Explain the relative instability of the French party system during the post-world war II period

Résumé du document

The Fourth Republic, which lasted only eleven years and twelve months, is the shortest regime in French political history since 1852 ; because there were about twenty-eight successive governments within this period, it is a common view that instability is the reason of its failure. Then, it is sometimes argued that instability was foreseeable, being essentially due to certain flaws in the constitutional scheme ; but we shall endeavor to show that the picture is a bit more complex than this deterministic, positivistic view, for it includes many more contingent, political and historical reasons.

It is certain that the nature of the constitutional text finally enacted on the 13th of October, 1946, has one role to play if one is to explain the following governmental instability. For, though its writers had explicitly aimed at avoiding the mistakes of the previous Third Republic, many persons, mostly gathered around De Gaulle, could already tell at the time that the new regime was equally mistaken.

Extraits

[...] Mais les conditions constitutionnelles de la dissolution n'étaient pas réunies'5. A contrario, the catastrophic role of the frequent use of the motion de censure in the numerous governmental crises is well-known : ultimately, a government was as easily overthrown as it was difficult to create, especially after the revival of the practice of double investiture, typical of the Third Republic, by Paul Ramadier which was not, be it counted against the positivistic view, part of the constitutional text6. This fact –perilous dependency of the executive, expressed by the frequent crises– is often perceived as the core element to explain the failure of the regime, mainly maybe because it was De Gaulle's central constitutional argument for a long time7. [...]

[...] For it made all crucial decisions dependent upon an Assembly which itself could feel merely independent, composed for the most part of old-fashioned politicians, it left the way open to the reproduction of typical behaviors from the Third Republic, while all great political aims at the time would appear to require people's support and constructive leadership. However, the deterministic view that the Fourth Republic was condemned to fail quickly due to its own Constitution must appear fundamentally deceiving, as many authors have wanted to demonstrate : this failure could have been avoided, had more political leaders, at each level, better understood the issues at stake and their responsibilities to face them. [...]

[...] ibid., p Even more generally, Gicquel and Avril support in this paper the (very interesting) case that much of the failure of the Fourth Republic should be analyzed as a return of customary practices from the Third Republic. The phenomenon of double investiture is a typical instance Actually since the first hours of the Fourth Republic : the ‘Discours d'Epinal', with its famous theses nous paraît nécessaire que ') appears retrospectively as an impressive piece of lucidity on the issues at stake Massot, J., ibid., p ibid., p : est bien connu qu'un même président du Conseil a pu avoir le soutien de majorités très différentes le deuxième gouvernement Pleven, après les élections de 1951, a dû ainsi louvoyer entre une majorité de droite, y compris le RPF, favorable à l'enseignement privé et qui a voté les lois Marie Barangé, une majorité du centre pro-européenne qui a ratifié le plan Schuman contre les voix du PC et du RPF et même une majorité contre nature, gauche plus RPF, qui a voté l'échelle mobile des salaires contre l'avis du Gouvernement' Lefort, B., partis et les groups sous la IVe République' in Pouvoirs (1996), p As Lefort puts it, from the very early days of the Fourth Republic, there was no true, constructive opposition : one part of it (communists, gaullists, and far-right parties) was willingly set outside the political life ; the other was ‘dans la majorité' (p. [...]

[...] First, there is still a great disequilibrium between the respective powers of the Assembly and those of the executive (i.e. the government plus the Président de la République), especially as for the balance of the motion de censure and the droit de dissolution, two crucial features supposed to guarantee the stability of the whole system. As Gicquel and Avril (1996) notice : ‘L'instabilité de la IVe [ ] a été d'autant favorisée qu'elle ne comportait aucune sanction, sinon l'avantage de la promotion à la fonction ministérielle, en raison de la neutralisation du droit de dissolution'4 for in fact, the conditions required for the Président du Conseil to dissolve the Assembly were never gathered : ‘Antoine Pinay en décembre 1952, plus sûrement encore Pierre Mendès France en février 1955, auraient pu, en dissolvant, faire apparaître au Parlement la majorité reflétant le soutien très massif qu'ils rencontraient dans le pays. [...]

[...] Such debates were obviously responsible for the collapse of many coalitions Lefort, B., ibid., p : ‘L'abus de la procédure, la persistance d'usages rétrogrades ont discrédité les institutions françaises. En outre, elles les ont rendues non viables. Les restrictions renforcées aux importations d'endives ou la qualification d'une boisson alcoolisée étaient autant de chausse-trapes sous les pas du président du Conseil. Elles permettaient sans doute à l'Assemblée de contrecarrer l'action du Gouvernement, voire d'abréger son existence, sans que les députés prennent leurs responsabilités véritables.' 20. ibid., p ibid., pp. [...]