The last constitutional revision of the institutions of the Ve République dates back to July 23, 2008. Since then, all the attempts put together by both François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron have failed on the resistance of the Senate, dominated by the right, and the virtual certainty of not being able to obtain in Congress the qualified majority of the three-fifths of the votes cast. This is how the “bills for a renewal of democratic life” presented to the Council of Ministers on August 28, 2019, after a first version was bogged down a year earlier, were put back in the boxes.
It was learned from this experience and this failure that the candidate Macron, during the presentation of his program on March 17, said he wanted, if he were re-elected, to install beforehand “a cross-party commission” hoping to be able, this time, to overcome the political blockages. He says he is convinced that“we can still improve the mechanisms of democratic control” and the “representativeness of Parliament”implying that the introduction of proportional representation in legislative elections still has its favour.
Attractive referendum
For two decades, the weakening of the institutions of the Ve Republic, the remoteness of citizens and places of decision-making – both locally and nationally –, the loss of confidence in political representation and desertion from the polls are shaking the foundations of representative democracy. For Jean-Luc Mélenchon, these institutions have become “dangerous” and he proposes to establish a ” WEe Republic “ which would result from the work of a Constituent Assembly.
Reactivation of the use of the referendum, development of the citizen or shared initiative referendum, extension of participatory democracy, new stage of decentralization, differentiation and right to autonomy of territories are all themes that have gained ground and are taken up by such and such a candidate in an attempt to reconcile citizens with public action.