We would therefore be at the beginning of a “new era”, a renewal of political action, according to the Hauts-de-Seine MP and former government spokesperson Prisca Thévenot. interviewed this Friday morning by our colleagues at LCIThe day after a final meeting between Michel Barnier, Prime Minister struggling with partisan apparatuses, and the President of the Republic, struggling with the verdict of the ballot boxes, a first list of a future government, expected before this Sunday, began to leak to the press.
82 days after the second round of the legislative elections, have we finally found this coalition spirit that we have collectively sought all summer, under the mocking eye of our European neighbors, so accustomed to these long-term negotiations that end up giving birth to a contract, this famous “common base”, this “common ambition” that Prisca Thévenot calls for.
Why does this exercise seem so difficult in the French context? Should we see this as a bad fate for the institutions of the Fifth Republic, or a form of immaturity of the parties and political personnel?
Yet, for more than a century now, this spirit of coalition has existed…
In Hauts-de-France, the urban community of Béthune-Bruay Artois Lys Romane became XXL in 2017: the intercommunality brings together 100 municipalities, of all political colors, nearly 280,000 inhabitants, on a territory larger than some departments. In central Essonne, around Grigny, it is a private company formed by municipalities of all sides that manages the geothermal project, also XXL, and which irrigates tens of thousands of inhabitants.
Town halls, inter-municipal authorities, inter-municipal energy unions… How can we explain that these territories, managed in a transpartisan manner, seem to work, contrary to the farce that our national political class offers us?
To go further:
References to Rémi Lefèbvre’s work, Politicizing intercommunality? The case of the 2020 local elections, Septentrion editions, 2023.
An article by Emmanuel Bellanger and François-Mathieu Poupeau: “Lights on the suburbs, history of the intercommunal union of the outskirts of Paris for electricity and communication networks.”
Political coalitions: a French blockageinvestigation by Anne Chemin published in Le Monde.
In local communities, the “culture of consensus” allows coalitions to emerge. Article published in Le Monde.
Intercommunalities: a culture of compromise that could inspire the national level? Article from the Gazette des Communes.
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