The collapse of Michel Barnier's government on Wednesday, December 4, appears to mark the failure of an attempt to force parliamentary politics on France's Fifth Republic. The system is being put to the test by the absence of an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale. According to Rémi Lefebvre, professor of political science at the University of Lille and author of the 2022 book Faut-il désespérer de la gauche? ("Should we despair of the left?"), the political culture of the fait majoritaire, deeply rooted in the country, cannot be transformed in such a short space of time. Although he attributes some of the responsibility to the political parties, he also stresses that they are simply remaining faithful to their voters' expectations.

The culture of compromise, a basic parliamentary culture, already existed in French political life, under the Third and Fourth Republics. Not so under the Fifth Republic, where a majoritarian culture rapidly took hold. From the 1960s until 2022, the party that wins the legislative elections almost always has an absolute majority, so the question of parliamentary compromise does not arise.

The inversion of the electoral calendar since 2002 [with the legislative elections now falling right after the presidential election] has reinforced this "majoritarianization" of political life. Emmanuel Macron himself, even though he didn't expect to have a parliamentary majority, had over 300 MPs elected from nowhere in 2017. This majoritarian culture is therefore massive and deep-rooted, and is certainly linked to the fact of having a president, but also to parties and partisan discipline.

But you can't change a political culture just like that. It's not something that can be decreed, it's an apprenticeship. For the parties, but not only. It also comes from the electorate: I'm not at all convinced that citizens are in favor of compromise. Of course, when we do micro-tests, everyone wants to compromise, but voters are also very attached to political preferences.

Polarization from above is also polarization from below. There is a strong injunction for parties to compromise, but there is also an injunction for parties to be loyal and sincere to their constituents. In the current democratic crisis, parties and MPs are very attached to the fragile bond of trust with their electors.

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