Macron, the Underrated and the Misunderstood

It has become a commonplace assertion across most of political Europe that, in calling the French parliamentary elections a few months ago, Emmanuel Macron has displayed his penchant for high-risk, if not reckless action.

Another commonplace assertion is that, in not giving the prime ministerial post to a representative of the New Popular Front (NPF), the left party block in France, Macron has acted arrogantly, if not displayed a wilful or even intolerable disregard of French voters.

Macron’s rationale

Both assertions may be beside the point. The reason for this assessment is that they neither properly reflect France’s current political realities, nor do they reflect the resulting reform needs that the country as a whole has to come to terms with.

The overarching political reality in France is not that, in an act of remarkable political maturity, virtually all the parties thankfully ended up cooperating to prevent a majority of Marine Le Pen’s party in the French Parliament.

Instead, the overarching reality in French politics is that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party is dangerously close to taking over power in a future parliamentary election, if not already in the next French presidential election, which will be held in 2027.

A cool, calculating realist

Emmanuel Macron’s move to dissolve the French Parliament after the European elections in June, can only be understood in this context.

As a cool, calculating realist, not an instinct-driven machine politician, Macron saw the clear and present danger that the other parties are ill-prepared to fend off a takeover of political power by the National Rally in France.

As has become painfully visible in recent weeks, especially the left camp in French politics has no sense of, or practice with, cross-party coalition governments.

The left’s intransigence

Given their inherent dislike of most things Anglo-Saxon, ironically the French left has displayed a winner-take-all mindset that is generally known as the Anglo-Saxon way of conducting electoral politics.

Its intransigence is a key reason why Macron did not pick a center-left candidate as Prime Minister, although he did try to do so with Bernard Cazeneuve.

Not much time to prevent Le Pen

The key reason why the French President decided to call the parliamentary elections is that he wanted to force the hand of the other parties to use the time that he is still in office to prepare the French body politic not just for the general idea, but the absolute necessity of coalition governments.

The rather petulant insistence of the French left – as the political block with the largest number of members of parliament, although far from an absolute majority – to be awarded the Prime Minister’s office underscores the correctness of Macron’s assessment of the current level of immaturity of the French political system.

France’s political coordinates have been moving to the right

Macron is a political realist. He sees that France’s political coordinates have been moving to the right. Hence his appointment of a center-right politician, Michel Barnier, as Prime Minister.

True, that choice may make the French left even more indignant, claiming that it has been now even more brutally denied its “victory.”

But, as it appears from Macron’s point of view, the key question for the future of France and the long-term viability of its political system is the ability to hedge against political extremes, whether on the left or the right.

Getting the French political establishment used to coalition politics

The only way to achieve that is to use Macron’s remaining 2 1/2 years to get French politicians used to coalition politics.

Such a coalition may at some point need to involve the National Rally, but the key thing, as just stated, is to hedge against an outcome where, owing to the peculiarities of France’s dislike of proportional representation, it ends up as the sole party in power.

Still stuck in the customs of the Fifth Republic

The fact that the French left is not laser-focused on preventing such an outcome underscores how deeply it is still stuck in the customs of the Fifth Republic, which are simply no longer really relevant. Those customs can be considered the modern equivalent of what the Maginot Line was in French war history. At a minimum, they offer a false sense of security and stability.

Macron’s political calculus is all the more applicable as it would be hard to agree in time on more reliable political structures for a “Sixth Republic,” which would smoothen the path for coalition governments.

Ultimately neither aloof nor arrogant, but deliberative and circumspect

Given that, the path that Macron has chosen may indeed be the only available (and hopefully a viable) one.

The deliberative and circumspect way in which Macron has gone about appointing a new Prime Minister is neither proof of aloofness nor of arrogance.

Lessons for Europe

Interestingly, in the new French political landscape, Macron may have also introduced a new path for coalition governments in other European countries.

With ever more EU countries by necessity moving to multi-party coalition governments, the traditional choice of awarding the politician leading the biggest party in the government block with the post of Prime Minister or Chancellor may no longer be a particularly promising one.

Mr. Scholz proves Macron’s point

The experience of Olaf Scholz in Germany proves this point. Whatever the German Chancellor‘s own ineptitudes, the current criticism hurled at him every day by his own party – that he does not sufficiently represent his party’s own political priorities enough in Berlin’s “traffic light” coalition – may have made sense in the old political logic. But it is not really relevant any longer in Europe’s new multi-party government realities.

These political realities require a political manager who is quite literally experienced in, and therefore able to, square the political circle to achieve meaningful political outcomes and ideally progress.

Frustration guaranteed

In the new political environment, for such a government not just to get off on the right foot but to stay there over its term, requires a different sense of political cognition among the partisans of the various parties constituting the respective government.

The understandable desire to have their own man or woman lead that government quite automatically leads to a great level of frustration.

Europe’s stake in the Barnier experiment

Instead, having such a government led by an experienced political manager with cross-partisan appeal and track record probably is the only way to set the correct framework conditions at the outset – and have any shot at matching political expectations with ultimate outcomes.

Hence, it is not just the French President who must hope that the Barnier experiment will work out. Far beyond the importance for the rest of Europe of France having a stable government, many countries across Europe have a direct stake in how France’s current, remarkably informal multi-party political experiment will turn out.

Macron’s two political revolutions

If you follow the logic of the analysis presented so far, another not truly surprising fact emerges: The dissolution of the parliament is the second French political revolution that Macron has created.

When he first ran for office, the entire premise of his political success rested on the notion that he could do away with the relevance of all political parties in France. However daring and preposterous that notion was, he did succeed with it against very long odds.

Getting away with it for some time

One can only assume that Macron was very much aware that he would not get away with this daredevil behavior for long.

He must have reckoned that at some point the old parties would try very hard to have all their insider power games prevail again in French politics, whatever the consequences for the French nation as a whole.

Niftily, Macron used the ever-stronger emergence of Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party – itself very much a consequence of the frustration especially of the people living in the French countryside with the Parisian insider games – as a hook to nip the re-emergence of traditional, winner-take-all party games right in the bud.

Conclusion

In essence, one can therefore conclude that Emmanuel Macron has managed to blindside the entire French political establishment – this time also including the representatives of his own party and movement – for a second time.

That he did so at the very moment they were scheming hard for their re-emergence must make the pain these parties feel to be, yet again, at the receiving end of his strategems that much harder.

Painful as that may be, Macron can legitimately claim that his two moves, the first in 2016 and the other one now in 2024, are ultimately conducted for the sake of French – and indeed European – democracy.

No wonder that Macron may well be thanking traditionalists and retro-reminded politicians with their hankering for bygone days. It created fertile soil for his (r)evolutionary moves.