Well, you will never make 65 million people agree with each other.

> Clearly they recognise a need for reform because they vote for politicians who run on a reform platform.

Meh. Macron, and his party, was not really running on a reform platform. He was the typical, business centrist candidate.

And the national assembly is very divided right now, and the government is systematically from a minority party (so neither from the left union, or the extreme right RN), which are not running on a reform platform (quite the opposite).

There is proposition about reforming taxes to taxes the wealthiest, something with some popular support, but no party that support this kind of reform as the power to make it happen right now.

We are in a deadlock since the dissolution of the national assembly by Macron, and we probably will be until the next presidential election, or a new dissolution that would give a big majority to one party which would pretty much ensure them control of the government.

The french system is really not made for a fragmented assembly. This is not what you can find in more parliamentary system where coalition form the government. A fragmented national assembly is basically a deadlock in France's fifth republic system.

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lucianbr a day ago | parent | next [-]

Why? What exactly makes it possible or impossible to have a coalition government, in your opinion?

A naive look tells me if a majority can agree to support a government then it can work, and it not not. What "system setup" helps or hinders a majority made up of different parties? To me it seems the important part is the willingness of parties to compromise. Which may or may not be there regardless of the "system setup".

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maeln a day ago | parent [-]

> Why? What exactly makes it possible or impossible to have a coalition government, in your opinion?

Mostly because it is a different system. The parlement in France doesn't elect the government. The president choose the prime minister, and the prime minister form the government.

The parlement can, at basically any point, vote to "censor" the government, effectively terminating it if a majority is reached (they do stay in position until a new government is formed, but can only take care of the "affaire courante", i.e simple daily affairs, no big laws, reforms, policy changes, ...).

Indirectly, this means that the parlement can have a lot of power over who will be in the government. If one party has an absolute, or almost absolute, majority in the parlement, it more or less mean that they can decide who shall be in the government.

Due to the way our election works, the party of the president usually has the majority in the parlement. This is even more true since Chirac changed the duration of the presidential mandate to match the duration of the parlement mandate (and their elections are very close). This usually give a lot of power to the president, effectively making him the sole judge of who shall be in the government (since he choose the prime minister and the parlement member of his party follow his lead).

But what we have right now is a very unique situation. Nobody has even close to an absolute majority in the parlement. The left "union" (which is not really united, but that's another story) control roughly ~33% of the seat, the extreme right party control ~21% of the seats, the presidential party control ~15%, and the rest are various centrist and right wing party.

The issue is that there is no way to get a solid absolute majority with this assembly. For the left, even if they were to compromise heavily and add as much center-right as possible in their coalition, it would barely give them a majority, and the government would have to compromise so much, it would piss off all their voters, which would be a political suicide for the next presidential election. Nobody want to ally with the extreme right except a few members of some right party, which would never give a majority (and the RN would only go to the government if they don't have to make any important compromise, for the same reason). So, you have to remove the two biggest block. And so, even if all the other party would somehow make a coalition (which is more or less the government we had since the assembly dissolution), it would still give less than ~45% of seats in the parlement, not enough to ensure that your governement would not be censored (which is what is happening, we've had like 3 or 5 government since the dissolution, i can't even remember all of them).

This is an unprecedented situation in France and basically the achilles heel of the fifth republic. Our system cannot function without a clear majority in the national assembly, and the way the assembly is divided right now makes any majority coalition impossible (or a political suicide).

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lucianbr 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Nobody has even close to an absolute majority in the parlement.

If the parliament would elect the government, the situation would be exactly as problematic as it is now. I don't see how the fact that the president chooses the prime-minister has any impact on the stability of the system.

You have pointed out a lot of true things, but none of them seems to be a your-system-specific-cause of the current instability.

I don't understand how a 30-30-30 split would work any better if parliament elected the government instead of the president. They would still be unable to reach any agreement, including an agreement on who to put in the government.

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RestlessMind a day ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of people complain about American FPTP system. But it seems that the French system, with a final round of top 2 in case no one gets clear majority, isn't any better. I am also familiar with the Indian system which gives rise to coalition politics which has its own problems.

	▲	disgruntledphd2 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The French system is a bit weird, but I think that parliamentary systems with proportional representation tend to work better, as they represent minority interests and basically force compromise, which is good for societal health (but on the downside, ensures that basically nothing controversial ever happens).

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a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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