From one perspective, Macron is the most successful centrist politician of his generation.
He won the presidency twice. He shattered the traditional party system of the Fifth Republic. He reduced the once-dominant Socialist Party to near irrelevance. He accelerated Les Républicains’ decline. He assembled a coalition that drew support from moderate social democrats, liberals, business interests, technocrats, and pro-European conservatives.
In purely electoral terms, this achievement was extraordinary.
Yet viewed from another perspective, Macron’s project has been far less successful. Despite repeatedly defeating both the nationalist right and the far left, France today appears more polarised than when he first entered office. A durable new consensus has not replaced the parties the former socialist displaced.
Instead, they have given way to an increasingly unstable political landscape dominated by three rival blocs: the centre, represented by Macron and his successors; the nationalist right, represented by Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement National (National Rally); and the left coalition, organised around Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise.
For much of the period following the end of the Cold War, French politics appeared to be converging toward the same destination as much of the rest of Western Europe. The great ideological struggles that had defined the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seemed increasingly exhausted.
The old antagonism between capitalism and socialism had lost much of its force. European integration deepened. Markets expanded. Economic management became more technocratic. Elections remained fiercely contested. But the range of acceptable outcomes appeared increasingly narrow.
The centre-left and centre-right continued to alternate in power, yet they did so within a shared framework. Disagreements persisted over taxation, welfare spending, labour regulations, and social policy, but the underlying architecture of political and economic life remained largely uncontested.
Politics increasingly concerns the management of a common reality rather than the struggle between fundamentally different visions of society.
This arrangement was not unique to France. It characterised much of the North Atlantic world. Yet France occupies a distinctive place within the story because it has long functioned as a political laboratory for Europe.
Revolutionary traditions remain unusually powerful. Intellectual debates often penetrate public life more deeply than in other contexts. Political realignments that emerge in France frequently illuminate broader transformations occurring throughout the democratic world.
That’s what makes Emmanuel Macron’s failure to craft a sustainable centre so important. It illuminates the predicament confronting centrist politics throughout the democratic world.
The conventional explanation for the rise of movements such as the RN and LFI focuses on extremism. Citizens have become more polarised. Social media has fragmented public discourse. Demagogues have exploited fears and resentments.
The political centre, according to this account, is under siege from increasingly irrational forces operating at the edges of the political system.
Although there is some truth to this interpretation, it mistakes a symptom for a cause. The more important question is not why the populist left and nationalist right have become stronger. Political movements do not emerge from nowhere. They become influential when they successfully articulate frustrations that existing institutions can no longer absorb.
The real question is why increasing numbers of citizens have begun to believe that alternatives to the existing order are necessary.
The rise of Macron was itself a response to a crisis of the old political system. By the middle of the 2010s, both the Parti socialiste (PS) and Les Républicains were exhausted.
François Hollande’s presidency had disappointed much of the left. Nicolas Sarkozy’s political coalition had begun to fragment. Economic stagnation, high unemployment, growing distrust of institutions, and dissatisfaction with traditional parties created an opening for something new.
Macron’s answer was ambitious. Rather than choosing between left and right, he proposed to transcend the distinction altogether. His movement presented itself as pragmatic rather than ideological, modern rather than doctrinaire, competent rather than partisan.
The objective was not merely to win elections. It was to create a new governing centre capable of replacing the increasingly dysfunctional party system that had dominated French politics for decades.
For a time, the strategy appeared remarkably successful. Macron’s victory in 2017 seemed to confirm the possibility of post-ideological politics. Across Europe, observers wondered whether France had discovered a formula for overcoming the growing polarisation that afflicted other democracies. Yet the apparent success concealed a deeper weakness.
Macronism was not simply a political coalition. It was a wager on a particular historical moment.
The presumption was that voters would continue to prioritise competence over ideology, expertise over identity, administration over conflict, and stability over transformation.
This reasoning depended upon the belief that the fundamental structures of contemporary society remained broadly acceptable, even if they required periodic adjustment and reform. The difficulty is that the conditions supporting those assumptions have steadily deteriorated.
The financial crisis of 2008 undermined confidence in economic expertise.
The eurozone crisis weakened trust in European governance. The pandemic exposed vulnerabilities within global supply chains. Inflation returned after decades of relative stability. Housing costs increased. Public services came under growing strain. Economic growth slowed. Geopolitical tensions intensified.
The optimism that characterised the first decades after the Cold War gradually evaporated. Each of these developments might have been manageable in isolation. Together, however, they produced a more fundamental shift in political consciousness.
Citizens experiencing stagnant wages, rising costs, insecure employment, and declining trust in institutions eventually begin asking uncomfortable questions.
If experts are managing the system, why does it appear increasingly dysfunctional? If globalisation benefits everyone, why do its rewards appear so unevenly distributed? If existing institutions are working, why do so many people feel powerless?
