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Cohabitation is a system of divided government that occurs in semi-presidential systems, such as France, whenever the president is from a different political party than the majority of the members of parliament.
When, in the 1986 legislative election, the French people elected a right-of-centre assembly, Socialist president François Mitterrand was forced into cohabitation with right-wing premier Jacques Chirac. [15] However, in 2000, amendments to the French constitution reduced the length of the French president's term to five years. This has ...
When parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum control parliament and the presidency, the power-sharing arrangement is known as cohabitation. Before 2002, cohabitation occurred more commonly, because the term of the president was seven years and the term of the National Assembly was five years.
The French economy shrugging off the early 1980s recession with 4% growth that year put the economy off the minds of voters as well as popular social programs being implemented, both of which gave Mitterrand the economic argument to achieve a second term despite the fallback in the last legislative election that caused cohabitation.
"It is the leading political grouping in the National Assembly that is to govern, so the President of the Republic has a duty to summon a prime minister from the new Popular Front to the Matignon ...
Following a tradition started by the first National Assembly during the French Revolution, the left-wing parties sit to the left as seen from the president's seat and the right-wing parties to the right; the seating arrangement thus directly indicates the left–right political spectrum as represented in the assembly.
He appealed to part of the conservative electorate, notably some RPR voters. The right-wing opposition was divided on the question of an alliance with the FN. In 1985, President Mitterrand's decision to re-establish party-list proportional representation at the legislative election caused political outrage. The RPR/UDF opposition accused him of ...
Cohabitation and regime voting in the 2002 French elections." British Journal of Political Science 35.4 (2005): 691–712. Online; Laver, Michael, Kenneth Benoit, and Nicolas Sauger. "Policy competition in the 2002 French legislative and presidential elections." European Journal of Political Research 45.4 (2006): 667–697. Lewis-Beck, M. ed.