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The Fall of the French Ruling Class?
This year’s French presidential election represents an extraordinary popular rebuke, on both the left and the right, to the country’s established political parties and candidates. But what does the Le Pen-Macron match-up reveal about France’s political elite more broadly, and about the Fifth Republic its members serve?
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CAMBRIDGE – How did it come to this? That is what much of the world, and certainly almost all of the French elite, is asking ahead of the second round of France’s presidential election. Charles de Gaulle included the runoff in the constitution of the Fifth Republic to force the French to choose responsibly – something he was never certain they would do unless pushed. And yet the choice this year still came down to Marine Le Pen, heir to the ugliest of all French traditions – that of collaborationist Vichy France – and the 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, who has never held elective office and was only briefly a government minister.