Such questions do not automatically produce support for either the left or the right. They do, however, create conditions under which alternatives to the status quo become increasingly attractive. This helps explain why the contemporary centre faces difficulties that are not merely electoral but structural.
The traditional centre-left and centre-right parties of the postwar era possessed deep social roots.
Social democratic parties emerged from labour movements, trade unions, and working-class institutions. Conservative parties often drew support from churches, local associations, business communities, and regional networks. Their voters tended to regard themselves not merely as supporters of parties but as proud members of political traditions.
The coalition that put Macron in power was different.
Its strength lay in its breadth. It attracted educated professionals, managerial elites, business interests, moderate conservatives, urban voters, and citizens committed to European integration. Yet these groups were united primarily by shared preferences rather than by a common political identity.
They agreed on what they wished to avoid, but were less certain about what they might collectively seek to achieve. As a result, Macronism was an electoral alliance more than a durable political movement.
The contemporary French centre’s strongest arguments concern not what must be done but what would be impossible to do.
The centre excels at explaining constraints. It explains why public spending cannot increase indefinitely. It explains why economic realities impose limits. It explains why complete national sovereignty is impossible in an interconnected world. It explains why international cooperation remains necessary.
Many of these arguments are correct. Unfortunately, politics is rarely won through correctness alone.
In contrast with the centre, the left and right offer visions.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right RN tells a story of national recovery. Its leaders argue that France has lost control over its borders, its economy, and its future. Sovereignty has been diluted. Democratic accountability has weakened. National identity has eroded.
The remedy the party proposes is to restore agency by reasserting national authority.
Whether one agrees with this diagnosis is almost beside the point. Its appeal lies in the promise that collective action can alter circumstances. It offers voters a sense that the political arena still retains the power to shape events.
The French left offers a different but equally ambitious vision. Mélenchon and La France Insoumise reject the assumption that economic constraints should dictate political outcomes. They argue that democratic institutions have become subordinate to market imperatives and technocratic rules.
Public needs, in this view, are routinely sacrificed to fiscal orthodoxy and investor confidence. The solution is not national restoration but democratic intervention: expanded public investment, stronger social provision, economic planning, and a renewed assertion of political authority over economic life.
Again, the crucial feature is not the specific program. It is the promise of empowerment. Both movements tell voters that politics can still matter. This is precisely where the centre encounters its greatest difficulty.
Centrist leaders keep warning that both alternatives contain significant dangers. The nationalist right threatens liberal institutions, minority protections, and international cooperation. The far left threatens fiscal stability, investor confidence, and economic predictability.
These warnings are often justified. Yet they increasingly confront a difficult reality. Large numbers of citizens have begun asking whether the status quo is itself becoming dangerous.
The centre is strongest when it presents itself as the architect of prosperity and stability. It becomes weaker when it appears merely as the custodian of drift.
This problem has become increasingly visible in France. Macron’s electoral victories have repeatedly depended upon the formation of anti-extremist coalitions. Moderate voters who might otherwise disagree on numerous issues have united to prevent either Le Pen or Mélenchon from coming to power.
This strategy has worked. It has prevented both the nationalist right and the far left from governing. Yet a political order cannot indefinitely sustain itself through fear alone.
The “Republican Front” that has repeatedly mobilised against the RN is a defensive mechanism rather than a positive political project. It answers the question of what many voters wish to prevent, not what they wish to build. That distinction may prove decisive in the years ahead.
The central question facing France is no longer whether the centre can win elections. Macron has already demonstrated that it can. Nor is the question whether the centre remains more moderate than its opponents. It plainly does. The more important question is whether the centre can generate a vision of the future that inspires loyalty rather than merely reassuring voters.
For nearly a decade, French centrism has survived by presenting itself as the only responsible alternative to Le Pen on one side and Mélenchon on the other. Yet a politics organised primarily around the avoidance of catastrophe eventually encounters a difficult problem. Citizens begin to ask what it is actually for.
That question extends beyond France. Throughout much of the democratic world, the centre emerged during a period when many fundamental questions seemed settled. Its historic function was to manage a consensus. Today, by contrast, the centre finds itself defending that consensus against critics who reject its basic premises.
France stands at the forefront of this transformation. The country that once appeared to have discovered a new model of post-ideological governance now reveals the limitations of that model. Macron conquered the political centre more completely than any European leader of his generation. Yet the very success of that project has exposed its fragility.
The centre remains powerful. It continues to command substantial support. It retains important institutional advantages. What it no longer possesses is unquestioned authority.
The centre cannot hold because the age that produced it is passing away. The future of French politics will not be determined solely by whether the nationalist right or the far left continues to advance.
It will also be determined by whether the centre can rediscover a political language capable of offering more than competence, stability, and the management of constraints.
Photograph courtesy of Jeanne Menjoulet. Published under a Creative Commons license.
