Marcus Henglein for dr. Nabulsi /dr. Hazareesingh
Why did the constitution-makers of the French Fourth Republic create a system with such potential for instability?
While instability comes packaged with many unpleasant vibes, too much stability can be equally bad. Dictatorships are quite often stable, yet this is generally not laudable. Designing a political system with a potential for instability is far from saying it’s a guarantee for instability and instability certainly isn’t a foreign element to most democratic constitutions but rather deliberately added as a safeguard against tyranny. A stable, efficient government is attractive, no doubt, yet the possibility for a new government, if needed, is equally sought after
– that is, a potential rather than a guarantee for instability. The question, then, is not asking why they would add a potential for instability, but rather why they pushed it to such a great extent. I will argue that we should divide the contributing factors into two groups: those that influenced the decisions of the constitution-makers
(architects) and those that worsened the situation but were more or less unforeseeable. I will argue that (1) the Occupation heavily influenced the architects, adding to an already sizeable heap of dismal French history, that (2) lessons learned from Third Republic failed to outweigh the fear of tyranny, that (3) a belief in a political system based on the tripartisme would mitigate any structural imbalances in the system and that (4) a general lack of social cohesion in France lead to a multiplicity of parties and hindered coalition-building. Evidently, then, this essay will look at the question from a structural point of view. Further, (5) we will look at the consequences of the unstable constitution. While decolonization certainly played a crucial role in ending the
Fourth Republic, I will argue that it was simply one of those factors that worsened an already bad situation, not something that actually influenced the architects.
“The Fourth Republic has never had a very good press”, notes Gildea and explains: “It presided over the decline of the French Empire, while its record of political crisis and ministerial instability – twenty-six governments between 1944 and 1958 – was worse than that of the Third Republic” (Gildea, 2002, p. 41). In comparison, a single chancellor governed Germany in the same period and the US had two presidents. The Constitution of the Fourth Republic was officially adopted in October 1946 after France had been governed by the
Provisional Government of French Republic (GPRF) since the Liberation in August 1944. Charles de Gaulle, originally installed as head of the GPRF, advocated a presidential system with a strong executive – something radically different from the Third Republic that hardly served the French people well. “Though many French people at the Liberation would have agreed that the Third Republic was a disaster, few followed de Gaulle’s argument that what was required was a more authoritarian regime” (Gildea, 2002, p. 38) and, as a consequence, the soon-to-fall-apart tripartite alliance between the Christian Democrats, Socialists and Communists opted for a parliamentary system – after an initial referendum rejected a unicameral solution, a bicameral model was adopted by a second referendum. The new constitution was, however, a far cry from novel and hardly provided France with a stable, political environment.
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Marcus Henglein for dr. Nabulsi /dr. Hazareesingh
The Occupation was undoubtedly a prime influence of the new constitution, adopted only two years after the
Liberation. The humiliation of defeat was still a vivid memory to the French. Indeed, the thought of surrendering to another Fuehrer was hardly enticing, as Larkin put it: “The suppression of democratic liberties and institutions during the Occupation intensified traditional suspicions of anything suggesting a strong executive” (Larkin, 1988, p. 137). In fact, one would be readily justified in claiming that two Napoleonic empires and a bloody revolution had equipped the French with a fear of tyranny and revolution – Gildea strengthens this claim, noting that: “[the Fourth republic] was … a parliamentary regime constructed deliberately to ward off the twin evils of revolution and dictatorship, frequent guests at the feast of French history” (Gildea, 2002, p. 41). The problem, however, was not whatever fear of tyranny or love of democracy that followed from the
Occupation but the extent to which this manifested itself in the new Constitution: “The desire to safeguard democracy was to blind many politicians to the equal need for effective government” (Larkin, 1988, p. 137).
As we shall see, however, not everyone vehemently opposed the notion of a more authoritarian regime.
Charles de Gaulle, who led the Free French Forces against the Axis powers, strongly preferred a semipresidential system to a modified version of the Third Republic’s constitution. The 1945 Constituent Assembly had the primary task of drafting a new constitution and elected de Gaulle as prime minister, and although he only held this position for three months, he ensured to spell out how France would be far better off without the party system that had bogged down the Third Republic, noting that “the rivalry of parties in our country is a national characteristic, that of always questioning everything and thus all too often overshadowing the higher interests of the country” (Larkin, 1988, p. 141). Yet the three big parties, the Communists, the
Socialists and the MRP, who had won three-quarters of the vote, thought otherwise and went for a parliamentary model. Although de Gaulle “favoured a system that would strengthen the representation of whichever party was first past the post, since it would improve the chance of a clear, decisive majority emerging in the assembly” (Larkin, 1988, p. 138), he was also worried that the Communists, the biggest party at that point in time, would gain the upper-hand and so the Fourth Republic found itself with a much more ‘democratic’ model that allowed for a multitude of parties and a somewhat proportional representation, although still considerably “better than a nation-wide system of proportional representation, whereby even the tiniest parties got a toe-hold in the assembly – as had notoriously happened under the Weimar Republic” (Larkin, 1988, p.
