Macron’s Warning to America’s Ascendant Left The French president thought he could steamroll the rural minority on fuel taxes. Riots ensued. By Joseph C. Sternberg
https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-warning-to-americas-ascendant-left-1544139254
The most common explanation for France’s gilets jaunes protests against fuel-tax hikes is that they arise from too little democracy. Lower-income and rural citizens feel left behind by President Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive economic reform agenda, which ignores their interests and benefits an urban elite. The opposite is true. The protests are happening because France has too much democracy. What it’s lacking is politics.
Mr. Macron’s political movement was born of the notion that France needed to become more democratic. As a young technocrat-in-training and junior government minister, he became convinced that special interests within the traditional parties obstructed national progress.
As Economist correspondent Sophie Pedder notes in her illuminating biography of the president, the premise is that as a numerical matter there are enough actual or potential winners from economic reform and globalization that a leader could cull those voters from the old parties and unite them under a new banner. It would then be possible to steamroll minority opposition.
Which is precisely what Mr. Macron did. It helped that his rise came in an era when French politics was becoming steadily more democratic overall.
A 2000 constitutional amendment shortened the presidential term to five years from seven—explicitly to align the presidential and legislative election calendars. This amplifies a president’s mandate (already bolstered by a runoff voting system meant to exaggerate electoral support for the eventual winner) by reducing the risk that he might have to “cohabit” with a National Assembly controlled by the opposing party. Mainstream parties have adopted the U.S. style of intraparty primary campaigning, allowing party members to pick who leads them into general elections. CONTINUE AT SITE
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