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France's Return to the Right
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21918 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
2,304 Words |
| Author
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Harvey B. Feigenbaum
Harvey B. Feigenbaum teaches political science at the George
Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of
The Politics of Public Enterprise: Oil and the French State
(Princeton University Press, 1985) and is coauthor of Politics
and Government in Europe Today (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1990). |
How do you govern a country that has over three hundred types of cheese?" General de Gaulle's exasperated query is often quoted and always appropriate. This time it might just as easily have been Francois Mitterrand, in chorus with the entire French Socialist Party, who uttered the remark. The French parliamentary elections in March brought a crushing defeat to the socialists and effectively transferred power to a coalition of conservative parties.
But the Right has not returned to its previously dominant position in French government. Gallic voters have opted for a power-sharing arrangement that they call "Cohabitation." Under France's unusual political system, power is shared between the president, prime minister, and Parliament in ways that, under some conditions, are not clearly defined by the constitution of 1958. The president appoints the prime minister, who must, in turn, enjoy the confidence of the Parliament. In situations where the president and prime minister are from opposing parties, executive authority is essentially a matter of negotiation and maneuvering.
This in turn depends on the relative strength of the prime minister's parliamentary majority and on the political skills of the president. Unlike in the United States, the president in France does not have veto power over legislation. But a crafty politician occupying the Elysee Palace (the French White House) can employ a host of subtle tools to undercut the thrust of policies and politicians with which and with whom he disagrees.
This has all happened before. During Mitterrand's first presidential term, conservatives won the parliamentary elections of 1986. But in 1988, Mitterrand outmaneuvered them, won reelection, and dismissed the conservative government. The second Cohabitation is unlikely to go so easily for the president. Even the heavy-handed Jacques Chirac and the politically obtuse Valery Giscard d' Estaing, leaders of the two main conservative parties, are unlikely to make the same mistakes again. They have an overwhelming majority in Parliament unlike their two-seat margin of victory in 1986, and can claim to have a mandate from the people.
The conservative parties combined won about 40 percent of the vote in the first round of the election: less than Margaret Thatcher, John Major, or George Bush in 1988. However, the French electoral system, which has single member constituencies and two-ballot runoff elections, creates exaggerated parliamentary majorities out of voter preferences that are really thin pluralities. The conservative score improved
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