> Doesn't the French Prime Minister answer to the President?
In theory, no, French PM answers only to Parliament. Only Parliament can dismiss them, not the President.
In practice, and in normal times, this isn't true at all. When the President tells the PM that their time is up, they immediately resign. (One tried to resist in the 70s and was immediately voted out by Parliament.) This makes the French PM effectively powerless. They simply implement the will of the President. The equivalent to the British PM is the French President, not the French PM.
Now there are non normal times where Parliament and the President are on opposite sides. When that happens (1986-1988; 1993-1995; 1997-2002), the PM is effectively in charge of most things, but even in those cases the President still has more powers than an typical constitutional monarch.
But my point wasn't about power but about humility. I think it's good and desirable that the ruler has to bow to someone else, and that that person, in turn, has no power whatsoever.
In theory, no, French PM answers only to Parliament. Only Parliament can dismiss them, not the President.
In practice, and in normal times, this isn't true at all. When the President tells the PM that their time is up, they immediately resign. (One tried to resist in the 70s and was immediately voted out by Parliament.) This makes the French PM effectively powerless. They simply implement the will of the President. The equivalent to the British PM is the French President, not the French PM.
Now there are non normal times where Parliament and the President are on opposite sides. When that happens (1986-1988; 1993-1995; 1997-2002), the PM is effectively in charge of most things, but even in those cases the President still has more powers than an typical constitutional monarch.
But my point wasn't about power but about humility. I think it's good and desirable that the ruler has to bow to someone else, and that that person, in turn, has no power whatsoever.