The French have shown that they like the cohabitation (with the power sharing), but they have also been frustrated at times by the inability of the state to act. Thus the recent reform that aligns presidential and parliamentary elections: both take place every 5 years, with the Presidential election taking place just before. Historically, the French have always provided a parliamentary majority to a just-elected president, and it happened again in 2002. But theoretically, the parliament could be from the other side, and it would be hard to know what would happen then - this has not been tested yet with the recent change of the presidential mandate in 2002 only.
France being still pretty centralised, local powers are not so important, and they are additionally split between departements (95 in metropolitan France) and regions (22 of them, usually 2 to 6 départements), with various powers allocated from the center, like school constructions and management (but with centralised programs), road management, and management of some social subsidies. Plus the big towns - and their mayors- are also pretty strong. You also have "communautés urbaines", i.e. an administrative grouping of big cities with their suburbs, to manage things like public transportation and pool local taxes to avoid beggar-thy-neighbor stuff and inequalities). Everybody agrees that one or two layers should be eliminated, but of course nonody wants to be the one to disappear...
Some regions are more typically to the left or the right, but you don't have the sharp differences as in the US. The most relevant difference is probably between Paris and the provinces or, increasingly, between the big cities and the rest. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The French "separation of powers" (if you can call it that) is still confusing to me. Would you say, for example, that Chirac has more power over France than Bush has over the U.S? Less? About the same?
Maybe a more concrete example would be helpful. Could Chirac have invaded Iraq without an act of Parliament? Could he declare French citizens "enemy combatants" and send them off to, say, St. Miquelon, to be abused, raped tortured and held indefinitely, the good old American way?
I think the French president has too much power. The constitution of the Fifth Republic, drawn up in 1958 in emergency conditions close to those of a coup d'état, was designed to put an end to parliamentary instability and put a strong hand at the helm, so to speak -- the strong hand being specifically Général de Gaulle's.
Since then, I think there has been some evolution toward rather more parliamentary activity, but the president still holds sweeping and all-permeating powers, to the extent that the office is often compared to that of a modern-day monarch. It's hard to compare with Bush, because he has Congress in lockstep, and is actively pursuing the increase of executive power. In other words, political conditions at a given time influence how much power a president has -- Chirac's on a down (referendum), Bush on an up (GOP hubris).
Foreign policy decisions in France are part of the king's -- oops, the president's -- field of power. As for declaring citizens "enemy combatants", no, I don't think that's possible -- but it isn't really a good "old" American way either, since it came in with the Patriot Act.
Conclusion -- I'd quite like to see a certain degree of constitutional reform in France. I'd just love to see a change of government in America... When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Gridlock seems awfully nice when the alternative is this. Happy little moron, lucky little man. I wish I was a moron, my God, perhaps I am! -- Spike Milligan
