La protesta radicale dei Gilet gialli e il percorso della risposta istituzionale

Yellow Vest Mouvement is a phenomenon of spontaneous mass demostrations that took the streets in France since november 2018 thanks to social media information and coordination. It carried on until march 2019. Hundreds of thousands of people mobilized with only a light coordination and rejecting any request for greater institutionalization. They also rejected any form of identification with existing political and social representation because they believed these organizations only represented themselves. The main concern of the people was defending their quality of life. A feeling of resentment or envy was directed at the most affluent social strata. They felt trapped in social disadvantage and they distrusted politicians of every kind, opposing the "real people" to the privileged. The pulverization of the individual positions made an unitary representation almost impossible. The distrust also concerned intermediate social bodies and this made social mediation impossibile as well. The President himself built his personal authority bypassing any social mediation. That's why a second demand of the people was «a democracy more willing to listen to people's needs». They asked President to find solutions or resign. As the protest gained a widespread support in the public opinion, the Government's strategy of condemning the violent parts of the demonstrations without a policy change turned to be a failure. Journalists and politicians began to speak about the spontaneous anger as a source of social legitimacy of the protest. The refusal of political institutionalization of the movement became a further source of consensus. The Government's second answer was a light economic support. What could maybe be enough at the beginning of the protest was not enough after a long mobilization. Here the President had an idea: he started a top-down mobilization and gave life to a National Public Debate that was a mass staging of a participatory process under presidential control. This "institutional" mobilization took the political stage for quite a long time without giving a real answer to the protesters' concerns. The political crisis was overcome, but at the re-election of 2022 Macron lost the majority he had in Parliament.