BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES ESSAIS –

As presidential candidates begin to declare their intentions, they all agree that the country is facing a political crisis. Benjamin Morel, in his new book, “Political Crisis, Regime Crisis,” analyzes the ins and outs.

“After holding the planned consultations, I decided to give you back the choice of our parliamentary future by voting. So tonight, I dissolve the National Assembly,” announced President Emmanuel Macron in June 2024, following the results of the European elections. While this dissolution was not the first in the history of the Fifth Republic, it nevertheless sparked a major political crisis. How to explain this? Benjamin Morel, in his essay “Political Crisis, Regime Crisis” (Odile Jacob), seeks to answer this question by looking back in time.

His diagnosis is clear: “The crisis is not the eruption of the people into the regime, it is the disorganization of the mechanisms that transform its preferences into government,” he writes in the preamble. In other words, if the machine has long functioned, it seems to be rusting over time, casting doubt on the bipolarization between right and left that has long prevailed. The “catch-all parties”