 Last time we did talk about the fact that Atisuit in French we say God bless you instead of God bless you to your wishes. So semi-presidential system no checks and no no very strong checks and balances in the system it's a semi-presidential system but we do not have similar structures such as those we have in the U.S. for example it such as I mean as in the case of a presidential system the Fifth Republic had endured two major tests one was the the infamous alternation the alternation from right to left so a right-wing coalition coming to I'm sorry a left-wing coalition coming to power under a left-wing presidency back in the 80s this was thought to be a strong test for or of the Fifth Republic because there were worries that what if given so much instability so much bloodshed revolution counter revolutions what if the system gets rocked okay so so so that was the first test Mitterrand's defeat of Gaulist right-wing center right or right-wing governments and the village is God this thing so so that was the first test the second test was cohabitation which means living together or residing together cohabitation as an institution it was an unintended consequence of the Fifth Republic I mean the Founding Fathers did not expect this to happen cohabitation in this sense means that a right-wing president lives with or coexists with a left-wing a right-wing president coexisting with a left-wing majority in the parliament and the prime minister or vice versa our right wing a left-wing president cohabiting with a the opposite in terms of its ideological stance the longest period of cohabitation was with Monsieur Chirac and Monsieur Jospin from the mid 1990s 1997 to the early 2000s for about five years so we had a right-wing president and the left-wing prime minister cohabiting this was feared by many but France under cohabitation did quite well in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of the legislative and the executive processes and in fact between 1986 and early 2000s mid 2000s in that two decades we had about ten years of cohabitation in total which was quite unthinkable and and it the system worked quite well which again was not as intended or was not as expected that was in a way a test to the Fifth Republic once again this was a test in the sense that we had a history of fragmentation political instability you know the pendulum swinging between radical democracy and monarchy strong executive weak weak legislature to weak executive strong legislature so so we had all kinds of swings back and forth between all these different sides of the pendulum but but there were reforms to prevent cohabitation such as the synchronization of the electoral cycles but still we still had incidences of cohabitation we now have the opposite of cohabitation which is called any ideas the opposite of cohabitation when we have a socialist president and the socialist prime minister we have we have president monsieur Hollande and prime minister Manuel Valls so both are representing the same ideological stance both are representatives of the party socialist party or social democratic left-wing party so in that case the opposite of cohabitation we call that unified control okay this is sometimes referred to as united control unified control united control it doesn't make a huge difference between the two let's see what the powers of the president are excuse me the powers of the presidents historically have depended on first naturally their constitutional powers the president we know is directly elected through a two ballot system which we've discussed before the president yes he has it's always been a he he's always had ceremonial powers as the head of the state or representing the the French state and he has political powers important political powers he names the president the prime minister and the cabinet members of the cabinet upon the suggestion of the prime minister he presides over the council of ministers the council of ministers is the inner cabinet of the cabinet or certain members of the cabinet high ranking ministers come are composing the council of ministers he conducts foreign affairs he directs armed forces so he is foreseeing not only foreign affairs but also defense issues defense policy matters he has the ability to dissolve the assembly a national the national assembly the parliament that is and he appoints about one third if I remember correctly one third of the members of the constitutional council the constitutional court in the system he is the only person he's the only institution the official to arbitrate between state institutions in fact this was the main idea behind both the force in the fifth republics so in case of disputes he was supposed to arbitrate between state institutions for a smoother functioning of state organs he declares or he may declare emergency powers as was the case recently Monsieur Hollande declared emergency powers in France after the attacks the recent attacks and he proposed he may propose constitutional amendments on his own initiative and he may call for a referendum on matters related to important policy initiatives so so basically his powers depend on the constitutional privileges he enjoys the powers he enjoys but in addition to these the power the de facto power these are the de euro powers of the present their de facto powers depended much more so on their leadership skills we had charismatic presidents such as president de Gaulle and president Mitterrand versus less charismatic presidents in history such as Monsieur Pompidou president Pompidou and president Baléuja Skadestang Monsieur Sarkozy Monsieur Hollande will see how they fare but in general it's difficult to categorize them under the the highly charismatic presidents or the less charismatic presidents as of now so history will tell us how will will perceive them with hindsight the institution of united control or unified control once again is when we have the two chief executives the president and the prime minister representing the same political faction same political ideological faction so when when both leaders are representing the right-wing coalitions we have united control or vice versa when both presidents and the prime minister represent right left-wing coalitions we have united united control or unified control once again this is the opposite of cohabitation very good let's see what the prime minister does how he or she functions the government according to the constitution it is the prime minister who