The Parliamentarian Majority’s Small Leeway on Policies: The Executive-Legislative Relationship in the French National Assembly

The French Fifth Republic is widely known as a system in which the President generally holds considerable powers because of the unfailing support of the parliamentary majority. This strong presidentialism is indeed a consequence of the emergence of a clear and stable majority which – most of the time – supports the President of the Republic as its paramount leader. As a result, the French National Assembly is commonly referred as a rubber-stamping chamber where governmental decisions are passed effortlessly whereas the true head of executive power is not accountable to the Parliament – unlike traditional parliamentary systems. Nevertheless, the concrete modalities of the executive-legislative relations are mostly yet to be investigated. Despite majority rule and party discipline, executive’s domination is neither absolute nor unlimited, and the parliamentary majority has still some leeway to influence policies. Deputies of the majority are not simply yes-men – or not all of them – and the presidential support in National Assembly does not dispense the executive power from accepting some, even minor, compromises and accommodations, in order to secure a clear majority when essential issues are at stake. Firstly, government’s MPs influence policies through private member’s bills. It is generally considered that those bills are a very marginal part of the legislation passed by Parliament and even that some of them are in fact disguised government’s bills. For large extent that is true, but some government’s backbenchers do manage to pass laws despite passivity or even reluctance of the executive, relying on their expertise on the subject and their ability to elicit support in the parliamentary party. Secondly, government’s bill are not always passed in the version initially intended by the executive. Most of the legislative process is controlled by the Prime Minister and the government has many constitutional and political tools to avoid unwanted amendments. But depending on the political and parliamentarian situation and the nature of the bill considered, some of them may be more subject to MPs’ amendments than other. Government also is able to make concessions to elicit the support of its majority on bills more important to him. To demonstrate this small but concrete influence of government’s backbenchers, I use a variety of empirical data: statistics on legislative activities (laws passed, private member’s bills, amendments to government’s bills), field observation and interviews with parliamentarians. This paper intends to study the complex reality of the rule of majority and intra-party politics in the French National Assembly and what we learn from the relatively rare instances where parliamentarians actually and partially make the law.