Bottom-up democracy, blame and a republican monarch among the ‘déclassés’

ABSTRACT As Emmanuel Macron confided to the journalist Cécile Amar, he owed his success to the weakness of the political system, while his anti-system presidential vehicle, La République en Marche, prided itself on being the antithesis of the old party machines, its ranks filled by individuals whose feet were firmly planted in civil society. Yet as his presidency progressed, it became clear that Macron’s agenda for renewal and reform was undermined by an approach to the presidency that in form and substance was more typical of a Fifth republic presidential monarch. This article examines the repeated attempts to open a new dialogue with the French people, notably following the eruption of the Gilets jaunes movement, and the gap between political discourse and political instinct which, on the cusp of a new mandate, left Macron himself as a kind of “président déclassé.”