In Toulouse on April 3, in Jean Luc Mélenchon’s last open-air rally of the campaign, a man held an enormous colorful sign that read, “For the Sixth Republic.” The existing republican order, the fifth in France’s postrevolutionary history, had come to its natural end, schoolteacher Damien told me. It is “way too monarchical, way too autocratic,” he said. “We might as well proclaim a Third Empire!”

Flore, who brought a sign made by her nine-year-old daughter, said that part of Mélenchon’s appeal was that he knew how to take good influences from wherever they came. The Référendum d’initiative citoyenne proposal — allowing citizens to propose legislation if they can collect enough signatures for a referendum — was inspired by the Revolución Ciudadano in Ecuador, she explained.

Mélenchon had first formally elaborated what the Sixth Republic could mean in 2010, when he wrote a short book whose titled could be translated as Get them all out! Quick, the Citizens’ Revolution. “The Citizens’ Revolution,” Mélenchon wrote, “is the concept proposed in Ecuador by Rafael Correa during the 2006 presidential election, which he won. This revolution was first of all constitutional. It gave by referendum full powers to the National Constituent Assembly.” This meant, Mélenchon explains, a citizens’ revolution in “institutions, social relations, and the dominant culture.”