is really responsible for key decisions so so with the government the prime minister makes key policy decisions especially with respect to domestic affairs so domestic policies it is the prime minister's remit or it is under his or her control but the factor we know that the factor situations under the factor situations the prime minister accepts presidents leadership and that's why we have we call the system a semi presidential system because the government is still headed by the president okay in the sense that the president presides over the council of ministers okay so that's that's important the prime minister is appointed by the president so after the general election takes place the president invites the chairman of the political party that has won the largest number of seats in the parliament and appoints that person as the prime minister the constitution really in this way designates the prime minister as key policymaker especially once again when it comes to domestic policies because foreign and security and defense policies are under the the privileges of the president but when it comes to day to day management of the country especially with respect to domestic affairs it is the prime minister who is responsible and in this way the president formulates policy in general lays out the principles but it is the prime minister and the cabinet who implements the policies okay even I mean this is true even when we have extra way we we talk about external relations of the country so it is the press it is under the presidential direct direct leadership or or it is under the leadership of the president but the prime minister in fact implements parts of those those policies and and legislative functions it is almost exclusively under the leadership of the prime minister because he or she is part and parcel of the National Assembly whereas the president cannot make laws okay so so he's not a legislator in that in that respect and the prime minister coordinates the cabinet and members of the cabinet direct ministries and they may propose policies but we do not see the cabinet as a forum for collective decision-making so so so we do not have an active cabinet you know forming a strong pillar of the French system yes there exists a cabinet but it is under the leadership of the prime minister and of course the president bureaucracy and civil service we know that in France the powers of the bureaucracy had been increasing had been expanding especially under the 5th Republic from the 50s onwards we have over now 20 percent more than 20 percent of the entire employment in France working in the public sector about 27 million employees being employed workers being employed the labor force being employed and more than 20 percent which is about more than five million people working for the French civil service so more than five million people working for the French civil service almost one in ten every Frenchman is working for the French civil service these figures are these percentages differ from one country to another in Turkey this is about 12 to 13 percent of the total labor force in in the UK this is more than 23% the British state has a larger public sector Japan was about 8% of the entire workforce and the US surprisingly has a civil service of about 15% of the entire 14 to 15% of the entire employment or the working population members of the civil service have traditionally been top civil service I'm talking about have traditionally been educated or trained at what's called the grand zekol the higher schools the large schools the prestigious schools they grant you know tertiary degrees with all kinds of masters and I think they also have incorporate PhD degrees to these are more like professional schools one is the ENA and a Ecole national administrative national school of administration which has been educating training I think all the presidents I don't remember about Monsieur Sarkozy but Monsieur Hollande Monsieur Chirac Monsieur Jessica Jessica Destin were all graduates of ENA and most prime ministers have been graduates of of this this Ecole this this school this administration administrative school so their powers and prestige have been very high the French system had been highly meritocratic and it was thanks to these grand zekol that this meritocracy remained in place with less politicization with highly meritocratic systems in place the French bureaucracy really represents or has been representing the principle of you know meritocracy as opposed to the spoiled system elsewhere this was happening this was taking place in France so it was the symbol of power and prestige but also meritocratic symbol of power and prestige the top top school the ENA was located in in Paris but now it is relocated to to Strasbourg which where where the European institutions are but over time from the 1980s onwards with the with the Mitterrand's U-turn the bureaucracy has been losing its power its prestige though the idea of the rolling back state not only quantitatively but also qualitatively has been undermining undermining the idea of an insulated meritocratic rational the very bureaucracy so reduced state activity through rolling back the state to us to a some extent and increasing power of the private sector with all rounds and rounds of privatizations back in the 1980s accelerating in the 1990s and an ideological shift toward the right with the conservative revolution worldwide has or have been cascading to to to result in the losing of prestige and power and status of the bureaucracy we also have public and semi public institutions state-owned enterprises have been very important historically in France especially by the end of the Second World War by 1946 or mid I mean before 1950s I have some figures to tell you the French state owned 98% almost all production of coal in the country it owned 58% of banking sector it owned about 30% 38 to 40% of the automotive sector so Roineau was one of the pioneers in this respect but with the 1980s and 90s Roineau telecoms France telecom and also Air France I mean the even the minority shares in these have been sold to the right the private sector and the banks have been have been privatized in time Ray de Lyonnais and also what used to be Société Générale now the bank is was renamed as Bay and pay BNP these were all state economic enterprises or the state had golden shares the state had huge shares in in these firms but now there are more private firms as opposed to public firms with the