Le modèle républicain français et la Constitution de 1946

• Published in: Parliaments, estates & representation estates & representation, 2005-01, Vol.25 (1), p.215-225
• Main Author: GUERRIERI, SANDRO
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0260-6755; 1947-248X
• DOI: 10.1080/02606755.2005.9522218

In this article, Sandro Guerrieri examines the debate about the renewal of the French republican model that took place in France after the Liberation. The forces that had fought the Vichy regime did not want to return to the constitutional system of the Third Republic (1875-1940): they aimed at building more efficient institutions. In the referendum of 21 October 1945, only 3.6 per cent of the voters consented to the hypothesis of going back to the Third Republic. But the protagonists of the constitutional debate had different ideas about the features of the new Constitution. For instance, while the communists wanted the absolute supremacy of a unicameral Parliament, General de Gaulle proposed to reinforce the role of the President of the Republic, which during the Third Republic had been greatly weakened. As a result, the two Constituent Assemblies of 1945-6 were marked by important disputes that weakened the final agreement between the communists, the socialists and the Christian Democrats of Mrp that was reached in September 1946. But if the Fourth Republic began with institutions that after all were quite similar to those of the previous Republic, an important renewal took place in the social basis of the Republican model, with an expansion of the idea of Republican citizenship.