Sunday’s French election runoff saw Emmanuel Macron reelected for another five-year term, on 58 percent of the vote. Yet with turnout at historic lows and an increased score for his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, the incumbent took the weakest popular vote for any winner since 1969. This narrowing support also owes to a broader weakening of the French party system over the last four decades, with the collapse of the old center-left and center-right parties that once mobilized public opinion.

In their book, The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France’s Political Crisis, economists Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini analyze the material bases of this shift, as former Socialists and Republicans have formed a new alliance behind Macron while marginalizing working people from political representation. By taking in forces from both these parties — and thus appearing to cross the previous center-left/right divide — Macron’s presidency intensified the class content of this project, accelerating France’s neoliberal transformation to the benefit of a handful of ultrarich individuals.

This shift has hollowed out the old main parties — resulting in the complete collapse of both the Socialists and Republicans, who totaled just 7 percent in the April 10 first round. Macron is thus a perfect symbol for the rise of a new “bourgeois bloc” that supposedly crosses the political spectrum yet itself struggles to mobilize popular support. After five years of Macron’s presidency, Sébastian Gillard met up with Amable to discuss the election.