rounds and rounds of privatization in the country the judiciary when we look at the judiciary we have the traditionally executive arm with little autonomy you know the you know judiciary had little autonomy under the executive the executive powers but we have seen the emergence of the constitutional court the conseil constitutionale which has been enjoying increasingly powers which is sometimes seen as a new check or a balance in the system so remember we talked about the case that in the French case in the French government's composition or the organization of state we do not have a strong checks and balances integrated or subsumed in the system but the the rise of the constitutional court the more be I mean it's being more active with an expanded access to the court with a broadened jurisdiction of the court we see the court as in or being a check and to a certain extent a balance to or on the system sub-national government wise we have three layers we have 36,000 municipalities at the city level 101 département departments think of these as provinces 95 of these are in mainland France and the five are overseas and we have 22 regional governments so the administrative divisions are many but what's interesting is that they had been quite weak until the 1990s remember that this was a centralized state yes it was a unitary state but also it was a centralized unitary state but there has been some loosening with respect to that some decentralization with the national government's supervision on or over local governments had been weakening since 1980s creation of regional governments was new this was a new phenomenon and the local governments have started to levy new taxes that's also new so with with more or expanded administrative as well as financial powers there has been some loosening of the grip of the central state over the sub-national governments please many ideas of course internationalization of norms 1980s were years of decentralization the name of the game was decentralization the name of the game was increasingly subsidiarity increasingly make decisions at the at the nearest level to the citizen so democracy had been recast with a local and regional emphasis to it so so there was some kind of an ideological shift away from centralized state structures towards more open systems open to in addition to government governance so multi-tier multi-actor multi-level governance so these were the ideas that were internationalized since the 1980s and the idea of governance became so popular worldwide democracy was in that respect redefined revamped recast and now we even talk about co-governance so not only governance as multiple stakeholders at multiple levels multiple tiers multiple actors but we also incorporate in contemporary democracy or democratic thinking or governance thinking we see empirical examples of of co-governance which includes not only public actors but also private actors in addition to civil society organizations public private partnerships and and quasi NGOs NGOs quangos all of these as making up what we called the governance systems so as opposed to one unitary centralized state directing administering we see the emergence of governance as an ideal still but also to a certain extent in action I would say it is the conservative revolution which paved the way for this rolling back the state those ideas were instrumental but also redefinition or redefining of democracy or what we understand from democracy as a political system had been changing since the late I would say mid 1980s and all throughout the 1990s also globalization helped or globalization brought about these changes with global circulation of ideas once an idea is invented somewhere if it is tested and true it circulates currency of ideas so so all of these have been taking place all in all advanced national life societies we've seen examples of those in the case of Britain and we'll see more examples elsewhere as we discuss other cases so my point here is that yes subnational governments had not been as important but from the 1980s especially 1990s onwards we've seen an expanded role for these in governing France now let me briefly talk about policymaking or day-to-day policymaking or politics of day-to-day policymaking one would expect policymaking to differ vastly from cases or instances of unified control versus cohabitation in which in which system or in which situation would you expect policymaking to be smoother more effective more efficient in unified control or in cohabitation logical right because under unified control the system works really in effect more like a presidential system because the president has a presidential majority in the parliament and they share values they have similar perceptions of policy problems as well as policy solutions so policymaking process becomes more smooth in cohabitation however the system looks more like a parliamentary system in the sense that there is some opposition we have the president and the prime minister representing different political ideologies different spectrums or different points in the political spectrum and there would be policymaking processes not as smooth not as efficient as would be the case in unified control so that's that's one more like structural characteristic of the French semi-presidential system so whether we have cohabitation then we can talk about more like a parliamentary system or we talk about or we have a system of unified control which in which the president may act more independently and may really push through his agenda through the other parts of the executive as well as the legislature so all of these will make a huge difference with respect to day to day workings of government in France another element I'd like to talk about is policy autonomy advanced industrialized countries generally have less politicized excuse me highly meritocratic civil service they were you know top civil servants had been educated trained at the Grand Zécoil so the French system the French civil service system had been a had been quite insulated from all kinds of political pressures don't forget bureaucracy policymaking apparatuses are simply tentacles of the executive they implement policies that the executive decides but at the same time the bureaucracy informs the executive so so there is a two-way traffic in terms of agenda-setting policy formulation decision-making and implementation so they were top bureaucracy yes it will help implement the decisions being taken at