Présentation de l’éditeur

This book focuses on the triangle of power dynamics between presidents, prime ministers and parliamentary majorities, and the way it has evolved throughout the French Fifth Republic, the longest-lasting semi-presidential system. What are the main patterns in the functions and interactions of the three institutions? How do the personalities of presidents, prime ministers and leading parliamentarians shape the dynamics of the institutional system and France’s political evolution during each presidential term? To what extent do their ideological and partisan affiliations affect collaboration between key political leaders? How do the dynamics of inter-institutional relations influence the country’s overall stability and progress? And what are the main lessons of the Fifth Republic’s semi-presidential experience for countries that based their institutional systems on the French model?

Sergiu Mişcoiu is Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo is Associate Professor of History at the University Paris East Créteil, France.

Sommaire

Presidents, Prime Ministers and Majorities in the French Fifth Republic
Sergiu Mişcoiu

Charles de Gaulle: The Birth of the Modern French Monarchy, the Fifth Republic
Bryan Muller

Georges Pompidou: Rooting the Fifth Republic
Olivier Sibre

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing: “France Shall Not Fall Back into the Party Regime”
Alexandra Alina Iancu, Sorina Cristina Soare

François Mitterrand: The Last Republican Monarch
Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo

Jacques Chirac: The Failure of Social Gaullism, the Longest Cohabitation and the Spectre of the Far Right
Bernard Lachaise

Nicolas Sarkozy: Voluntarism, Hyper-Presidency and Contestation
Marius-Mircea Mitrache

François Hollande: The Presidency at an Impasse
Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo

Emmanuel Macron: The Art of Casting
Fabrice Hamelin