 1981, Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 and Emmanuel Macron in 2017. If
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PRESIDENTS, PRIME MINISTERS AND MAJORITIES …
7
exacerbated, this pattern could lead to a concentration of power in the
president’s hands, especially after the 2000 constitutional reform, when,
as Matthew Søberg Shugart contends, a “toxic institutional combo”
was created (Shugart, 2022): hyper-presidentialism, ultra-centralisation,
supra-personalisation and the domestication of the legislature. The ultimate consequence of such drifts was the relocation of political confrontations from the institutional framework into the streets (Mis, coiu, 2012;
Rozenberg, 2023).
The second pattern is that of split power, typical of cohabitation
periods. It generally emerges when the president and the prime minister,
who initially shared the same political views, grow distant and engage
in more or less intense competition. According to this pattern, the
parliament plays a significant role, acting as a supporter of the prime
minister (during cohabitation periods), as an arbitrator between the
two or as an ally of the president, pressuring the prime minister to
comply with the presidential agenda, while also trying, in all these
three scenarios, to weigh in on the inter-institutional balance. In addition to the three cohabitation phases (President François Mitterrand—
Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, 1986–1988; President François Mitterrand—Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, 1993–1995; President Jacques
Chirac—Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, 1997–2002), this pattern also
applies to the periods when the presidents had to deal with “dissenting” prime ministers (e.g. President Georges Pompidou—Prime Minister
Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who became opponents in 1971–1972; President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing—Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, 1975–
1976; President Nicolas Sarkozy—Prime Minister François Fillon, 2011–
2012; President François Hollande—Prime Minister Manuel Valls, 2015–
2016). Moreover, one may notice that there are periods that do not fit
neatly into these two patterns. For instance, the early years of the Fifth
Republic, when the legislature initially intended to exert control over the
indirectly elected president and the prime minister sought to enhance
his legitimacy both in the National Assembly and with the Presidency
(1958–1962), are most certainly not compliant with either of these two
models.
Thus, given the complexity of the inter-institutional and political relations between these three actors, many aspects still need to be explored.
In this volume, after a largely analytical-historical overview, we will retrace
the dynamics of the “power triangle” involving the president, the prime
minister and the parliamentary majority by a detailed examination of the
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8
S. MIŞCOIU
terms in office of the French Fifth Republic’s presidents (1958–2022).
The contributors to this volume were invited to answer the following
research questions: What are the recurring patterns in which the three
institutions function and interact? To what extent do the personalities
of the presidents, prime ministers and leading parliamentarians influence the dynamics of the institutional system and the country’s political
evolution during each presidential tenure? How much did their ideological and partisan affiliations affect the collaboration between these
key political leaders? What were the far-reaching consequences of the
inter-institutional relation dynamics on the country’s overall stability and
progress? How have the perspectives on the French semi-presidential
system changed after the brutal and decisive reconfiguration operated by
President Macron? How likely is it that this new balance of powers—
which seems to be tilting in favour of the president during his second
term in office—will last in spite of Macron’s slender majority in the legislature following the 2022 parliamentary elections? What are the success
odds of projects aiming at the instauration of a Sixth Republic, less presidentially oriented and more directly accountable to the citizens? And,
above all, what are the main lessons to be learnt from the French experience regarding this complex relation between presidents, prime ministers
and parliamentary majorities?
This volume brings a contribution to the understanding of the interinstitutional dynamics of the French Fifth Republic by analysing a series
of issues that have not been systematically and thoroughly investigated
elsewhere.
First, the overwhelming impact of the presidents’ backgrounds and
profiles over the way they conceive the presidential function, but also on
how they manage the relation with their prime ministers and the parliamentary majorities. Fundamentally impregnated by the personality of its
funding father, Charles De Gaulle, whose military background and whose
status of the main anti-Nazi Resistance’s leader and France’s liberator
proved to be decisive in the way he imagined the Fifth Republic, configurated the inter-institutional relations and incarnated the presidency, the
1958-born regime took the shape of a pyramid with a sharp a high peak—
the president—but also with a large and solid rectangle as a base—the
people. In these early times of the Republic, some could place the parliament somewhere between the lateral triangles of the pyramid and the
prime minister in the middle, closer to its top. But given the important amount of constitutional attributions the President of the Republic
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PRESIDENTS, PRIME MINISTERS AND MAJORITIES …
9
possesses, the personality of the function’s owner could very difficultly be
kept separated from the official exercise of power—an apparently banal
observation, which proved to be nevertheless of paramount importance,
especially in the cases of the longer terms in office, such as the ones of
Mitterrand or Chirac, as our contributors show in their respective chapters. So, the distance between the peak of the pyramid, its base and its
edges has varied, in function of the holders of the supreme office’s profiles
and also—but to a far lesser extent—of that of their prime ministers.
