Opinion | France Needs a New France

In France, it has been a frenzied fall.

First, the government was toppled by an irate Parliament. Then, in a panic, President Emmanuel Macron tapped a protégé, Sébastien Lecornu, to be prime minister; he resigned less than a month later. Confusion raged. Today things are a little calmer. Mr. Lecornu, returned to the office he had so hurriedly vacated, has managed to bring some stability by making concessions to rivals. He might even succeed in passing a budget.

But he is not out of the woods yet. Without a clear majority in the National Assembly, the government remains vulnerable to a motion of no confidence. That could force Mr. Macron to name yet another prime minister — the sixth of his second term — or call snap legislative elections. Meanwhile, eyes are turning to the 2027 presidential race and the increasingly plausible prospect of a victory for the far-right National Rally.

What comes next matters a great deal. But France needs much deeper change: More than a new prime minister or a new president, it needs a new republic. Nearly two and a half centuries into one of the longest-running democratic experiments on the planet — one that has seen the ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité repeatedly vanquish monarchs, emperors and military strongmen — the country should go back to the drawing board. The time has come for a new form of government in France.

Many of the country’s challenges are shared across Europe. The far right is rising, and backlash to immigrants is growing. Public services and the social safety net are under threat in a hypercompetitive globalized economy, where growth is stagnating and debt is mounting. Trust in the political class is plummeting; faith in democracy is sinking. Yet exacerbating all these problems is the architecture of France’s political regime, a deeply centralized system that concentrates power in the presidency.

This is the Fifth Republic. Designed for Charles de Gaulle in 1958, in the midst of the Algerian War, it broke with previous parliamentary setups to endow presidents with stunning constitutional prerogatives: the ability to dissolve the National Assembly, the authority to appoint prime ministers of their choosing, the capacity to propose referendums directly to French voters and even the emergency power to rule by decree. More generally, the Fifth Republic encourages presidents to view themselves as the keystone of the entire system, turning them into quasi-monarchical figures around which all political life revolves.

This turbocharged presidency has always been at odds with France’s republican tradition, but it is especially out of sync with today’s national mood. In the postwar era, French voters delivered presidents sweeping majorities in the National Assembly — and when they disagreed with the head of state, they handed solid majorities to the rival party. In the past 20 years, however, popular support for presidents has dwindled. Like his recent predecessors, Mr. Macron is winding down his final term with disastrously low approval ratings. The result is an unpopular figure with extraordinary power to dictate the national agenda.

A Sixth Republic — in the form of a new Constitution crafted or at least ratified by citizens, as previous ones have been — could drastically roll back presidential authority and return France to a full-fledged parliamentary system. With presidents reduced to largely ceremonial functions and executive authority flowing instead from legislators, French parliamentarians would have to embrace coalition politics like their European neighbors. Alliances and compromises, rather than the impulses of the head of state, would shape national political life. Naturally, there would be no place for Article 49.3, the notorious measure that allowed a previous government to ram through Mr. Macron’s unpopular pension reform without a full vote.

A newly empowered Parliament could also become more representative of citizens. An obvious way to start would be to adopt proportional representation — a voting system similar to those used in Spain and Germany that allot legislative seats according to parties’ shares of the vote. That would be a big change from the country’s current two-round winner-take-all system, which often leaves voters feeling that they’re choosing the least bad candidate. Voters could also directly elect senators, who are currently chosen largely by local representatives, infusing some much-needed democratic vitality into an upper chamber known for its resistance to change.

A new republic could also revisit the thorny question of decentralization. While France’s predilection for a strong national state long predates de Gaulle, the resentment fueled by the concentration of wealth and power in Paris is only getting worse. Although national governments have taken steps to entrust regions and municipalities with greater responsibilities, the framers of a Sixth Republic could go further — and perhaps even entertain the possibility of a fully federal system. Such a proposal might once have seemed fanciful, but France is evolving. According to a November poll, 64 percent of the public now favors a system in which the country’s regions could set their own laws.

Polls show the French favor the idea of a new republic, too. That willingness to embrace change stems from a healthy civic tradition in which constitutions are viewed not as sacrosanct texts but as guiding documents that can be updated to reflect the needs of a changing country. Why, many wonder with good reason, should the nation stay wedded to a system built for a war hero called on to defend a colonial outpost nearly 70 years ago? That was a country where women had recently won the right to vote, memories of the Nazi occupation were still fresh and the death penalty was still on the books.

The biggest obstacle to reform is the political class. France’s centrists have shown little interest in criticizing a system that, under Mr. Macron, works for them. The far right yearns to exercise those powers itself. Even the parties of the left, historically the most critical of the Fifth Republic, have made little noise about sweeping constitutional reform or forging a new path. Although the New Popular Front alliance called for a Sixth Republic ahead of last year’s elections, its member parties have dropped the issue as the presidential race approaches. The allure of the Élysée Palace is apparently all-consuming, even for those politicians who swear they want to reduce its influence.

At a certain point, France’s political establishment may not have a choice. What happens if the government collapses again? What if new legislative elections produce a similarly divided National Assembly? And what if Parliament remains polarized under a newly elected president, who then seeks to abuse executive power in dangerous ways? The longer France’s political logjam drags on, the more talk of a Sixth Republic will grow louder — until perhaps the day arrives when it’s no longer seen as a utopian dream but as the only way out of the crisis.

Cole Stangler (@ColeStangler) is a journalist based in France and the author, most recently, of “Le Miroir Américain.”

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