1 - A New Régime
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2023
Summary
Emmanuel Macron’s rise to power could never have been just another presidency for France. From the onset, it was clear that Macron’s vision for France was revolutionary and drastic, and it promised to shake things up. The contrast with the past five years of the socialist presidency of Hollande could not be starker. After half a decade of more of the same, it was time to shake things up and halt the lethargy. The first task of the régime was to institute a new diet for France. Grown too fat, it was time to start thinning the social body and get back in shape for the global economy. This will be the first focus of this chapter on the new régime: to look at the analogy of the diet to understand what Macron’s régime is about. The analogy will lead us to strengthen the claim that Macron’s revolution was not a centrist revolution, beyond left and right, but rather a continuation of right-wing policies under a new banner. Even though there have been some token left-leaning policies enacted by the régime, I show that it is in fact a new version of the right that has emerged since 2017. Right and left are always relative terms in politics: they referred initially to the position of deputies in the First Republic in France, with the moderate monarchists sitting on the right, and the radical republicans on the left of the nascent assembly. But the right has a long trajectory of catching up with its revolutionary adversary, and the three historical rights in France (the Restauration, July Monarchy, and Bonapartist rights) had revolutionary elements to them as well. Macron’s revolution differs from these three, and this will be the second analysis of this chapter. What is the fourth right, promoted by Macron, about? How does it compare with its historical counterparts? We will see that it is a version of neoliberalism that emerges in Macron’s ideology that sets it apart. Although neoliberalism is not in itself new in France, having permeated left and right governments of the past four decades, it is a new, self-assertive and radical version of neoliberalism that is proposed by Macron.
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- The Macron RégimeThe Ideology of the New Right in France, pp. 17 - 38Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2022