Democratic Stability and Instability: The French Case

The outstanding characteristic of the French political system is its historical instability. Constitutional monarchy was overthrown by a revolution, replaced by a republic, which in turn quickly evolved into a dictatorship, and when it too was dismissed by an armed uprising, the interminable squabbles among the monarchist factions allowed another republic to come into existence by default. But for an “accident” of history this republic too would have given way to a dictatorship through the bloodless medium of the coup d'état, but while the republic tottered on in the interwar period the life-span of its governments was calculated in terms of months rather than years, and with its “collapse” under the coup de grâce of military defeat a new dictatorship immediately sprang up to take its place, to be succeeded by another republic lasting for thirteen years amid constantly recurring cabinet crises, then falling in the wake of an eminently successful revolution, out of which emerged the present regime. Here we have what sociologists might label the “institutionalization of instability”, interpreted by a number of leading writers on French politics as the product of a deep-seated conflict between the “two Frances”, whether these two political subcultures are viewed as the parties of mouvement and of I'ordre établi, or as the “administrative and representative traditions.”