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Realizing that Poujadism is a part of this tradition, we shall do well not to exaggerate its significance. Infrastructure, security, education, and healthservices are among the best in Europe. The difficulty is that too many questions of fundamental importance on which the various parties have cause to disagree have come up for decision at one time. This is no minor problem. From the point of view of public opinion, no clear-cut indications appear. ©2020 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Thus the means often obscures the ends. Finally, because France is France, the prisoner of a long past through which she has evolved in a political climate peculiarly her own. Is it any wonder so many ghosts haunted the men who were striving to establish a Fourth Republic? This made it necessary for a governing majority to look for support further to the right, even to the Gaullists; and this in turn drove the Socialists toward the left and revived the idea of a popular front. Take, for example, the multiplicity of French parties which is so often the cause of reproach. Nos partenaires et nous-mêmes stockerons et/ou utiliserons des informations concernant votre appareil, par l’intermédiaire de cookies et de technologies similaires, afin d’afficher des annonces et des contenus personnalisés, de mesurer les audiences et les contenus, d’obtenir des informations sur les audiences et à des fins de développement de produit. These voters reason that the more the Communists are feared the more they are listened to. Why should they be so incomprehensible to foreigners, especially to Americans? Nevertheless, the régime continues to be what its authors intended--a parliamentary régime with power centered in the Assembly. With the political left we are back in the atmosphere of the nineteenth century, facing the question whether the French Revolution, with all its consequences and particularly the separation of Church and State, will be accepted. Since the 1980s, the government of France has favored capitalism and market-orientated policies. Despite spontaneous movements and policies of decentralization, as well as challenges from new forms of local governance, Paris retains its dominant role in the nation. This was indeed the parliamentary régime in the democratic tradition of 1793, where the elected deputy is the sole true representative of the people. In 1940, for example, Marshal Pétain, in his "National Revolution," called to his aid the most reactionary traditions in our history. This site uses cookies to improve your user experience. During the first, from 1944 to 1947, the majorities were based on the coöperation of the Communists, Socialists and Popular Republicans (Catholic left). It must always be remembered that the Frenchman, the man in the street as well as the intellectual, is above all an individualist.

Please enable JavaScript for this site to function properly. As I stated above, the Frenchman votes more for principles than for practical considerations. In addition, the question is often asked how it happens that a people held to be so intelligent govern themselves so badly. Thus France deliberately turned her back on the type of presidential régime favored by General de Gaulle. And as Keynes has said, "Men will not always die quietly." Foreign Affairs, Published by the Council on Foreign Relations. The terms "right" and "left," which do not mean much to Anglo-Saxon Americans, have dynamic and passionate force in France; they contain the threat of a return to the past, the promise of the future. In contrast, the 1958 constitution was contested by 85 percent of the electorate, of which 79 percent were in favour; among the overseas territories only Guinea rejected the new constitution and consequently withdrew from the French Community.

The authors of these institutions meant them to be uncompromising, but in practice a sort of law of equilibrium has tended to correct their excesses. The answer is that the individualism of the Frenchman is Latin in essence, which means that he has a capacity for stating problems clearly and for seeing in any solution the principle involved and the direction in which it leads. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. At the same time we would make a mistake not to take it seriously, for although it certainly does not imperil the régime it is nonetheless symptomatic of a basic malaise.

Doubtless its supporters also include more than one Gaullist or Vichyite.
Viewed in this aspect, the elections take on quite a different meaning. Elected for seven years, presiding by right over the Council of Ministers, and having the responsibility of designating the President of the Council, he plays a rôle of influence rather than authority but still one of great importance. In order to achieve the political stability that was lacking in the Third and the Fourth Republic, the constitution of 1958 adopted a mixed (semipresidential) form of government, combining elements of both parliamentary and presidential systems. But any alliance between parties as different as the Independents on the right and the Popular Republicans, socially oriented toward the left, was bound to be precarious, the more so because they were not in agreement on the problem of Europe and German rearmament, just then coming to the fore. This abstract concept may be pleasing to the French mind, but it separates the voter from reality. Indeed, from the time the Revolution posed this fundamental dilemma France has never succeeded in resolving it. No one, not even the rightist, wants to be considered to be on the right. France thus is burdened with the weight of her past, and the burden is the heavier because that past has never been entirely resigned to being extinguished but every once in a while crops up again, if not in its earlier form, then in a new one. Today it still--or rather again--poisons the relations of parties which on other counts would get along together quite well.

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