Provider of in-depth & balanced analysis on hot issues around the world

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском In the weeks leading up to the appointment of Michel Barnier as France’s new prime minister, there was one word in particular to hang on the lips of those at the Elysée Palace – “coalitation”. The portmanteau of “coalition” and “cohabitation”, “coalitation” serves to refer to the situation of acute governmental deadlock in which France finds itself, more than two months after the snap parliamentary elections called by Emmanuel Macron failed to land any party an absolute majority of seats. Under the Fifth Republic, France has known three cohabitations following parliamentary elections won by the opposition to the president’s party. The first was between the socialist president François Mitterrand and conservative prime minister Jacques Chirac from 1986 to 1988; the second, between president Mitterrand and Édouard Balladur from 1993 to 1995, and the third between president Chirac and socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002. Under such circumstances, the president took on a secondary role, including tasks such as appointing the prime minister or presiding the council of ministers, while the prime minister and national assembly set the political agenda. However, the current situation is very different, recalling more the paralysis of the Fourth Republic than any of the duos listed above. While the presidential camp lacks even a relative majority, none of the parties or coalitions from the recent legislative elections come close to securing one either. Michel Barnier will therefore have to rely on a new coalition or new ad hoc agreements to get his legislative proposals passed and avoid being censured. The French neologism coalitation is therefore more appropriate to describe the situation in which Emmanuel Macron and Michel Barnier find themselves. A notion of performance In addition, such a state of affairs is not without recalling expressions used in the labour world, such as ‘remote working’, ‘presenteeism’, ‘management’ and ‘coworking’. In the 1980s, the expressions ‘management’ and ‘managers’ became widely used terms in France to describe the challenges of optimising resources and managing people in organisations. This period marked the proliferation of neologisms, particularly of English origin, in the business world. It highlighted the importance of individual and collective performance, helping French companies compete in an increasingly global market. By the 1990s, expressions like “New Public Management” and “New Managerialism” emerged in English-speaking countries. These terms were particularly applied to setting performance targets – especially financial ones – in organisations originally serving the public interest, such as health and education sectors. An expression used by Macron? The term “coalitation” was first coined by advisers to the President of the Republic. We can read its use as an attempt to downplay the lack of a presidential majority and to ease the transition into the upcoming cohabitation. This strategy can be seen as a way for the President to maintain the upper hand despite his party’s defeat in the parliamentary elections. It functions as a semantic tool that allows Macron to frame this cohabitation in a modern and new way, setting it apart from previous ones. But the links between this term and management-inspired neologisms also reflect Macron’s profile as a “politician manager” and his managerial approach to politics. An advocate of free enterprise and entrepreneurship, often associated with the “start-up nation” concept, Emmanuel Macron embodies a political philosophy directly influenced by the business world. His terms in office have stood out through their use of team-building seminars, the use of consultants from private firms, and staff reshuffles following unmet performance targets. Inability to renew? Back home, the seemingly contradictory term also echoes the president’s fondness for the expression of “En même temps” (“At the same time”) that has become part of the Macron brand. The adverbial phrase sees him lay out a position, only to deconstruct it and espouse its contrary proposition. Critics say it shows the centrist president’s inability to adopt a stance, opting instead for a verbal fudge of saying one thing, then its opposite and ultimately, nothing at all. The neologism coalitation also embodies a new form of the Macronist “at the same time” philosophy by emphasising the need to find common ground between opposing programmes and political forces. For supporters of the president, this term highlights the relevance and timeliness of an approach developed by Emmanuel Macron. In this context, Michel Barnier’s profile as a negotiator and moderate can be seen as a reaffirmation of this strategy. Historically, however, the use of such neologisms has sometimes served to mask the challenges of ineffective or risky strategies. Some researchers have questioned whether introducing expressions like ‘management’ and ‘manager’ into the French vocabulary truly changed how companies and social relations worked, emphasising the sometimes artificial nature of these approaches. The same applies today to the term “coalitation” as this neologism seems to illustrate Emmanuel Macron’s struggle to offer a new way of doing politics despite the promises made on the night of his re-election. Macron France French Politics Barnier Politics

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском After more than 50 days of deadlock in forming a government (an unprecedented political situation under the Fifth Republic), the choice of Michel Barnier to become Prime Minister may appear as a "solution" to end the crisis, but it above all reveals the current political weakness of President Macron, oscillating between the hope of maintaining control and forced failure. But this nomination puts him at odds with the messages sent by voters during the electoral sequence that he himself chose to trigger. Three key lessons Three lessons from the July legislative election are unambiguously necessary to understand the paradoxes of the current sequence. 1. The rejection of “Macronism” In the previous European election, the Macron camp had been soundly defeated. In confirmation, the message from voters in the legislative elections is one of rejection of the power in place since the presidential parliamentary group went from 245 elected representatives to 163 and the two most pronounced opposition blocs went from 89 to 143 (the RN and its allies) and from 153 to 193 for the left bloc. The aggregation of the various votes therefore expresses a desire to see notable political changes come out of the ballot boxes to break with all or part of Macron's policies. But the differences in direction to translate these inflections maintain the confusion. The left wants to repeal the immigration law, while the RN wants to toughen it up, for example. 