https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19940/france-democracy-crisis-authority
Marseille, France’s second-largest city and biggest port, is depicted as a European version of Chicago in the Prohibition times with gang warfare, shootings, protest strikes by police and tension among “communities” routine features of daily life.
The usually tame French media describe the situation as a “challenge to law and order”… President Emmanuel Macron goes further by warning about a “loss of authority” that he intends to correct by as yet unknown measures.
Loss of authority isn’t limited to Marseille gangs engaged in war over a bigger share of the drug market… Authority is also under constant challenge in Paris itself, where one could see numerous shop windows shattered by protesters in the recent riots against a two-year increase in the legal minimum retirement age. Even once sleepy cities such as Nîmes and Limoges have been affected by “loss of authority”.
However, Macron’s first moves and the ideas his entourage are circulating look more like dancing around the issue rather than addressing its root causes.
Where does authority come from?
The classical answer is that it comes from the two key tools of persuasion and coercion that a properly constituted government has for imposing its decisions. Beyond that, however, one may argue that authority emanates from continuity of rules and mores, the accumulation of a cultural, including religious, heritage that transcends here-and-now considerations.
Macron tries to address that problem by talking of “duties” as opposed to “rights”, something that contradicts the core values of the French Revolution. In the French Revolution’s worldview, citizens, regardless of whether they do their duties or not, have inalienable rights. In Macron’s redefinition, a citizen’s rights may look like rewards for duties performed.
But who sets those rights and duties?
Can one talk of duties in the service of an autocratic regime that one hasn’t chosen?