End of the primary post-dissolution parliamentary session: the time for the steadiness sheet | EUROtoday

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In the Assembly, July 8, 2025.

QUEL is the end result on the finish of a yr with a nationwide meeting characterised by an absence of a majority as a result of a nationwide illustration exploded in eleven parliamentary teams and a number of other blocks and each reverse?

To perceive this topic in an authentic and enlightening means, it could be fascinating to begin from the work of the American political scientist George Tsebelis. In VETO Players, How Political Institutions Work? (Princeton University Press, 2002), he developed the eponymous idea of “veto players”.

The “veto players” (or vet gamers) are ” actors whose agreement is required for a change in the status quo ».

Tsebelis’ theory may simply be summarized: the ability to reform depends on the number of veto players and the ideological distance that separates them. There is status quo if the number of “veto gamers” is important and if there is an important ideological distance between them.

For Tsebelis, the coalitions, such as that bringing together the parties from the presidential majority and the Republicans, have several veto. This plurality of vet players is even more marked within a national assembly exploded in 11 parliamentary groups and three main blocks, opposed to each other, at least two of which must agree to reach a majority. From this configuration within the lower chamber, a coalition government is the result of a greater ideological distance between the parties that compose it.

Conversely, in an absolute majority situation as we have known under the XIVᵉ and XVᵉ legislatures for example, the number of “veto gamers” within French institutions was reduced as well as their ideological distance.

We will not enter the detail of the theory of Tsebelis vet players and will not, not,, for the sake of readability,Setter agenda And the distinction between individual or collective vet actors or between institutional and supporters’ “veto gamers”.

Above all, let us remember that the theory of veto players claims that when there are many “veto gamers”, a greater number of laws is adopted but these laws are less important.

The data* of the ordinary session which has just ended will go in the direction of this theory. There have indeed been a greater number of texts adopted but of less importance.

This seems the case, at first glance, seeing the title of certain texts adopted this year such as the law aimed at facilitating the transformation of offices into housing or the law aimed at establishing a contraventional sanction system to prevent the development of unclear vines which represent a health threat to the entire French vineyard. Where the 2014-2015 ordinary session was marked by the adoption of several reforms like the law strengthening the provisions relating to the fight against terrorism, the intelligence law or the redistribution of the regions.

But it seems more appropriate to objectify this by means of statistical elements.

First making a salient during this session, the strengthening of the increase in the proportion of law proposals (PPL) adopted in relation to bills (PJL), a trend already observed during the sixteenth legislature although in a lesser scale.

Following our count, 36 PPL and only 8 PJL (excluding international conventions) were adopted during this ordinary session against 10 PPL and 16 PJL during the ordinary session 2014-2015 which serves as a comparison. This can be presented in a more telling way visually by the following two graphics, designed from the statistical data published by the Assembly:

The law proposals tend to be shorter and lower texts than bills which would go in the direction of Tsebelis’ theory. This is confirmed by the data on the length of the texts.

The average length of the texts was more than 25 articles and almost 8,050 words during the 2014-2015 ordinary session against less than 16 articles and less than 7,350 words during the ordinary session 2024-2025.

But these data, taking the form of averages, are sensitive to extreme values.

If we are interested in the medians, the data is even more talking.

The median length of the texts of the ordinary session 2014-2015 is 10 articles and 3,240 words while it is 3 articles and 640 words for the session 2024-2025.

These data clearly confirm the fact that the texts adopted during this ordinary session are shorter than in the absolute majority configuration of the ordinary session 2014-2015.

Some graphics can allow us to visually illustrate this state of affairs.

What is obvious is the decline in the proportion of texts of more than 10 articles, the number of which goes from 13 to 9 (including the PLF, the PLFSS and a text of transposition of European texts among the 9 texts of the ordinary session 2024-2025) and which has as a corollary the progression of the texts of less than 10 articles which go from 13 to 35.

Where the big texts predominated in an absolute majority, it is essentially short texts that have been adopted in a national assembly exploded between several blocks.

Finally, note that a larger number of texts (44) were adopted during this session than during the 2014-2015 ordinary session (26).

George Tsebelis’ the theory of “veto gamers” therefore seems to be confirmed in fact in the framework of this 18th legislature.

Is this profusion of legislative texts of parliamentary initiative beneficial for the quality of the writing of the law and parliamentary work? We can doubt it.

If the power of initiative of the Parliament is de facto reinforced, the power of amendment could be passed in the background and the intensity of the lessened parliamentary debates. In Parliament, where we parliament, the initiative of the texts seems to have as a corollary a weakening of speech as the time of the debates seems to be shortened by the bottling of legislative texts observed throughout the year.

Often, during this session, the deputies and their teams had only 24 hours to deposit their amendments for the public meeting on the text adopted in committee.

The activity reduced almost by two, this year, contributors to this blog thus seems to reflect this state of affairs, the legislative rate having left them too little time to write articles.

*We recorded the number of texts adopted definitively during the ordinary session and having been the subject of an adoption in the National Assembly during this same session. The quantification of the length of the texts was carried out from the final version of the text outside the appendices (and financial statements). The 2014-2015 ordinary session was chosen in order to have the most comparable ordinary session possible. Like the 2024-2025 session, it was effectively of the third ordinary session of the presidential five-year period (we can indeed hypothesize that an ordinary session at the start or end of the five-year period will be characterized by a difference in reform momentum). The comparison with the more recent 2019-2020 session was not possible due to the impact of the COVVI-19 on parliamentary activity.

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