2. The refusal of the National Rally in power While it was fashionable to declare it moribund, the "republican front" has regained strength in this summer of 2024. Through a political surge, which is as much an ideological rejection as the expression of sincere fears about the damage of the RN at Matignon, the forces hostile to the RN have accepted mutual withdrawals to "block". This electoral gamble paid off, and if the RN has progressed, it has remained far from the expected absolute majority. Nevertheless, this "republican front" has not led to a political alternative: it was only a front of refusal and not the premises of a probable future governmental cooperation. Hence the current impasse and the threats hanging over the survival of the future Barnier government. 3. The marginalization of the Republican right The emergence of Emmanuel Macron in the political game, eager to overcome the divide and the alternations of government between the PS and the Republicans, has put the right in a vice. Stuck between the center right embodied by Macron and the hard right embodied by Le Pen, the Republican Party has seen its voters melt away on both sides. We must add the electoral rise of the RN to the ordeal of the right. On these early legislative elections, the dilemma remained the same. The president of LR, Éric Ciotti, crossed the Rubicon and made an alliance with the RN, while the rest of the party opposed him without however winning back its voters who had gone to the Marconian camp. In the end, LR, proclaimed heir to Gaullism, which gave four presidents to the Fifth Republic, is no more than a parliamentary force, even if the senatorial voting system still ensures it a counter-power in the Senate. Let us note, however, that if we add a large part of Macron's voters with those of LR and RN, we are entitled to affirm that the parliamentary barycenter is clearly positioned to the right of the hemicycle. However – ultimate confusion – it is the left-wing coalition that comes out on top in the hemicycle.span> The Barnier choice against these messages from voters These three lessons are followed by a governmental choice that has all the makings of a paradox, not to say a contradiction. Indeed, if we sum things up brutally, appointing Michel Barnier amounts to choosing a representative of the minority party (LR), whose profile and political positions poorly embody a break with "Macronism", and who owes his appointment to the benevolent neutrality (to date) of the National Rally. Indeed, President Macron made it clear that "non-censurability" was the decisive criterion for his choice. However, he declared that he had made this choice (after the tests of many other names failed) because he had ensured "the conditions of stability and the broadest rallying". Knowing the disappointment of the New Popular Front, this explicitly indicates that President Macron obtained the commitment of the RN not to censor Michel Barnier a priori. Which was confirmed a few minutes after his nomination by Marine Le Pen. Without of course entering the government, the RN therefore becomes the arbiter of its choice, the arbiter of a censure. The parties of the presidential camp have therefore agreed to make an electoral pact with the left front (yet widely hated in their ranks) in the name of the government barrier to the RN, so that the president ends up appointing a prime minister thanks to the RN's promise not to censure him. A choice of both hope and failure President Macron is primarily responsible for the current political chaos , through a dissolution that was as perilous as it was failed, the success of which rested on the bet that the left would be incapable of uniting and would once again have to resolve to a republican front in the face of the "RN threat". However, he is trying to take advantage of the complexity of the moment to keep control. He wants to be the expert in time, extending for several weeks a government clearly disavowed at the ballot box. He wants to be the expert in the partisan game, imposing the trans partisan coalition including the central bloc as the only horizon for access to Matignon. All this, while claiming to do so in respect of the will of the French people… The Macronists who have been calling for more than 50 days for an “overcoming” of divisions, for “inventiveness” in the creation of an unprecedented coalition, are here benefiting from their central position on the left-right axis to refuse a cohabitation-alternation, in favor of a coalition-continuation (which will nevertheless involve some political inflections). But the choice of Michel Barnier, by default certainly, has the virtue of guaranteeing that Emmanuel Macron's political achievements will not be brutally unraveled, as happens in the case of cohabitation, and as the New Popular Front loudly wanted. President Macron can therefore probably feel a little relief today. He can even hope to convince the French, by invoking that France is on the right and that the left-wing coalition has been intransigent. One Man's Political Failure Yet this nomination is weighted with many signals that speak of the political failure of a man. Emmanuel Macron wanted to dynamite the partisan game: he found himself prisoner of a Republic of ukases, each party announcing who they were going to censor on the sole basis of their name. He wanted to embody a policy breaking with the "old world": here he is giving the Fifth Republic one of the oldest prime ministers (after having sacrificed the youngest by dissolving it). The political party he created around his person, Renaissance, published a press release in reaction to the nomination, specifying that it was not signing a "blank check" to Michel Barnier. This situation thus indicates that, even within the Macronist camp, preparations are already being made for the post-Macron period. This is true of Edouard Philippe, already a candidate for his succession, and of Gabriel Attal who secured his influence by being elected leader of his parliamentary group. Emmanuel Macron has consistently been elected (in 2017, 2022, and in the 2024 legislative elections) in the name of a Republican barrier to the National Rally, benefiting from the votes of the left. And now he owes his (provisional) exit from the crisis to the neutrality negotiated with Marine Le Pen. This unbalanced position can only reinforce frustration, even anger against him, in the left-wing electorate, and can sow confusion among some centrists. Not to mention that being at the parliamentary mercy of the National Rally will very quickly place the head of government in a dilemma: whether to make concessions to the RN in exchange for its survival. The immigration law has left scars within the so-called "left wing" of Macronism. Even greater and more symbolic concessions made to the RN could fracture its own party and further confirm the end of "Macronism" - the left/right divide regaining strength and vigor.