139). The result was that “not only did the political landscape make for a multiplicity of parties, none of which enjoyed a majority, but government itself was usually a coalition – thereby depriving the French system of that close link between party and government that characterised Britain” (Larkin, 1988, p. 143).
On the other hand, it seems unreasonable to claim that a multiplicity of parties caused instability – rather, it depends largely on contextual and cultural factors. Denmark, for instance, has 10 political parties but enjoys stable government while preserving decent democratic representation – the difference between contemporary
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Marcus Henglein for dr. Nabulsi /dr. Hazareesingh
Denmark and French Fourth Republic, however, is best captured with de Gaulle’s saying: “How can you expect to govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” or in MacRae’s words:
“France has long been known as the land of controversy” (MacRae, 1967, p. 5). Indeed, the party system reflected the fragmented French people; a system especially volatile in making and breaking alliances – while this hardly could have come as a surprise to the architects, one could even argue that they thought of it as an advantage: A fragmented electorate is the perfect safeguard against a tyrant, be that a person or a party, once again building on the claim that the architects’ plans were skewed towards a ‘faithful representation’. Larkin supports this, arguing that “the prime concern of the architects of the electoral system was to create a representative body that would faithfully reflect the diversity of opinion in the country, rather than provide a strong majority that would ensure strong and effective government”
Moreover, the architects’ most fatal miscalculation most likely involved the tripartisme, an alliance that quickly fell apart. According to Rioux “The Constitution’s architects did not doubt that tripartisme was evidence of the new maturity in French politics” (Rioux, 1987, p. 109) – the system they designed, then, was only seriously unstable in the absence of tripartisme – it seems reasonable to wonder whether an element of cognitive dissonance played a part: How could the architects on the one hand want to create a republic based on a multiplicity on parties, while simultaneously expecting a group of three parties to run the show? Perhaps they actually intended for a more stable government than what actually turned out to be the case, yet wanted to include a stronger sense of democracy by including parties of all sizes and shapes even though their powers were to be limited. Perhaps the architects were simply biased: the tripartismee held the majority of the seats at the time the constitution was drafted. Either way, Larkin argues that the tripartismee came with “a myriad of warning signals for the future, confirming all too accurately de Gaulle’s apprehension about the direction affairs were taking” (Larkin, 1988, p. 140) and what was lost with its breakdown was a “blow to hopes of a stable parliamentary majority” (Larkin, 1988, p. 156)
The parliamentary system resulting from this constitution was far from perfect. On the one hand was the strong legislature. Rioux notes that “from whichever angle it is considered, the Constitution of the Fourth
Republic invariably leads back to the control exercised by the National Assembly” (Rioux, 1987, p. 108). The first referendum rejected a unicameral solution by a people alarmed at the thought of overwhelming Communist power in the legislature. Rather, a ‘bicameral’ model was proposed, though one should wisely be sceptical towards this label - “This was in reality an extremely lop-sided bicameralism” noted Rioux (1987, p.
107), adding that the Council of the Republic, the Upper House, was “very feeble” (Rioux, 1987, p. 107). A bicameral solution would fragment political power and slow down the legislative process, something that certainly could not be in the interest of any party who stood to gain a large number of votes at the forthcoming election, such as the Communists – which also explains why people shied away from voting for this model.
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The solution, then, was to add a second chamber with very limited powers. Rioux remarks rather pessimistically that “the intention of the Constitution’s makers had clearly been to create an essentially deliberative second chamber, one whose views could in practice be ignored.” (Rioux, 1987, p. 107) – one should keep in mind that all parties of the tripartisme saw the same advantage in holding a large number of seats in a single chamber. Rioux underlines the weakness of the second chamber, stressing that “the weak and constrained second chamber … had quite obviously been conceived merely as a sop to the doubts over full unicameralism expressed in the first referendum” (Rioux, 1987, p. 107).
One the other hand was the weak executive . As noted, de Gaulle had fervently argued the case for a stronger executive than what had been case in the Third Republic, yet “the new constitution bore witness to the widespread reluctance to leave too much power in the hands of a strong executive” and, slightly ironically, “the role of the President of the Republic was less than under the 1875 constitutional laws” (Rioux, 1987, p. 107), which were the laws governing the Third Republic. Unlike the Presidents of the Third Republic, the President of the Fourth “did not control military and civil appointments and his acts had to be countersigned by the
President of the Council [the Prime Minister] and one minister” (Rioux, 1987, p. 108). The President’s main powers were informal and centred around his moral authority, especially in his role as ‘President of the
French Union’ – the job then allowed for a strong personality, yet this made conflicts with the Prime Minister inevitable (Rioux, 1987, p. 108). The President’s chief formal power lay in appointing a prime minister, although the President hardly had the final say: “The prime minister then had to be invested by an absolute majority of the National Assembly, according to the principle of the sovereignty of the people, vested in its representatives. This was the hurdle that provoked most of the crises of the Republic”, mentions Gildea (2002, p. 42) who stresses the many days and prime ministers it usually took for the assembly to make a decision.
