Legislators have toppled France’s government in a confidence vote. The result on Monday marked a new crisis for Europe’s second-largest economy that obliges President Emmanuel Macron to search for a fourth prime minister in 12 months.
In the Greek constitution, the president is obligated to give an “investigative mandate” to form government to the three top parties in order of their election results. So if you have plurality you get 3 days to try to form a government (striking deals etc) but you have to get a vote of confidence within 15 days. If none of the three leaders can successively secure a vote of confidence, it’s elections again.
The French system is way too royalist in this respect, and I suspect that our constitutional framer, Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was basically a francophile gaullist, must have been trying to balance what he saw as an excess in his otherwise favourite political system.
Basically, France you can do better, and you guys need to reform.
France had republics before the current 5th that had the president as more of a ceremonial role. But it did not work for us, and both the third and fourth republics ended up with political instability and governments falling one after the other.
The 5th republic purposefully gave more power to the president, to remediate the political instability that France had seen with the previous systems. It works.
No democratic system is perfect. The one Greece has, per your comment, sounds great in theory. But the day where the 3 top parties can’t come to an agreement, and the elections don’t change the outcome, you’ll have an extended period of instability where the government is unable to do anything. And that is absolutely awful for a country.
It is great that Greece isn’t encountering these issues. But France has, and the current system is a fix to that. Let’s not repeat bad History by reverting to a system we know does not work for us.
In the Greek constitution, the president is obligated to give an “investigative mandate” to form government to the three top parties in order of their election results. So if you have plurality you get 3 days to try to form a government (striking deals etc) but you have to get a vote of confidence within 15 days. If none of the three leaders can successively secure a vote of confidence, it’s elections again.
The French system is way too royalist in this respect, and I suspect that our constitutional framer, Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was basically a francophile gaullist, must have been trying to balance what he saw as an excess in his otherwise favourite political system.
Basically, France you can do better, and you guys need to reform.
Not every system fits every country.
France had republics before the current 5th that had the president as more of a ceremonial role. But it did not work for us, and both the third and fourth republics ended up with political instability and governments falling one after the other.
The 5th republic purposefully gave more power to the president, to remediate the political instability that France had seen with the previous systems. It works.
No democratic system is perfect. The one Greece has, per your comment, sounds great in theory. But the day where the 3 top parties can’t come to an agreement, and the elections don’t change the outcome, you’ll have an extended period of instability where the government is unable to do anything. And that is absolutely awful for a country.
It is great that Greece isn’t encountering these issues. But France has, and the current system is a fix to that. Let’s not repeat bad History by reverting to a system we know does not work for us.