Macron and the Blurring of the Boundaries: How Democratic Legitimation Enables Illiberal Governance from Within a Liberal Regime

This paper examines how the blurring of liberal democracy operates within the executive discourse of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency in France, a consolidated liberal democracy formally committed to the defence of liberal values and the rule of law. The paper argues that Macron’s governing discourse shows how the language of democracy itself can be mobilized to authorize, normalize, and render acceptable forms of illiberal governance. Rather than being suspended, democracy is continuously invoked to justify its own restriction: responsibility, efficiency, institutional stability, and respect for rules are mobilized to legitimate practices that weaken its deliberative core. It is no longer the exception that suspends democracy, but democracy that is called upon to justify the exception. Empirically, the paper relies on a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of presidential speeches, interviews, and press conferences delivered between 2017 and 2025. CDA makes it possible to analyse how practices that are procedurally and substantively anti-democratic are discursively reframed as legitimate, necessary, and even protective of democracy itself. The analysis identifies three core mechanisms through which this process operates in Macron’s executive discourse. First, the construction of a fictive “republican arc” rests on a strategic use of democratic ideals to redraw the boundaries of legitimate politics. Under Macron, the line of legitimacy is no longer drawn between democracy and the far right, but between a self-proclaimed rational governing centre and two “extremes” placed on the same level—La France insoumise and the Rassemblement national. Ideals of moderation are mobilized to disqualify radical opposition as democratically illegitimate, recasting political pluralism itself as a threat to the Republic and assimilating social and xenophobic radicalism within the same logic of exclusion. Second, the normalization of executive bypassing of parliamentary sovereignty—most visibly through the repeated use of Article 49.3—is framed as an act of democratic virtue. The 49.3 is presented as a gesture of democratic responsibility, a bulwark against parliamentary paralysis, and a tool serving the general interest. Here, the weakening of deliberation is redefined as a condition of democratic efficiency and institutional stability, producing a clear decoupling between democratic procedure and executive legitimacy. Third, the legitimization of state violence and militarization is framed through the democratic ideals that are supposed to constrain the use of force. The protection of institutions and the defence of the Republic are mobilized to justify an exceptionally violent use of policing during the repression of the Yellow Vests, Sainte-Soline, and the protests against pension reform. Repression is thus presented not as an authoritarian deviation, but as a democratic necessity in the face of a threat described as “anti-republican,” “radical,” or “seditious.” By showing how the weakening of counter-powers, the restriction of protest, and the concentration of executive authority are justified in the name of democracy itself, the paper contributes to current debates on democratic backsliding and autocratization within formally democratic regimes. Situated within a consolidated liberal democracy, the Macron case demonstrates that contemporary illiberalism does not only develop against democracy, but also through democracy’s own language, thereby actively blurring the boundary between democratic and non-democratic rule.