“French culture is not very open to political pluralism”

Despite their divisions, the opposition groups, now in the majority in the National Assembly, promise to play an important – and unprecedented – role in the 16^e legislature, which began on June 22.

The V^e Does the Republic try to reduce the opposition to the minimum portion? Is the situation different in the UK or in Germany? Here are the answers of Olivier Rozenberg, professor at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, who has edited, with Eric Thiers, an excellent collective work bringing together the reflections of historians, jurists and political scientists on the opposed (The Parliamentary Opposition, French Documentation, 2013).

What analysis do you make of the results of the legislative elections?

By inviting, the day after the elections, the opposition groups to participate in a majority of ideas, Emmanuel Macron took note of the unprecedented nature of the political situation. The opposition will now have to discuss and negotiate the bills presented by the majority: it is therefore strongly empowered.

We are far from the political atmosphere evoked in 2004 by the constitutionalist Guy Carcassonne in an article devoted to the “happiness” of the opposition. “No more precautions to take, no more restraint to maintain, neither realism nor experience put unwelcome curbs on free expression”, he wrote in the magazine Powers.

While the upcoming discussions between the majority and the opposition may be beneficial, the current situation nevertheless raises questions as to the ability of the oppositions to embody a real alternative for the future. Contrary to what is happening with our neighbours, there is uncertainty on this subject: the oppositions are split into three poles, they are dominated by radical movements, and the left remains very divided despite its electoral alliance. Here we lose an essential dimension of the oppositional dynamic: the idea that another team could easily govern tomorrow.

The opposition in France is often confined to a protest posture. Is it a legacy of history?

During the nineteenth^e century, the notion of opposition referred to differences relating to the very nature of the regime – which did not help to make room for it. Thus, the powers of the monarchists were limited, at the beginning of the III^e Republic, in the name of the necessary safeguard of the republican form of government.

Au XX^e century, the constitutional debate subsided, but the notion of opposition remained vague: the voting discipline of the parliamentary groups was not acquired and the strategies of alliance fluctuated according to the political situation. We often speak, not of the “opposition”, but of the “minority”: the term does not refer to a political strategy, but to an arithmetical observation during the vote of censure.

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