Jupiterian Presidency and Representative Democracy: Presidential Authority between Symbolic Assertion and Sociopolitical Constraints under Macron.

This article examines how Emmanuel Macron has reinvested the presidential role through a vertical, solitary, and symbolically charged (i.e., Jupiterian) conception of power. Relying on the institutional specificities of the French Fifth Republic—further reinforced by the quinquennat reform and the inversion of the electoral calendar—Macron has consolidated the centralization of executive power, sidelining intermediary bodies and weakening parliamentary logic through the recurrent use of ordinances and Article 49.3 of the Constitution. The article also explores the impact of this intensified presidentialization on French representative democracy in a context marked by a growing distrust of political parties, the depoliticization of public debate, and the rise of citizen mobilizations outside traditional partisan structures. Using Colin Crouch's concept of post-democracy, it interrogates the dialectical relationship between Macronism and the erosion of classical democratic mechanisms. It concludes that Macron's style of governance is both a product and a catalyst of a post-democratic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]