War of Ambitions: When Clan Wills Undermine the Democratic Game

The political crisis currently shaking France, marked by institutional tensions, cascading resignations, and growing distrust towards elites, highlights a well-known dynamic of democratic systems: the war of ambitions. Behind ideological stances and discourses of national responsibility, a bitter truth emerges — politics often transforms into an arena of personal rivalries and partisan struggles where the general interest fades in favor of power conquest strategies. This phenomenon, far from being unique to France, finds a particular echo in the situation of Haiti, where leadership quarrels and clan logic have plunged the country into a chronic political and institutional crisis. *In France: The Breakdown of Republican Consensus* The current crisis in France cannot be reduced to a simple disagreement between President Emmanuel Macron and the opposition. Rather, it reveals a deep fragmentation of the political landscape, where each side primarily seeks to consolidate its electoral base rather than build a collective project. Since the last legislative elections, the National Assembly illustrates this paralysis: traditional parties, weakened but still influential, populist movements from both left and right, and the presidential majority neutralize each other. President Macron, weakened by unpopular reforms and a perceived technocratic image, faces a fragmented opposition united in its hostility towards him. Each political group seeks to profit from the institutional chaos: the left dreams of a recomposition around Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the traditional right of a return to influence, and Marine Le Pen's far-right is already preparing the ground for 2027. This zero-sum game, where no one concedes anything, reflects the crisis of democratic compromise: power is no longer perceived as an instrument of service, but as an end in itself. *In Haiti: Politics as a Field of Survival and Appropriation* While France is experiencing a governability crisis within a solid institutional framework, Haiti, for its part, faces an existential crisis of its political system. Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, the country has had no truly legitimate government or functional Parliament. Attempts at transition have followed one another, often sabotaged by internal disagreements between political actors and economic elites. Here, political ambitions are not only translated by the quest for a mandate, but by a struggle for control of resources, the state, and international recognition. Each group — whether former traditional parties, citizen movements, or self-proclaimed figures of the transition — claims its legitimacy in the name of the people, while refusing to cede an inch of influence. This war of egos, coupled with a lack of institutional culture, prevents the formation of a national consensus, which is nevertheless essential to restore constitutional order.
The consequence is tragic: the power vacuum benefits armed groups, informal economic networks, and the widespread distrust of the people towards any form of governance. Politics, instead of being a tool for reconstruction, has become an instrument of blockage. *France – Haiti: Two Crises, One Same Ailment* Although the contexts differ — institutional stability in France, state collapse in Haiti — both countries share the same pathology: the primacy of individual ambitions over collective logic. In France, this logic translates into democratic paralysis and the rejection of elites; in Haiti, it leads to the collapse of the state and the disappearance of politics into chaos. In both cases, political fragmentation creates a vicious circle: the more actors pursue their personal interests, the more the population turns away from politics. Distrust then becomes the engine of the system, fueling extremes in France and anarchy in Haiti. Thus, the problem is not so much the diversity of opinions as the inability to articulate this diversity around a common project. Democracy, whether liberal or fragile, does not survive the logic of the clan. *For a Rehabilitation of the Common Good* The war of ambitions, whether it takes the form of electoral rivalries in Europe or power struggles in Haiti, reveals a deep crisis in the meaning of politics. As long as the conquest of power takes precedence over its ultimate purpose — the service of the nation and the defense of the common good — democracy will remain vulnerable to authoritarian drifts, populisms, or institutional collapses. The real challenge, for Paris as for Port-au-Prince, is therefore not to know who will govern, but why and how to govern together. Rehabilitating the idea of collective responsibility, rebuilding trust between governors and governed, and restoring politics to its ethical dimension: this is the only possible way out of the war of ambitions that undermines our democracies. _By Gesly Sinvilier_