Politics of France in the context of "Executive branch"

A head of state is the public persona of a sovereign state. The name given to the office of head of state depends on the country's form of government and any separation of powers; the powers of the office in each country range from being also the head of government to being little more than a ceremonial figurehead.

In a parliamentary system, such as India or the United Kingdom, the head of state usually has mostly ceremonial powers, with a separate head of government. However, in some parliamentary systems, like South Africa, there is an executive president that is both head of state and head of government. Likewise, in some parliamentary systems the head of state is not the head of government, but still has significant powers, for example Morocco. In contrast, a semi-presidential system, such as France, has both heads of state and government as the de facto leaders of the nation (in practice, they divide the leadership of the nation between themselves).

The Ultra-royalists (French: ultraroyalistes, collectively Ultras) were a French political faction from 1815 to 1830 under the Bourbon Restoration. An Ultra was usually a member of the nobility of high society who strongly supported Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, the Bourbon monarchy, traditional hierarchy between classes and census suffrage (privileged voting rights), while rejecting the political philosophy of popular will and the interests of the bourgeoisie along with their liberal and democratic tendencies.

The Legitimists, another of the main right-wing factions identified in René Rémond's Les Droites en France, were disparagingly classified with the Ultras after the 1830 July Revolution by the victors, the Orléanists, who deposed the Bourbon dynasty for the more liberal king Louis Philippe.

In modern politics, "law and order" is an approach focusing on harsher enforcement and penalties as ways to reduce crime. Penalties for perpetrators of disorder may include longer terms of imprisonment, mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws and even capital punishment in some countries. Many who support the "Law and Order" movement would see harsh punishment as a deterrent for crime. Opponents of the "law and order" movement make the argument that harsh punishment is unsuccessful in deterring crime and does not address underlying or systemic causes of crime. They furthermore credit it with facilitating greater militarisation of police and contributing to mass incarceration in the United States.

Despite the widespread popularity of "law and order" ideas and approaches between the 1960s to the 1980s exemplified by presidential candidates including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan running successfully on a "tough-on-crime" platform, statistics on crime showed a significant increase of crime throughout the 1970s and 1980s instead, and crime rates only began declining from the 1990s onwards. To differing extents, crime has also been a prominent issue in Canadian, British, Australian, South African, French, German, and New Zealand politics.

Charlie Hebdo (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁli ɛbdo]; French for 'Charlie Weekly') is a French satirical weekly magazine founded by François Cavanna and Professeur Choron in 1970, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian, and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far right (especially the French nationalist National Rally party), religion (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), politics and culture.

Charlie Hebdo has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Muhammad. In the second of these attacks, 12 people were killed, including publishing director Charb and several other prominent cartoonists. In the aftermath, Charlie Hebdo and its publications became internationally recognized as symbols of free speech, culminating in the "Je Suis Charlie" ("I am Charlie") movement, which underscored the global defense of freedom of expression and opposition to censorship.

Gaullism (French: Gaullisme [ɡolism]) is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle withdrew French forces from the NATO Command Structure, forced the removal of allied (US) military bases from France, as well as initiated France's own independent nuclear deterrent programme. His actions were predicated on the view that France would not be subordinate to other nations.

According to Serge Berstein, Gaullism is "neither a doctrine nor a political ideology" and cannot be considered either left or right, but probably centrist in internal matters. Rather, "considering its historical progression, it is a pragmatic exercise of power that is neither free from contradictions nor of concessions to momentary necessity, even if the imperious word of the general gives to the practice of Gaullism the allure of a programme that seems profound and fully realised." Gaullism is "a peculiarly French phenomenon, without doubt the quintessential French political phenomenon of the 20th century".