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Ex-president Hollande surprise candidate in French election

Former French Socialist president Francois Hollande on Saturday said he is to stand again for parliament in legislative elections -- a political comeback that took even his allies on the left by surprise.

Published: 15 June 2024 17:29 CEST

Former French President Francois Hollande waves as he arrives to attend the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France at the Louvre Carrousel in Paris

Former French President Francois Hollande waves as he arrives to attend the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France at the Louvre Carrousel in Paris on May 6, 2024. Hollande has said he would stand again for parliament in the upcoming elections. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP)

Hollande, France’s president from 2012-2017, left office with record levels of unpopularity and is detested by some within the radical left while even the Socialist leadership regard him with suspicion.

But he has had a relatively high media profile in the weeks leading up to President Emmanuel Macron’s dramatic calling of snap elections to combat the rise of the far right.

Hollande said he will stand as an MP for the southwestern Correze department for the New Popular Front, a left-wing union for the elections including Socialists, hard-left, Greens and Communists.

“An exceptional decision for an exceptional situation,” Hollande told reporters in the department’s main town of Tulle, describing his comeback.

Hollande has already backed the new broad left-wing union saying that we “must all do everything to make sure the far right does not come to power in France”.

Hollande is not the first president to run for legislative elections after leaving the Elysee Palace. In 1984, three years after his defeat against Francois Mitterrand in presidential elections, Valery Giscard d’Estaing was elected MP for the Puy-de-Dome department.

Officially, the Socialist Party reacted cooly to the move with the head of its election commission Pierre Jouvet simply saying that it “takes note” of the candidacy.

But one senior party figure, asking not to be named, said they were “devastated” by the news while admitting: “We said we wanted the broadest possible left wing.”

The elections, with a first round on June 30 and second on July 7, were called by Macron after the far right trounced his own centrist ruling party in this month’s European elections.

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Explained: What was France's Fourth Republic and why it's in the news again

Le spectre de la IVe République plane-t-il sur Macron ? – Is the spectre of the Fourth Republic hanging over Macron?

If you’re following French press coverage of the chaotic political situation in France right now, you might be coming across more and more sentences like this.

But while the Fourth Republic is a standard part of the French history syllabus, it doesn’t make it into many lesson plans outside France.

Here’s a look at what the Fourth Republic was, and why it might be relevant to the modern political crisis.

When

The 4th republic ran from 1946 to 1958. French history is divided into the ancien regième (pre French Revolution) and the post-Revolution period which is divided into a series of republics, interspersed with a few non-republic periods such as when Napoleon got carried away and declared himself emperor.

You can find a fuller history here, but in brief the republics go;

1792-1804 – first republic. Runs from the abolition of the monarchy during the French Revolution until Napoleon declared himself emperor
1848-1852 – second republic. Ended when Napoleon’s nephew Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) overthrew the government and declared a second French empire with himself at the head
1870-1940 – third republic. Ended with the Nazi invasion of France in 1940 when the republic was suspended and the period of the occupation and Vichy government began.
1946-1958 – fourth republic. This one ended with a threatened military coup over Algerian independence, a panicked government brought WWII resistance leader Charles de Gaulle back into government and passed a new constitution.
1958-present day – fifth republic.

Each republic has its own constitution with significant differences in aspects such as how the political system works and the powers of the president versus the government.

What was going on?

The Fourth Republic covered a turbulent period in French politics – in 1946 the country was emerging from one of the most traumatic periods in its history; the Nazi occupation of World War II.

Nearly bankrupt, the country was also dealing with the national shame of the occupation and the collapse of the democratic government in 1940 (replaced by the un-elected collaborationist Vichy regime).

The Fourth Republic ended in turmoil (as have all French republics so far, in fact) during the exceptionally brutal war of independence in Algeria.

Sensing that the government in Paris was paving the way for Algeria to be given independence from France, French soldiers in Algeria launched a military coup in opposition to this – the military also seized power in Corsica.

The national government panicked, fearing that insurrection could spread to France itself and other colonies.

Charles de Gaulle – who made his name as a figurehead of the French resistance during WWII and as the country’s first post-war leader – was called out of retirement to unite the country, restore order and avoid what some feared would become a civil war.

But what about the politics?

The Fourth Republic wasn’t just a turbulent period in history – it was also an extremely unstable period for governments.

Over its 12-year duration, there were a total of 24 governments.

Governments rose and fell with dizzying regularity – a man named Pierre Pflimlin was prime minister for a grand total of 18 days in 1958, and he wasn’t even the shortest-serving PM of the fourth republic.

Parliament was also frequently deadlocked, coalitions and alliances were made and broken rapidly and prime ministers came and went as through a revolving door – the shortest serving PM was Robert Schuman who served just nine days, but that was his second shot at the job.

Henri Queuille was prime minister three times, in 1948, 1950 and 1951 and his first period in the job was the longest premiership of the Fourth Republic, lasting a whopping one year and 47 days.

It was a reaction to this political chaos that strongly influenced the constitution of the Fifth Republic – set up with Charles de Gaulle at the head in 1958.

De Gaulle insisted that the president was given widespread powers, at the expense of parliament, in order to curb what he saw at the excess of parliamentary powers that contributed to the turmoil of the Fourth Republic.

It’s why the French president to this day has constitutional powers to over-rule parliament, for example through the tool known as Article 49.3 which allows a president to force through legislation even if parliament opposes it.

The Fifth Republic also set up the president as the dominant political power in France – previously that had been the prime minister, with the president having more of a ceremonial role.

Its sheer instability means that these days the Fourth Republic is little lamented – those who call for a complete change of the system of government and the creation of a Sixth Republic tend to skip over the fourth altogether and use as a model the Third Republic.

But this is ancient history, why are we talking about it now?

The Fourth Republic is back in the news because it looks like France may be facing a new period of chaos in parliament.

The snap parliamentary elections called by president Emmanuel Macron were intended to restore a sense of consensus, but look like they are backfiring and instead creating a more turbulent situation.

Current polls suggest that the far-right Rassemblement National will be the biggest party, but it’s not certain whether they will win enough seats in parliament to gain an absolute majority.

If the party wins a majority the most likely outcome is that Macron will be forced to appoint far-right leader Jordan Bardella as prime minister and rule jointly with him in a very uneasy cohabitation.

If the far-right become the biggest party but don’t get a majority the most likely result is chaos – with attempts to build fragile alliances or coalitions between parties.

The “spectre of the Fourth Republic” is therefore the spectre of chaos and deadlock in parliament and maybe even a PM who will break Robert Schuman’s unenviable record of just nine days in office.

OPINION: The best that France can hope for now is 12 months of chaos

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