Too Much Power?
June 16, 2007
For some, the overwhelming majority Nicolas Sarkozy will likely enjoy in parliament after Sunday's second round of legislative elections are cause for serious concern. Others say it should be welcomed, since it will allow the president to break through the political bottleneck to reform that modernizers say is crippling the country.
In the first round on June 10th, Sarkozy's party, the UMP, garnered 10.3 million votes. The UMP and its new partners, the New Center and the traditionalist, conservative breakaway "Movement for France," were able to capture just under 46 percent of the vote. And the many still undecided electoral districts mean that the UMP's chances of getting an absolute majority are very good.
It appears that Sarkozy has been able to pull off in 2007 what center-right German Chancellor Angela Merkel could not back in 2005 -- obtain a clear mandate from the voters. It is the first time in France's Fifth Republic that a newly elected head of state has received such a large majority.
Lack of a counterweight
But French political scientist Henri Menudier warns against reading this concentration of political power in one man or one party as a danger to democracy. There is no need, according to him, to fear this new power center.
"France hasn't become a fascist state," he said. "But what is alarming is the near lack of any kind of political counterweight."
In the parliament, the National Assembly, only Sarkozy's government coalition and the socialist will have factional representation. The smaller parties did not make it over the required hurdle of twenty seats.
The new centrist party of Francois Bayrou, Democratic Movement (MoDem), entered the legislative race with 520 candidates, but according to the prognoses will end up with no more than four members in the legislature.
On the left, the story is the same. The Communist Party, once one of the most powerful political groups in the country, got only 4.3 percent of the vote in the first round. The Greens did worse with only 3.3 percent.
Even the extreme-right National Front could not resist Sarkozy's "blue wave," seeing its worst results since 1981. Only one of its candidates has a chance of getting into the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen, daughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Bi-polar politics
The poor performance of the smaller parties in France will, in the long run, serve to marginalize them, says political scientist Menudier. They will receive less financial support from the government and they will have fewer opportunities to get their message across, since the loss of parliamentary group status limits their speaking time in the Assembly.
In France, the majority voting system tends to strongly distort the real power relationships in the country. And today that distortion is more extreme than it ever has been. That has led to the revival of discussions about reforming the voting system. Voices calling for such reform are getting louder.
But this new two-party reality will not necessarily tip French democracy into crisis, according to the head of the French-German Institute, Frank Baasner. That is, if Sarkozy follows through on his promises of reform, namely, to strengthen the power of parliament and introduce a "dose of proportional voting law."
When are the reforms coming?
Such reform is especially important, according to Menudier, since the French president and the parliament are elected for five-year terms. When presidential terms were seven years, people often used the parliamentary elections to punish the head of state for his unpopular policies.
But the latest legislative election took place just five weeks after Sarkozy won a resounding victory, leaving no time for the public to judge whether or not they liked their new leader and his leadership.
"It's is absolutely necessary to reform the voting system," said Menudier.
However, experts generally do not believe Sarkozy will tackle this kind of structural reform during his first term in office. His first priority will likely be his program of rupture, which includes reforming the social system and bringing down the unemployment rate. Despite his overwhelming political majority, that will not be an easy task. In France, presidents have often had the brakes put to their plans by pressure from the street -- nothing brings French protesters out en masse like talk of reform.