The French election results have been interpreted through the lens of US and UK politics, but this framework ignores the political strategy that led Macron to victory.  The diagnosis of a fracture between the educated, urban cosmopolitans and the rural, poorly educated, anti-globalists might be part of the story, as is the dissolution of France’s traditional centre-left and centre-right parties. But what this narrative ignores is that Macron is not the passive victim of this political landscape, somehow managing to navigate it, but its creator. Macron’s strategy was to dominate the political centre of French politics -  the resulting polarization was the reason behind his victory, argues Stathis Kalyvas.

Emmanuel Macron just won a new presidential term in France by defeating his far-Right opponent Marine Le Pen by 58,54% to 41,46%. His election caused considerable relief, as a victory for the far right would have posed a major threat to both domestic and international institutions.  At the same time, however, the dominant mood was more one of concern and apprehension than elation or joy. Although Marine Le Pen failed to win, she obtained an unprecedented share of the vote. But the main narratives and framing of this result misunderstand the reasons behind Macron’s victory, and the strategy that lead him to it.

French politics have been bitter and polarized reflecting the type of electoral demography that gave us Donald Trump and Brexit, namely a fracture between an urban, cosmopolitan, highly educated, financially well-off, optimistic, pro-globalization and pro-European integration segment of French society represented by Macron and a rural and exurban, parochial, poorly educated, lower middle class and working-class, pessimistic, anti-globalization and anti-European integration segment that went all the way for Marine Le Pen. What is more, Macron’s victory came at the cost of the total collapse of the party system that sustained the Fifth Republic and guaranteed the stability of its institutions, a system based on the political domination of Socialists on the left and Gaullists on the right. But this dissolution of the traditional parties wasn’t a bug, as they say, but a feature of Macron’s strategy.

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The above elements that have led many observers to dismiss Macron’s victory, bringing up the spectre of a crisis of legitimacy threatening France’s democratic foundations. “Macron May Keep the Presidency, but Le Pen Has Already Won” was the title of the New York Times main opinion piece on the eve of the second round. While these observers have a point, they are reversing the logic of Macron’s victorious enterprise. Polarization is less the regrettable emanation of socio-economic discontent that risks engulfing Macron and the democratic institutions of France, and more the inevitable side-effect of his amazingly successful political strategy. Likewise, the collapse of the French party system is less the result of polarization and more the outcome of Macron’s strategy. For he won not in spite of polarization, but because of it. To understand how, is to be alerted to something that most observers tend to disregard: Macron has self-consciously and single-handedly reengineered the French party system in a way that can only be compared to General Charles de Gaulle’s singular reorganization of French politics back in 1958.