All these courts are subject to the control of the Court of Cassation, as are the specialized professional courts, such as courts for industrial conciliation, courts-martial, and, from 1963 to 1981, the Court of State Security, which tried felonies and misdemeanours against national security. Very exceptionally, in cases of high treason, a High Court of Justice (Cour de Justice de la République), composed of members of the National Assembly and of senators, is empowered to try the president of the republic and the ministers. They can also be tried by this court if they have committed felonies or misdemeanours during their term of office. These are the only situations in which the Court of Cassation is not competent to review the case. Otherwise, the court examines judgments in order to assess whether the law has been correctly interpreted; if it finds that this is not the case, it refers the case back to a lower court.
The more than 5,000 judges are recruited by means of competitive examinations held by the National School of the Magistracy, which was founded in 1958 and in 1970 replaced the National Centre for Judicial Studies. A traditional distinction is made between the magistrats du siège, who try cases, and the magistrats de parquet (public prosecutors), who prosecute. Only the former enjoy the constitutional guarantee of irremovability. The High Council of the Judiciary is made up of 20 members originally appointed by the head of state from among the judiciary. Since 1993, however, its members have been elected, following reforms designed to free the judiciary from political control. The Council makes proposals and gives its opinion on the nomination of the magistrats du siège. It also acts as a disciplinary council. Public prosecutors act on behalf of the state. They are hierarchically subject to the authority of the minister of justice. Judges can serve successively as members of the bench (siège) and the public prosecutor’s department. They act in collaboration with, but are hierarchically independent of, the police. Administrative courts
One of the special characteristics of the French judicial system is the existence of a hierarchy of administrative courts whose origins date to Napoleon. The duality of the judicial system has been sometimes regarded unfavourably, but the system has come to be gradually admired and indeed widely adopted in continental European countries and in the former French colonies. The administrative courts are under the control of the Council of State, which examines cases on appeal. The Council of State thus plays a crucial part in exercising control over the government and the administration from a jurisdictional point of view and ensures that they conform with the law. It is, moreover, empowered by the constitution to give its opinion on proposed bills and on certain decrees. Political process
Universal suffrage at the age of 21 has existed in France since 1848 for men and since 1944 for women; the age of eligibility was lowered to 18 in 1974. Legislation enacted in the late 1990s penalizes political parties for failing to maintain sufficient parity between male and female candidates. Candidates for the National Assembly must receive a majority, not a plurality, of votes, and, if no candidate receives an absolute majority, then a second ballot is held the following week and the post is awarded to the plurality winner. Elections follow the model of single-member districts rather than proportional representation within a district. Two-phase voting is also used for the presidency, with the exception that, if an absolute majority is not reached after the first ballot, then only the two highest vote getters are considered for the second ballot, which is contested two weeks later.
Historically, French political parties have been both numerous and weak, which is generally accepted as the reason governments fell frequently before the advent of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Since then there has been a degree of streamlining, although, especially among centrist groups, parties are still poorly organized and highly personalized. Indeed, there have been many vicissitudes in the fortunes of the main parties since the late 1950s. In the 1960s and early ’70s, Charles de Gaulle’s centre-right party—first named Union for the New Republic (UNR) and later Rally for the Republic (RPR)—dominated the elections. After the election of the centrist Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to the presidency in 1974, the Gaullist party declined, while the centrists (from 1978 as the Union for French Democracy; UDF) and Socialists gained in strength. From 1981 and with the election of the Socialist president François Mitterrand, the Socialist Party became dominant, its gains being made primarily at the expense of the Communists. It was the first time since 1958 that the left had taken the leadership in French politics. While the Gaullists achieved a comeback with the appointment of Édouard Balladur as prime minister in 1993 and the election of Jacques Chirac as president in 1995, the Socialists regained control of the government during 1997–2002, when Lionel Jospin served as prime minister. In 2002 Chirac was reelected to the presidency under the coalition banner of the Union for Presidential Majority (UMP), decisively putting down Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Front, who had surprised many with his strong showing in the first round of balloting. The UMP retained control of the presidency and the government following the 2007 election of Nicolas Sarkozy, but it was swept from office by the Socialists in 2012. François Hollande defeated the incumbent Sarkozy in the presidential race, and the Socialist bloc captured a clear majority in the National Assembly.
The French party system has continued to display volatility, though less so than in the past. Because the dominance of the Gaullist party was relatively short-lived, with other groups from the centre eroding its strength, the parliamentary base of the governments of the centre-right shrank; this was especially so since the centrists remained a loose confederation of several groupings, each of which tended to adopt different tactics. The precarious nature of political balance was underscored by recent periods of cohabitation between presidents and prime ministers of opposing parties. Security Armed forces
The overall responsibility for national defense rests with the president, who is the constitutional chief of the armed services and presides over the higher councils and committees on national defense. Since a decree in 1964, the president can give the order to bring the air and strategic forces into action. The prime minister, assisted by the secretary-general for national defense, oversees the armed forces according to the terms of the constitution, but it is the minister of defense who actually directs the land, air, and naval forces and who, moreover, has authority over the armament policy and the arsenal.
Since 1958 the military administration has been divided by various functions; it includes strategic nuclear forces, territorial-defense forces, mobile forces, and task forces. France has had the atomic bomb since 1960 and the hydrogen bomb since 1968. The nation withdrew from the integrated military command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1966, but in 1995 it took a seat on the NATO Military Committee, and in 2009 it announced its plan to return to the organization’s command structure. An all-volunteer army was in place by 2002, though previously every French male 18 years of age had been subject to one year of compulsory military service. Police services
The police are responsible primarily for maintaining public law and order. Under the authority of the minister of interior, they are responsible to the prefects in the départements and to the prefect of police in Paris and adjacent suburban communes. The police force is divided into public security forces and specialized police forces, such as the vice squad. The security police include the State Security Police (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité; CRS), responsible for public order; the judicial police, who carry out criminal investigations and hunt down suspects; and the complex internal intelligence and antiespionage units. The municipal forces are responsible to the mayor. There is also the national gendarmerie, a kind of state police, which is responsible to the minister of defense, combats terrorism, and is of particular importance in the rural areas. Health and welfare Social security and health