The most common explanation for France’s gilets jaunes protests against fuel-tax hikes is that they arise from too little democracy. Lower-income and rural citizens feel left behind by President Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive economic reform agenda, which ignores their interests and benefits an urban elite. The opposite is true. The protests are happening because France has too much democracy. What it’s lacking is politics.

Mr. Macron’s political movement was born of the notion that France needed to become more democratic. As...