This chapter analyzes contemporary debates on the meaning of democracy and the best institutional realization of this ideal. It offers a theoretical perspective on the reasons why the French representative system, as it is shaped by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, may be considered to be in distress. It is suggested that there is a growing discrepancy between the aspiration to new, less elitist forms of democracy by a part of the population and the strong concentration of power in the hands of a very personalized executive. The initiatives taken by President E. Macron to increase citizen participation, instead of re-balancing the representative system by opening it to a plurality of legitimacies, frustrate participatory ambitions by refusing to acknowledge the limits of electoral legitimacy.