Presidents, Prime Ministers and Majorities in the French Fifth Republic

This introductory chapter explores the theoretical definitions and approaches of semi-presidentialism and highlights the limitations of pre-existing literature. It also explains the relevance of the main lines of inquiry that are used in this volume in order to make sense of the dynamics of the relations between the presidents, the prime-ministers and the parliamentary majorities. Finally, it will include a transversal analysis of the following chapters, where the authors are invited to tackle the relations of this “power triangle” in each of the presidential terms from 1965 to 2022.