Worse yet, “once invested, the government depended for its survival on its majority holding together; if one of the parties forming the majority deserted, the government would be forced to resign” (Gildea, 2002, p. 42), although Larkin clarifies that only two cases would force the government to resign: 1) If the Prime Minister made a ‘forthcoming vote in parliament a matter of confidence’ and parliament then rejected it by an absolute majority or 2) If parliament passed a motion of censure by an absolute majority (Larkin, 1988, p. 145), both cases indicating that the government needed the Assembly’s confidence. A counterargument to this apparently hopeless situation is one of the government’s few checks on the Assembly: “to dissolve the National Assembly if it brought down two governments within eighteen months” (Larkin, 1988, p. 145). Rather than a source of stability, this quickly became a dangerous ‘game of chicken’: “This weapon of dissolution increasingly tempted Prime Ministers to make crucial votes matters of confidence, hoping that parliament would give the government the majority it wanted rather than run the risk of having to face the electorate prematurely as a result of bringing down two government within eighteen months” (Larkin, 1988, p. 145). In fact,
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Marcus Henglein for dr. Nabulsi /dr. Hazareesingh this was a monthly gambit during the 1946-51 parliaments making it easy to mistake these scenarios for poker rather than politics.
Curiously, governments weren’t always forced to resigned – often, “when Prime Ministers were unable to get legislation through parliament, or were anxious to forestall impending defeat, they generally choose to resign before it was necessary rather than risk the humiliation of formal eviction” (Larkin, 1988, p. 145) – resigned prime ministers were often recycled from old cabinets or reused in new, which probably served as one of the key motivators behind Larkin’s claim that “the fear of defeat was … more disastrous to good government than the actual defeats themselves” (Larkin, 1988, p. 146). We should, however, note the distinction between
‘prime minister’ and ‘government’ as they are far from interchangeable. While the Prime Ministers were constantly in flux, the governments usually “retained three-quarters of the ministers of the previous cabinet, many of them continuing to hold their former portfolios” (Larkin, 1988, p. 146). If this is not stability, one might remark, what is? The clue is that only certain ministries were considered stable, namely those “whose spheres were not central to the main concerns of parliament and which tended to become the province of specialists” (Larkin, 1988, p. 146). Crucial ministries, such as the Ministry of Finance, were never at rest and one cannot wholeheartedly argue that the French Fourth Republic was stable in any sense.
The fact that the Fourth Republic ended abruptly after so few years of service could be viewed either from a structuralist or behaviourist point of view. The government’s inability to respond to the growing problems of decolonisation was certainly caused by structural flaws in the system. On the other hand, de Gaulle’s crucial role in the Algerian crisis and in reforming the republic was unrelated to the structures. While MacRae notes that “the problems of decolonization were added to the wounds of World War II and Vichy” (MacRae, 1967, p. 2) this did not show immediately – the many flaws of the republic were apparent long before and it seems unfair to think the architects willingly designed a system to allow for such apocalyptical ruptures. The Third
Republic was unstable as well, although in different ways, yet required an external force to tip it over the edge.
The Fourth Republic could probably have survived for some time in an isolated system, but the post-war world is a far cry from closed, which aids in explaining its swift downfall. Decolonization was one of the many factors that exposed the instability of the system, but it didn’t cause it.
The Fourth Republic was ridden with instability – a brief look at the consequences of its constitution certainly underlines this fact. The architects of the constitution, then, must either have been out of their right mind when designing the system or, more likely, made a slight miscalculation – I have argued that this miscalculation consisted in not trusting the executive with sufficient power, which led to six-month governments and resigning Prime Ministers, a choice that itself stems from the a bleak French history and a general distrust of authority – I mentioned the German Occupation as a specific example. The naïve hopes for the tripartisme certainly also blinded the architects. What I haven’t considered in this essay are elements that perhaps could
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Marcus Henglein for dr. Nabulsi /dr. Hazareesingh have prolonged or shortened the French Fourth Republic, such as female suffrage, the rise of the Communists and Gaullist opposition. Yet as my discussion on the parliamentary faults showed, the system was intrinsically feeble. While these factors certainly could have played a part, the system was rotten at its core –
The architects purposely wanted a system with a weak executive, which in turn meant a very unstable system.
Weak executive power, then, is hardly power at all.
Gildea, R. (2002). France since 1945. New York: Oxford University Press.
Larkin, M. (1988). France since the Popular Front. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
MacRae, D. (1967). Parliament, Parties and Society in France, 1946-1958. London: Macmillan.
Rioux, J.-P. (1987). The Fourth Republic 1944-1958. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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