Confronted with debt, environmental crisis, and insecurity, many French people feel the state is no longer up to the challenges. Some would accept an authoritarian leader to prevent collapse, even at the cost of democracy. Donald Trump’s election has served as a shock for some.
French people feel surrounded by major issues, including public debt, environmental crisis, and rising insecurity. They view the state as powerless against these challenges, fostering growing doubts about democracy. To avert a potential collapse, part of the population considers the arrival of a strongman in power, willing to curtail democratic freedoms.
Aurélien, a thirty-something from Paris’s 10th arrondissement, exemplifies this sentiment. Father to a newborn and a football enthusiast, he leads a personally fulfilling life but harbors deep anger toward the “French political flabbiness” he has known since childhood. Donald Trump’s second election in the United States acted as an “electrochoc” for him: “I realized, for the first time in my life, that politics could really have an impact,” he shares. In France, in his view, over the past twenty years, regardless of the leader, “absolutely nothing changes. Or only on the margins and often for the worse.”
This grand narrative highlights widespread frustration, where political inaction leads some to question the foundations of the democratic system.
