Nicolas Sauger

Political institutions under stress? Assessing the impact of European integration on French political institutions

Abstract This article examines the impact of European integration on French political institutions. In particular, it assesses the way in which the scrutiny of European affairs has affected and changed relations between the legislative and the executive. Contrary to previous work, we show that simple principal–agent models are difficult to apply to the French case, provided there are two directly elected institutions. Together with the relatively low salience of European issues in French public opinion, this explains why the scrutiny of European affairs has not given way to any substantial renegotiation of legislative–executive relations in France. The overall weakness of the French Parliament has finally been demonstrated with regard to European affairs, despite a substantial formal increase in powers of scrutiny since the Maastricht Treaty.

The End of Ambiguity? Presidents versus Parties or the Four Phases of the Fifth Republic

This article adopts a long-term view of the Fifth Republic. It argues that there are historically two partly contradictory readings of the institutions created by the constitution of 1958: a presidential and a partisan reading. The first grants the president the role of a consensual arbiter at the heart of the executive. The partisan reading or logic puts the parties at the centre stage of a more parliamentary political system with the president as some kind of super prime minister. Both logics have co-existed in permanent tension. The authors show that the changing balance between the two logics has determined several successive phases in the evolution of French politics. They argue that the second logic has progressively supplanted the first. The constitutional revisions of 2000 and 2008 may, moreover, have institutionalised the partisan logic and presidentialisation of the Fifth Republic.

Introduction: The Institutions of the French Republic at 50

The creation of Frances Fifth Republic in 1958 was certainly an extraordinary event. It was the last time that a Western European state was at the brink of civil war. From an institutional point o...