Why is it so unusual for a French president to win re-election?

…Political disaffection and national character both play a role

Some countries like to hang on to their leaders. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama each won a second term in America. Germany’s Angela Merkel was re-elected three times; Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair twice each. Yet under the French Fifth Republic, introduced by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, until this year the French had never re-elected a sitting president who had a parliamentary majority. Why is it so unusual for France’s head of state to win a second term?

A referendum in 2000 shortened French presidential terms from seven to five years. Following constitutional reforms in 2008, leaders can serve only two consecutive terms. But even this has eluded most of them. De Gaulle himself was voted back into office in 1965. But he had first been elected in 1958 by an electoral college of parliamentarians, mayors and city-council members, not by the people. Before this year the only presidents to have been directly re-elected were François Mitterrand, a socialist, in 1988 and Jacques Chirac, a Gaullist, in 2002. Each achieved this while presiding over a government of opposition parties, under a power-sharing arrangement known as “cohabitation”. This made it easier to deflect blame. Moreover, in a shock first-round result, Chirac faced a run-off against Jean-Marie Le Pen, the xenophobic leader of the National Front and father of Marine Le Pen, a losing candidate this year. That match-up boosted Mr Chirac’s chances overnight.

One reason for the French fondness for kicking out the incumbent may be a growing disengagement with representative democracy. Dwindling turn-out is one measure of voter dissatisfaction. Abstention at the first round of the presidential election increased from 16% in 2007, to 26% on April 10th this year. In Britain, the trend has gone the other way: the turn-out rate at general elections edged up from 61% in 2005, to 67% in 2019. Another way to gauge voters’ frustration is the rise of the extremes. In the first round of this year’s French election, 58% of voters backed an extremist or populist candidate, up from just under half in 2017—although Emmanuel Macron, the sitting centrist president, who won re-election on April 24th, also increased his score by four points to 28%.

French disillusionment seems to be squarely directed at the figure of the president. Nearly three-quarters of people have “confidence” in their local mayor, according to an Ifop poll; for the president, this share falls to just 41%. The constitution concentrates huge powers in the highest office. The head of state commands the armed forces and the nuclear button, names the prime minister and the government, can dissolve the National Assembly, go to war and exercise emergency powers. This invests in a single leader both great responsibility and inflated expectations, which readily turn to disappointment.

But French discontent with their leaders seems to have deeper roots. Indeed it may just be part of the national character. The country periodically attempts to overturn the ancien régime with mass protest. The French even have a word for it: dégagisme, or getting rid of the old order. That seems to reinforce rebellious voting patterns. Leaders who defy the odds—as Mr Macron has done—remain the rare exception.

The Economist