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Unit 8: Constitutional Structure: Legislature

the floor of the National Assembly, deals primarily with financial situation rather than with specific Notes
items. General discussion over the money bill or budget begins after the report of the Finance
Committee.
The class of wage-earners and salaried personnel has its own organised groups, the most important
of which is the General Confederation of Labour—C.G.T. (Confederation General du Travail), It includes
many industrial unions of craftsmen, steel workers, artisans etc. Its directive medium is the National
Confederation Committee that is elected by the delegates to the annual National Congress. The French
Confederation of Democratic Labour—CFDT— is very much like the CGT in respect of its organisation.
Most of its members desist from adopting the tactics of the communist leaders who have been in
power in the CGT. A militant section of this organisation left it to form the National Confederation of
Labour —CNT— that is said to be influenced with the philosophy of anarchism.
The interests of the farmers, particularly the richer ones, are represented by the National Federation
of Fanners—FNSEA. It claims the membership of 700,000 farmers. As this organisation is largely
dominated by the richer sections of the peasantry, the socialists, communists and others have also
formed their splinter groups. For instance, the socialists have their General Confederation of Workers,
the communists run their General Confederation of Agriculture, Farm Workers, the Catholics and
the MRP work through various Catholic Action Groups, while a dynamic and small group of
agriculture experts, technicians and intellectuals has organised the National Council of Young Farmers.
While the business and labour-agrarian groups constitute the volatile element of pressure group
politics in France, a brief reference may be made to the organisation of the intellectuals and the
veterans. The most important organisation of the ‘intellectuals’ is the Confederation of the Intellectual
Workers of France. A very loose organisation of some 400,000 members representing about 80
association, it includes printers, painters, writers, journalists, teachers and like. A special point to be
noted about this organisation is that the members have sharp differences on the merits of economic
issues and the strategy of action to be adopted for protecting and promoting- their interests. The
League of the Rights of Man founded at the time of the Dreyfus Affair champions the cause of freedom
of the press, maintenance of individual liberty and opposes all forms of authoritarianism. It is mostly
dominated by the ‘left’. The teachers have their Federation of National Education. The students have
their own organisations like National Students Union of France that remain concerned with the
advancement of their own status and well-being in the form of scholarships, loans, living quarters
etc.
Finally, we refer to the associations of the army officers and the veterans that are dominated by
different shades of political forces. The ‘centrists’ have their National Union of Veterans, the
‘communist-minded’ have their Republican Association of the Veterans, the ‘radicals’ have their
National Federation of the Republican Veterans, while the ‘socialist-minded’ have their Federation
of Workers and Peasant Veterans. All these organisations of officers, non-commissioned officers and
graduates of the different military schools have their own groups that largely concentrate on obtaining
pensions and other financial privileges. During the times of Algerian crisis and war in Indo-China,
there came into being the French Union of the Associations of Veterans and War Victims.
Not the variety of organised groups but their role in the politics of the country is of real importance
that places France in a category quite different from that of England and the United States. It can be
visualised in the fact that interest groups play a very powerful and, at the same time, a very
irresponsible role not because the political system of this country pertains to the hitherto parliamentary,
now quasi-parliamentary system, but for the reason that the people have a different temperament
and their sectional interests “tend to take precedence over the national interest.”
Lobbying is the main tactic of the business pressure groups. The owners of hotels, gas stations, liquor
distillation centres, automobile productions, oil companies and the like have their powerful groups
engaged in influencing the legislators and administrators. These ‘lobbies’ give financial support to
the candidates at the time of elections, induct their own men into the high ranks of the bureaucratic
administration, release their own journals and handouts in an attempt to sway the public opinion in
their own favour and do a lot of other things that brings them close to their American counterparts so
far as the method of action is concerned. Their agents are very much in the National Assembly and

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