Externe Publikationen

The French response to the Corona Crisis: semi-presidentialism par excellence

Burni, Aline / Benedikt Erforth
Externe Publikationen (2020)

published on Executives, Presidents and Cabinet Politics (PEX) Network, 07.05.2020

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This blog post analyses the response of the French government to the Coronavirus pandemic. The piece highlights how the semi-presidential system in France facilitates centralized decisions to manage the crisis. From a political-institutional perspective, it is considered that there were no major challenges to the use of unilateral powers by the Executive to address the health crisis, although the de-confinement phase and socio-economic consequences opens the possibility for more conflictual and opposing reactions. At first, approvals of the president and prime minister raised, but the strict confinement and the reopening measures can be challenging in one of the European countries with the highest number of deaths, where massive street protests, incarnated by the Yellow vests movement, have recently shaken the political scene.