From the modernising, cultured and reserved public servant
(Pompidou) to the aristocratic liberal adventurer (Giscard d’Estaing), and
then to the mature paternalistic monarch (Mitterrand), the peak of the
pyramid oscillated while giving the impression in the end that it went so
up that it became imperceptible from the base. But the pyramid’s height
was shortened during the terms of the popular social-Gaullist Jacques
Chirac, who initially played the card of the rapprochement to the people,
but who was sent back to an inaccessible and solitary top of the pyramid,
after the 1997 failed dissolution of the National Assembly and after his
2002 reelection by default against the far-right. With the introduction of
the five-year term, the president needed to permanently circulate from
the peak to the middle and sometimes to the bottom of the pyramid,
deforming in this way its structure, as it was the case with the iconoclastic
hyper-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who managed his parliamentary majority
and the current affairs of the government on a day-by-day basis. His
successor, the socialist every-day’s-man François Hollande, who wanted
to restore “normalcy”, miscalculated at his turn the optimal distance
between the height, the middle and the ground of the pyramid in such a
way that by the end of 2016 the pyramid started to look like a dysmorphic geometrical object. This opened a boulevard for the post-partisan
young progressist Emmanuel Macron who struggled to repaint, refurbish
and redecorate the pyramid, but ended by shaking it from the ground. As
earthquakes impact more those who are at the higher level of a building
than those who are at the lower grounds, the result of the president’s
activism in formally and informally reforming the French political and
partisan systems led in 2022 to the drastic limitation of his parliamentary
majority, placing Macron in a particularly uncomfortable position at the
very beginning of his second term in office.
Secondly, and in line with the previous argument, the Fifth Republic
witnessed a desacralisation of the president’s status and role. To a high
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10
S. MIŞCOIU
extent, this evolution was inevitable, as no other heroic-paternalistic character equivalent to De Gaulle emerged as his successor. The sacred figure
of the head of state and father of the nation, succeeding to the kings
and the emperors of France, was restored by the creation of the Fifth
Republic, which attributed to the president an undisputable central political role. This change emerged after almost one century of preeminence of
the parliamentarianism, under the Third and the Fourth Republics, where
the president was indirectly elected and had only ceremonial roles, and
where power lied in the hands of the prime minister and of his cabinet,
both at the mercy of the majority changes in the legislature. Seen by
many as a mechanism for the legitimate restauration of the “natural”
hierarchy inside the country and of France’s international influence, the
Fifth Republic unofficially sacralised the role of its president. But if the
founding father of the Fifth Republic was able to brilliantly embody this
political sacrality, his successors were only variably and partially able to
incarnate the sacred dimension of the presidency. As several authors of this
book’s chapters point out, forced to compose and recompose the parliamentary majorities, to directly intervene in the concrete actions of the
government, to guide on a daily basis the country’s policies or to invent
various hypostases in order to include and integrate the people and the
key stakeholders in various decision-making, deliberative and participatory
processes, the President of the Republic progressively and ineluctably lost
in terms of splendour and political stature.
And thirdly, the Fifth Republic has also seen the decay of the role
of the prime ministers, who were transformed into the mere presidents’ “collaborators”, except for the periods of cohabitation (which have
become though increasingly unlikely after the 2000 reduction of the president’s term to five years and the reversal of the electoral calendar, with
the presidential elections immediately preceding the parliamentary ones).
According to the initial settling, while the president was meant to politically guide the country and to determine its main directions, the prime
minister was responsible for leading the current affairs of the executive
and for implementing the public policies. Thus, the prime minister had a
crucial role in that he/she directly managed the country’s government,
being the head of the executive, although the president remained the
main decision-maker. However, in time, the stature of the prime minister
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PRESIDENTS, PRIME MINISTERS AND MAJORITIES …
11
has endured several depreciations, as the presidents learned how to transform the premiers into the scapegoats of all the failures happening during
their terms in office, starting with Jacques Chaban-Delmas (1969–1972),
who served under President Georges Pompidou, before being sacrificed
the year before the crucial first parliamentary elections of the postDe Gaulle era, continuing with Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s open
conflict with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1974–1976) and with
the delicate relation between Prime Minister Michel Rocard and President François Mitterrand (1988–1991). But as problematic as it could be,
the position of the prime minister was nevertheless politically entrenched,
thanks to the fact that the premier was or often acted as he was the
“leader of the parliamentary majority”, as the first holder of the office,
Jean-Louis Debré, put it (Debré, 1988). In fact, it was the 2000 constitutional reform that sealed the fate of the prime minister, who depended
onwards on the president’s capacity to win both the presidential and the
parliamentary elections and to secure in the way a majority for his government, up to the point that President Nicolas Sarkozy depicted in 2007 his
Prime Minister, François Fillon, as a mere “collaborator” (Nay, 2012). As
shocking as it might have been, Sarkozy’s assertion reflected in a faithful
way the new would-be role of the country’s premiers, who were forced to
admit that their autonomy was now drastically limited and their dependence of the presidents was almost total. Although these developments
did not necessarily lead to the growth of the number of prime ministers per year of presidential term (during the seven-year term, between
1962 and 2002, there were 15 PMs in 40 years, so 3.75 premiers per
year, while after the introduction of the five-year presidential term, there
were 8 PMs in 20 years, so 4 premiers per year between 2002 and 2022),
the profiles of the heads of the governments became increasingly technocratic and thus less political, far from the position of de facto leader of
the presidential majority within the National Assembly.
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12
S. MIŞCOIU
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