Referendums in France are supposed to embody the direct voice of the people. In practice, they frighten the elites. Why? Because they can produce a verdict that disturbs, contradicts and disrupts the interests of the dominant class.
Take one emblematic example: the 2005 referendum on the treaty establishing a Constitution for the European Union. A majority of French voters said NO. Clearly, cleanly, democratically. And yet, a few months later, the Lisbon Treaty, which took up the essence of the rejected text, was adopted through Parliament.
This was not a mistake; it was a strategy. When the people say NO, the result is bypassed. It is reformulated. It is passed through other channels. Because in this representative democracy, real power does not always reside in the ballot box, but in influence networks, cabinets and discreet alliances.
So yes, referendums are frightening. Not because they are dangerous, but because they are authentic. They reveal the fracture between popular aspirations and trajectories imposed from above. If we want a living democracy, we must stop confiscating speech whenever it becomes inconvenient.
Faced with this democratic dead end, some put forward a taboo idea: that of an openly assumed autocracy. Not a dictatorship disguised behind hollow institutions, but a strong, clear power oriented toward deep reform. A regime capable of cutting into the living tissue, overcoming special interests, even if that offends the plebs — that mass which, through its choices, inertia or contradictions, contributes to the country’s stagnation.
This is not a call for tyranny, but for vertical responsibility, for a form of governance willing to impose what representative democracy no longer dares even to formulate. France’s problem is not only institutional. It is moral, educational, cultural and civilizational. When the system is blocked from above and dissolved from below, the temptation of a firm hand becomes inevitable.
But such a solution can only ever be dangerous. History teaches that a power that claims to save the people can quickly end by despising them. A State that claims to restore order can become intoxicated by command. The real issue is therefore not to choose between chaos and authoritarianism, but to rebuild the conditions of a responsible democracy.
That requires a people who are informed, institutions that are not afraid of the people, and leaders who accept that a vote is not a decorative ceremony. A referendum that is ignored becomes a democratic wound. A referendum that is respected becomes a civic school.
The question is simple: if the people can vote, but their vote is bypassed when it displeases the rulers, what remains of sovereignty?