France is having a genuinely strange year, even by its own standards for political drama. A government collapsed after 14 hours in office, the shortest in the country’s modern history. Nationwide student protests over school conditions have spread from the Paris region to cities across the country, with hundreds of arrests and, at the edges of some demonstrations, arson and violence. The sitting prime minister has called a crisis meeting while the government simultaneously tries to push through a painful cost cutting budget. None of this is happening in a vacuum. It is unfolding just as campaigning quietly begins for the 2027 election to choose the person who replaces Emmanuel Macron, who is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.
To understand how France got here, it helps to understand how its government actually works, since it is built very differently from the American system most readers are used to. France elects a president directly, in a separate national vote, the way Americans are used to thinking about presidential elections. But the president does not automatically control the legislature. France’s National Assembly, its equivalent of the House of Representatives, is elected in its own separate contest, and the prime minister who actually runs day to day government needs that body’s confidence to survive, somewhat like a parliamentary system layered on top of a presidential one. When a French president’s party does not hold a working majority in the Assembly, as has been the case since a snap legislative election in 2024 scrambled the chamber into fragments, the president is stuck appointing prime ministers who then have to survive a legislature nobody fully controls.
That is exactly the trap Sébastien Lecornu has been living in. Macron appointed him prime minister in September 2025 after the previous government collapsed. Lecornu’s first attempt at forming a cabinet lasted barely half a day before public backlash, infighting with the conservative Republicans party, and disputes over a wealth tax proposal forced its resignation, the shortest government in French history. Macron reappointed him days later, and the second Lecornu government has spent its time since dodging no confidence votes from both the far left and the far right, surviving mainly because the Socialist Party has been willing to prop it up in exchange for walking back an earlier pension reform.
The protests layering on top of that instability are, at least on their surface, about something more mundane than national budget politics. High school students, starting in schools around Paris, began demonstrating over overcrowded classrooms, long school days, and a shortage of substitute teachers. The government’s proposed 2027 austerity budget landed the same week as a crisis meeting over the unrest, and critics across the political spectrum have been quick to tie frustration over school conditions to the broader argument over government spending cuts. Authorities have made hundreds of arrests, and incidents including a school fire and clashes between police and protesters have made this one of the more serious waves of unrest France has seen in years.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of a presidential race that has not officially started but is already shaping political behavior. Macron cannot run again next May under France’s two term limit, and potential successors are already positioning themselves around how they respond to the current chaos. Far left leader Mélenchon has accused the government of a repressive response to the protests, while critics have accused his own political camp of stoking unrest for electoral advantage. Opposition parties on both the far left and far right have renewed calls for Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call snap legislative elections, a power the French president holds that has no real American equivalent, since nothing in the U.S. Constitution lets a sitting president simply call new elections for Congress whenever gridlock becomes unbearable.
Why this matters to voters
Americans tend to assume political dysfunction looks the same everywhere, but France’s current crisis is a useful contrast precisely because its system is built so differently from ours. A government that can collapse in 14 hours, a president who can dissolve the legislature outright, and a presidential race that effectively starts years before the actual vote because of a hard term limit are all features of a system engineered on fundamentally different assumptions than the ones Americans vote under. Watching how France resolves this, through the current budget fight, the ongoing protests, and whatever shape the 2027 campaign eventually takes, offers a real time look at how a different democracy handles the kind of gridlock and instability that, in the American system, tends to get absorbed more slowly and less visibly.
Watch more here:
“EXPLAINER: FRANCE Government Collapses in Hours — What Went Wrong?”
References
Wikipedia, Second Lecornu government
PBS NewsHour, Student protests grip France as Prime Minister Lecornu calls crisis meeting
France 24, France’s dissolution of parliament, snap elections: What happens next?
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