Who today can say what will follow the Republic?

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 407 to 408 (in French)
March 22nd, 1850

Today’s quote dating back to 1850, we now know that the Second Empire followed the Second Republic further to a coup on December 2nd, 1851 and a new constitution promulgated on January 14th, 1852.

We can see here that, as soon as 1850, the instability of the institutions worried Frédéric Bastiat who was already seeing the end of the Second Republic that had just been born further to the revolution of February 1848. I do not think that France in 2025 finds itself in such an unstable situation as then but, observing that three different governments followed each other over the last twelve months and given the sorry situation of public finances, I believe that Frédéric Bastiat’s question can be asked again. Similar to him, I am in no position to predict the future on this issue but it seems to me that the Fifth Republic is losing steam and that the legitimacy of the government is more and more questionable. The risk of seeing an autocratic regime replacing it has become real. This is sad.