After President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly, the first round of the snap legislative elections took place on June 30. Historian Mathias Bernard analyses what’s at stake.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire, NFP)
Displaying all articles
Leftist and centrist parties will now try to coalesce behind each other’s candidates in order to prevent National Rally from securing an outright majority in parliament.
Whatever the outcome, the next government will likely be even weaker than the current one, precisely the situation President Emmanuel Macron had hoped to rectify.
Macron has often referred to historian and ‘résistant’ Mark Bloch. As his dissolution of parliament opens the way to the far-right, might it be time he went back to reading him?
As young people despair that established parties can address their many concerns, far-right parties have found fertile political ground.
As a parliamentary system with a presidency, France is unique: the effective leader is the president when parliament supports him, but in the event of cohabitation, the prime minister calls the shots.
Julien Robin, a specialist in French parliamentary life, looks at what the surprise dissolution means for French politics.
Top contributors
-
Senior Lecturer, School of History, ANU / Chercheur Associé at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, Australian National University
-
Doctor Europeus en droit (mention histoire du droit – label européen) / chercheur post-doctoral, Université de Bordeaux
-
Doctorant en science politique, Université de Montréal
-
Lecturer in history, Queen Mary University of London
-
Professor in International History, Flinders University
-
Historien, Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA)
