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Unit 6: Socio-Economic Bases and Salient Features of the Constitutions

law-making. The Monarchy of the Restoration (established after the military defeat of Napoleon) Notes
was succeeded by the Monarchy of July when Charles X was supplanted by Louis-Phillipe and the
constitutional charter of 1830 came into being. It marked some change so far as the position of the
monarch was concerned. No reference was made to his divine rights as was done under the
charter of 1814. Though the king entertained definite ambitions of being himself able to direct the
policy of government, the principle of political responsibility of the ministers to the Chamber of
Deputies became, in practice, clearly recognised and the general result was that the parliamentary
system became better established in the French tradition.’
In a sense, the constitutional charter of 1830 established the system of limited monarchy. However,
the ‘Orleanist July Monarchy’ met its end in the revolution of 1848 when the system of presidential
government came into being. A new constitution came into force whereby the executive power
was vested in the President elected directly by the people for a term of four years, while the
legislative power was entrusted to the Assembly directly elected by the people for a term of three
years.
Like its predecessor, the ‘Second Empire’ had its doom within a couple of years and once again
return to the republican system took place in 1870 as a result of the military defeat of the king and
the successful revolution of the people. It is called the Third Republic that lasted till 1940 — the
longest period in the history of the republics of France. Constitutionalism under the Third Republic
witnessed certain features that could be described as real movements in the direction of a republican
system. For the first time, there was established a parliamentary system.
The Third Republic officially came to an end in 1940 when President Petain secured the constituent
powers by the use of amending process in a way that he became the virtual despot of the country.
He shelved the requirement of a constitutional amendment measure’s ratification by the people
and adopted the way of promulgating ‘constitutional acts’ one after another. Shortly after July,
1940 he declared himself as the head of the French State, assumed plenary powers, adjourned
until further order the two chambers, and repealed all provisions of the constitution of the Third
Republic that were inconsistent with his authoritarian position.
The Fourth Republic came into being in 1946 that failed to have a life of more than 12 years. A new
constitution was adopted that placed the President in a very weak and the Parliament in a very
strong position. It paid utmost adherence to the principles of a parliamentary government by
vesting supreme authority in the Parliament, notably in the Lower House. The Prime Minister and
his Cabinet governed as long as they had majority support in the National Assembly. The President
of the Republic was elected by the Parliament and, like the British monarch, was the titular head
of the state. The system of proportional representation in the elections enabled even very small
political parties to have some seats in the national legislature and thereby form groups to face the
government with the problem of its survival. Since the ministry was made accountable to the
Parliament and, more-over, no party could be in a position to have a comfortable majority behind
it, the Prime Ministers came and went away with the disturbing frequency as the majorities
shifted back and forth in the National Assembly.
The result was that France earned the notorious distinction of having a system of political instability
in view of the fact that 20 cabinets had their existence during a short period of 12 years. As such,
the people came to understand the folly of cultivating a fanatic zeal for the parliamentary system.
They could realise that the system under the previous constitution had the model of a ‘paralysed
republic’. The ‘demand for reform’ thus gathered more and more momentum in the direction of
doing away with the system of an ‘unmanageable legislature’. The crisis in Algeria provided a
more calling force. The net result was that the nation reposed its faith in the leadership of Gen.de
Gaulle who gave a new constitution that placed France under the Fifth Republic.
It is a well-known fact that Gen. de Gaulle was the most uncompromising critic of the constitution
that had inaugurated the Fourth Republic and it was because of his stern attitude that he left the
government and since then lived in retirement off and on revealing his forebodings about the
erratic working of a constitution that had delivered an ‘omnipotent’ Parliament. However, the
circumstances that helped to make his return possible was the transformation of the Algiers

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