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That actually makes even more parallelism between them, since de Gaulle resigned in 46 in order to avoid being voted out and then came back in 1958 for the Algerian Crisis.

de Gaulle was a jackass, but he was the stubborn donkey that France needed. Much like his counterpart Churchill in England.

de Gaulle stepped down largely because although his *party* had won a sweeping victory in the 1968 elections, he personally was increasingly unpopular for his heavy-handed, autocratic style of leadership. Basically, de Gaulle's entire Presidency coasted on the massive amount of public trust...

In my opinion, the best leader France ever had was Napoleon III, and if one could combine Napoleon I and Napoleon III into a single man, he would pretty much be the best individual monarch in the history of the world. It says something that the civil reforms and infrastructure upgrades put in...

From a domestic French perspective, it's hard to say De Gaulle was wrong; the Fifth Republic has been a vastly more successful government than either of the previous regimes specifically because the President has the authority to cut through when the democratic process bogs down into an...

France has stronger protections in some areas, and weaker protections in others. For example as part of the EU, France does enforce a "right to be forgotten", whereas no such right exists in the United States other than the sealing of juvenile records.

Oh please, it is the English who are the absolute masters of passive-aggressive. The French are far, far more willing to openly tell you to your face that they don't like you.

Sigh. This is not a new thing; it has been the case for years and it is an implementation of EU regulations. If you actually pay attention to the details, private transactions are exempt, the restrictions are on large cash payments in commercial business, because they are used to evade VAT.

Every nation puts her own interest first, this is completely normal but somehow people decide France is specially bad because of it.

I hold French and American dual citizenship.

It is my country as well, and here is the full text of the Constitution of France: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000000571356/ Article 16 is "Pouvoirs exceptionnels" and Article 36 is "État de siège". Again, the French system of government explicitly *does not* have coequal...

This is absolutely incorrect. Article 49.3 is explicitly not emergency power; the emergency powers of the President of France are laid out in Article 16 (exceptional powers in time of crisis) and Article 36 (exceptional powers in time of siege). Article 49 is the normal authority of the...

That's very foolish considering that the history of every single version of French government strongly shows that the more power the people have, the *worse* things are. France was at its greatest when power was the most centralized in the King; France was at its weakest and worst during the...

Ancien Regime: Centralized monarchy under the House of Valois and then the House of Bourbon; late Middle Ages to 1789 First French Republic: French Revolution to Napoleon; 1792 to 1804. First French Empire: More Napoleon; 1804 to 1814. Bourbon Restoration: Return of the Kings; 1814 to 1830...

Bringing back the monarchy would be a rather paradoxical reaction to the President of France using his lawful authority “against" democracy.

Maybe. There’s certainly an argument that the pendulum was swung too far because de Gaulle is, well, de Gaulle. On the other hand, his temporary powers during the creation of the Fifth Republic were literally unlimited authority to rule by decree, and he legitimately stepped back from that...

Except it's not legalism, any more than the U.S. electoral college is a "legalism". This is literally the French government working in exactly the manner it is designed to work, and France literally owes its continued existence as a nation to having implemented broad Presidential authority in...

The thing about France is that by design, the President of France is far more of a direct ruler than the President of the United States. In the French system, the three branches of government are not supposed to be coequal as they are in the American system; rather, the executive branch is the...

Except it's not a problem at all. The government having the authority to pass laws by fiat is a core provision of the French Constitution, and was one of the specific reforms introduced in the Fifth Republic (1958) to correct the shortcomings of the Fourth Republic.