Death of the Fifth Republic

When Charles de Gaulle inaugurated the Fifth Republic in 1958, his primary objective was to overcome the systemic fragility that had paralysed the previous regime. The parliamentary Fourth Republic had suffered from crippling instability, producing 24 governments and 16 different prime ministers in a mere 12 years.

For decades, the Fifth Republic’s semi-presidential system appeared to have secured the desired stability, achieving a remarkable tenure of 67 years—only three years shy of the record held by the Third Republic. Yet, the very issues it was engineered to resolve have dramatically resurfaced. The years 2024-2025 alone have seen a turbulent succession of six prime ministers, with the most recent appointee having just doubled his short-lived term.

In the face of his Prime Minister’s initial resignation, President Emmanuel Macron chose to deploy his ultimate executive authority. By immediately recalling him to office, Macron engaged in a display of power and perceived vanity historically reserved for monarchs—or, indeed, for the powerful Presidents of France.

While Sébastien Lecornu has once again accepted the challenge, the question remains: How long can the French political establishment sustain this masquerade? With President Macron facing approximately an 80% disapproval rate, how long can he defy public opinion before the long-foretold collapse arrives and ushers in the Sixth Republic?

Why the French politics became so chaotic in the last years? Firstly, thanks to the sources of success behind Emmanuel Macron. His first decision was to backstab Parti Socialiste. While serving as Minister of the Economy under President François Hollande, Macron increasingly distanced himself from the party’s mainstream, advocating controversial, pro-business reforms (the Loi Macron) that provoked a rebellion on the PS’s left wing. This culminated in his resignation from the government in 2016 to found his own centrist movement, En Marche! The rational was to exploit his own position to capture the electorate of disillusioned centre-left and to create a new political force that, in the 2017 elections, utterly decimated the French Left, relegating the historic Socialist Party to the political margins.

Having politically neutralized Parti Socialiste, Emmanuel Macron next turned his attention to systematically cannibalizing the traditional centre-right, Les Républicains (LR). Since his first victory in 2017, Macron’s strategy has been to occupy the political centre ground while simultaneously draining talent and ideological substance from the Gaullist mainstream. He achieved this by appointing key LR heavyweights—such as former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, and ministers Bruno Le Maire and Gérald Darmanin—to top positions in his own government. This tactic effectively split LR into factions: one that viewed Macron as a necessary liberal ally and another that saw him as an opportunistic destroyer. By incorporating the right’s best and brightest, Macron left the remaining LR leadership to drift between ineffective opposition and ideological incoherence. This systematic co-option and subsequent weakening is a fundamental reason why the French right, once one of the two pillars of the Fifth Republic, is now a fractured and electorally marginalized force, split between pro-Macronist Les Républicains under Bruno Retailleau, and far-right leaning groupe UDR under Éric Ciotti.

Denial of Compromise

Secondly, the whole system was never designed to facilitate compromise. It’s rather systematically devoid of any possibility of compromise. The constitutional blueprint devised by De Gaulle was fundamentally an institutional fix for the chaos of the Fourth Republic. It wasn’t designed for typical democratic give-and-take; rather, it was engineered to guarantee one specific outcome: a highly stable government centred on a monumentally strong president commanding an outright majority in the legislature.

Every core element of the system reinforces this design, from the two-stage presidential vote—which naturally pushes the electorate toward a single, broadly accepted figure—to the subsequent timing of parliamentary elections. Consequently, the entire political structure operates smoothly only when the President’s political machine holds a clear majority. In this ideal (for the executive) scenario, the Parliament’s true authority is severely curtailed, effectively turning it into little more than an advisory board rubber-stamping the government’s policies through voting.

Chaos and Paralysis

In any other political arrangement, however, the entire edifice immediately begins to fray at the seams. A reversal of fortunes, where the opposition secures power, plunges the nation into cohabitation—a constitutional state universally understood meaning political paralysis.

Worse still is the plight of the current hung parliament, a configuration that emerged from the fallout of the June 2024 election. Within this fractured assembly, political factions possess the institutional impetus for meaningful compromise. The executive branch wields such overweening power that any attempt at formal collaboration would, in any case, confer negligible real influence upon the cooperating parties. Meanwhile, having a straight mandate from the people through votes, the opposition can play it in the most ruthless way possible.

Consequently, party leaders are engaged in a bitter, tactical calculus: their optimal path is to remain outside government, deploying every manoeuvre possible to precipitate the next presidential contest—even if that strategy demands the systematic decapitation of successive Prime Ministers.

The glaring structural deficiencies of this system have been starkly exposed for over a year. Five consecutive Prime Ministers have attempted, with varying degrees of sincerity and skill, to broker a viable budget agreement with the established political parties. In every instance, the endeavour turned out to be a Sisyphean folly, with each premier hastily abandoning the post; the most recent resignation occurred in less than a month. All of this because the vaulting presidential ambitions of political heavyweights, including Macron who’s the most unpopular president in the history of the Fifth Republic, were actively sabotaging the nation’s stability.

Right now, less than a week after appointing new-old prime minister both the left and the right announced a subsequent vote of no confidence, which, presumably, will take place on Thursday. All in order to capitalize on the weaknesses of the presidential camp. A rational move actually forced upon political actors through the framework of the Fifth Republic.

No Peace in Sight

So, how long can the French political establishment sustain this masquerade? As long as president Macron wants to, nevertheless at some point his term will end, and then it would up to the French people which way to choose. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon propose new republican projects, French people will have a choice. The question is what will become of the Fifth Republic, it might, thanks to Macron’s doing, become just a dead weight, rather than a proposition to be upheld.

Cover photo: Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu (source)

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