The Return of Parliaments? On France and South Korea’s resistance to authoritarian executives
On Wednesday 4 December 2024, French Prime Minister Michel Barnier was forced to resign after 3 short months in office – the shortest government in recent French history. On the very same day, in South Korea, President Yoon Suk Yeol was threatened with impeachment. What unites these two cases are attempts to ascertain power and bypass parliaments, in a context of budgetary disagreements. These cases remind us of the importance and democratic value of parliamentary assemblies, which have frequently been sidelined in favor of executives in recent decades.
The censure of the Barnier government
Michel Barnier was appointed Prime Minister by President Macron three months ago despite the very low score of his party – Les Républicains (LR, traditional right) – in the early legislative elections of July 2024. Emmanuel Macron presumably saw him as the balance point in a grand coalition of the Right, since his party (LR) is slightly further to the right than Macron’s (Ensemble) and slightly less than Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN).
A right-wing coalition externally supported by the far-right was, from an ideological viewpoint (and in the absence of a clear cordon sanitaire), more “natural” than any other association that would have seen the Left mixed with the Right. As the boundary between the traditional right and the far right has become very porous in recent years, it didn’t seem too difficult to find compromises by staying on that side of the spectrum. Despite this, the partners quarreled over the central issue of the budget (thus, taxes and public spending). The Prime Minister tried to force his way through with a widely used constitutional disposition (49.3) which allows bills to be passed without a vote in parliament. In so doing, he exposed himself to a motion of censure (vote of no confidence), which allows a majority of MPs to force the government to resign. Despite the executive’s blackmail, which promised the seven plagues of Egypt (or at least a ‘Greek-style scenario’), parliamentarians were not impressed and voted the motion of censure with a very clear majority (331 out of 577 MPs), the left-wing opposition having been joined by the far right for the occasion.
If this censure is to be welcomed despite this unpleasant occasional alliance between left and far-right, it is mostly from the viewpoint of democracy. It marks a halt – temporary, no doubt, but symbolically important – in the great shift of power, over the last few decades, from parliaments to executives. Today, parliaments are often no more than a sounding board for the wishes of the executive (power shared in some countries between the President and the Prime Minister), which often resents the uncertainty and slowness of parliamentary work and claims to embody strong and effective power.
In the French context, the frequent use of the 49.3 proviso, by both Right and Left, is the best illustration of this domination of the executive. However, since the last legislative elections in 2024, which for the first time in a long time failed to produce a single winner, parliament has regained significant blocking power. In the absence of a guaranteed majority in parliament, the executive cannot just force its way through. And so much the worse if this makes work on the budget more difficult (the old budget can always be renewed pending a new agreement, thus allowing a Greek nightmare). France will have to come to terms with a situation that is well known in consensual political systems: the need to make genuine compromises, rather than concede a few bits to the opposition. That’s the rule when you’re in a minority, and Michel Barnier learned it the hard way.
The South Korean president’s disavowal
At the exact same time, in South Korea, it was the conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol who tried to force his way in by declaring martial law, a kind of state of emergency, in an impulsive and uncoordinated manner. Also frustrated by his inability to pass his budget without compromise, annoyed by the opposition’s attempts to investigate suspicious practices by the First Lady, and shamelessly denouncing the ‘dictatorship’ of the legislature, he declared martial law on the evening of Tuesday 3 December, thereby strengthening the powers of the army and suspending some civil rights. Concretely, it means for example that anyone suspected of violating martial law can be arrested without a warrant. In short, a clear authoritarian turn.
The parliamentary response was swift: although access to the building was blocked by the army (some MPs had to climb over the fence to vote), the declaration of martial law was invalidated by the 190 MPs out of 300 who were (or managed to get) inside, with some members of the President’s party (PPP) uniting their votes with those of the main opposition party (the Democratic Party). As a result, the next morning, the South Korean President was forced to publicly renounce his plan, while demonstrations denouncing his coup multiplied across the country.
President Yoon Suk Yeol then faced a motion of impeachment, initiated by the opposition and widely supported by public opinion (over 73.6%). A supermajority of two-thirds was required for this to happen, but after hesitations, his party accepted his public apologies and decided not to support the impeachment. Worse, they boycotted the vote, thereby making it impossible to meet the required quorum of participation.
This is highly regrettable, but the most important is that MPs from his party at least opposed him at the key moment, overturning the martial law. Even if it was the opposition that had the majority in parliament, this episode of partial cross-partisan democratic unity against an authoritarian president showed all the importance of a parliament that is not subjected to the executive.
The democratic value of parliaments
What these two recent episodes remind us of is that the democratic institution par excellence in modern democracies is the parliament. It is parliamentarians, far more than the prime minister or the president, who acquire a relatively strong democratic legitimacy through elections (although there are debates on the limits of electoral legitimacy). This may seem quite obvious in countries where neither the Prime Minister nor the President (if there is one) are directly elected by the people. But it is also true in countries like France and South Korea, where the president is directly elected by the people.
A parliament, taken as a whole, is slightly more representative of social diversity and much more representative of the ideological diversity of the population than a president. Presidential elections under uninominal voting methods (i.e. when you can only vote for one person) bring to power little consensual candidates, who may only enjoy the real support of a quarter of the population. Moreover, a decision taken by a parliament is often enriched by parliamentary work to inform and reconcile points of view (although one may regret that parliaments are not more deliberative). In contrast, decision-making by a president or prime minister still resembles far too much the monarchical logic of the ancien régime. Finally, entrusting too much power to a single person is to expose ourselves dangerously to authoritarian backsliding, as illustrated to varying degrees by the recurrent use of 49.3 in France and the permanent temptation to install a state of emergency, as in South Korea. A strong parliamentary system is much more resistant to authoritarianism than a presidential system.
Defending democracy at the present time undoubtedly means thinking of supplements to elections, which produce only limited legitimacy. But it also means defending parliaments, the most democratic institution in existence today, in the face of the shift in power towards the executive that is underway across democracies.
This text was originally published in French by Politique: revue d’analyse et de débats.