the top but the top bureaucracy will also inform the process of policymaking in return please exactly so so in this respect we have in all advanced industrialized societies are a largely independent bureaucracy insulated from political pressures yes there is some lobbying right so pressure groups interest groups are important the bureaucracy will will not be able to turn a blind eye to social movements and their needs and the organized interests from civil society actors but when it comes to the the electoral cycle they're much more insulated from the political ranks please so so in in time in time there has been as I as I was just trying to describe in time I mean there the French system had been quite a closed system state society relations had been quite sharply demarcated against one another the the state structure top bureaucrats were educated at the Grand Zécoil and they were meritocratic appointments so retention promotion rules had been not really politicized but in time with the 1990s we see increasing politicization everywhere in advanced industrialized societies so there is some concern with respect to the impartiality or partiality of the top bureaucrats in time this has been changing this is what I meant by politicization of bureaucracy in Britain too and and some segments of the bureaucracy are more in general politicized than in others for example in the British case we've seen the police being more politicized than the financial bureaucracy to a certain extent so so in France we had traditionally policy autonomy so this the bureaucratic system was highly autonomous given the the policymaking style in the French case we do not have a corporatist or neocorporatist policymaking style which is like in a way the British style so so we have the bureaucratic system being quite closed to popular demands and demands from the upper echelons of the executive so so there are few opportunities that pressure groups can voice their interests but this has been changing over time so so policy autonomy is being loosened up and with the ideas of governance and co-governance civil society actors pressure groups or interest groups social movements have been more vocal and have been more articulate and the French state has been listening to these demands more so than in the past please well the president will not be able to do much in case a leader of the party or a party which is in opposition to his or her stance gets the highest number of seats in the parliament so the in the legislature the prime minister and his cabinet has to gain a vote of confidence has to you know secure a vote of confidence as long as the vote is secured of course the president will be tempted to appoint his like-minded people or her like-minded people but in actuality what happens is Monsieur Mitterrand comes to power 1981 then he has to or he had to appoint Monsieur Chirac because he had the largest number of seats in the parliament or he was controlling the largest number of seats in the parliament so so there was no other way I can't think of a president nor can you I'm sure you know being like appointing a leader of a party which will not be able to secure a vote of confidence so it all it will all depend on the composition of the assembly of national assembly so as long as the president or as long as there is a prime minister or a candidate for a prime minister is there who has the potential to win a vote of confidence of course the president will be appointing his like-minded person or the faction or the political party who would be who would be next to or near his his ideas or who would who would approximate his ideas but in the absence of that there's no way the president would appoint a member of the potential opposition but but yes this is a this is a question and interestingly the founding fathers of the Fifth Republic did not think of this they were thinking they were assuming that France will be led by center-right coalitions and that there won't be a contender or they didn't expect this and for about 23 years 1958 till 1981 right that that makes about that makes more than 20 years 23 years there was no incidence of cohabitation it was all unified control under right-wing governments the idea of cohabitation was therefore not debated it was in a way unthinkable there was no need to think about to fantasize about these ideas until when we had Monsieur Monsieur Mitterrand coming to power then a left-wing parliament which was followed by a right-wing parliament so so for for for more than two decades the the initial to first two decades of the the Fifth Republic no need for cohabitation but only then there was cohabitation and this respect or in this way many scholars of French politics really saw this alternation this alternation from right to left with Monsieur Mitterrand coming to power as a strong test to the system because it brought with it the potential of cohabitation so not only alternation but also cohabitation was possible for the first time in the Fifth Republic so so so these were so coming back to policy autonomy of course policy autonomy would differ when we have unified control or when we have cohabitation from the elected officials that would make a difference too and finally the EU had been imposing limits on the national policy autonomy EU directives through what's called the direct effect supersedes national legislation in fact the EU treaties supersede the national parliaments so so from the 60s onwards we have the EU's a key communitaire which is basically all those treaties agreements directives recommendations opinions all those policies really superseding French policies or domestically made policies which in a way limits the policy autonomy of the civil service because we have when we were you know when when I was about your age 1990s we there was the urban legend that there were about 80,000 pages of the a key communitaire that the EU was the EU body of law all kinds of legislation policies there was there was over 80,000 pages of a key communitaire which was really bearing down upon the national policy making systems this has been increasing over time I heard I've read somewhere that this has increased or this has expanded to 120,000 pages of legislation policies this data the other what have you which has been really constraining domestic national policy processes and not only processes but also all kinds of decisions that national governments can take or cannot take okay I think we should take a break now