Raymond Aron’s France: The New Republic is a short book of political analysis built around a single document: the constitution of the Fifth Republic, drafted in the summer of 1958 and put to the French people that autumn. Published for the Fund for the Republic with an introduction by D. W. Brogan, it pairs Aron’s essay on the new institutions with a transcript of the discussion that followed when he presented it to an American study group, and it closes with the full texts of the 1946 and 1958 preambles and the constitution itself. The setting is the strange interval when Charles de Gaulle had returned to power to end the crisis of May 1958, the Algerian war was still burning, and nobody yet knew what the new machinery would do in practice.
A Constitution Drawn Against the Assembly
The Fund for the Republic and the Setting of the Book
The volume opens with the apparatus of its occasion. Raymond Aron was invited by the Consultants on the Basic Issues of the Fund for the Republic to join their October 1958 meetings on the newly drafted Constitution of the Fifth Republic, on the reasoning that his views would sharpen their own examination of the American Constitution and its bearing on American society. Robert M. Hutchins’s preface records the invitation and names the consultants—A. A. Berle, Jr., Scott Buchanan, Eugene Burdick, Eric F. Goldman, Clark Kerr, Henry R. Luce, John Courtney Murray, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Isidor I. Rabi—and explains that Aron’s presentation is printed together with part of the discussion that followed it. The table of contents promises a preface, an introduction by D. W. Brogan, a note by Aron, an essay on the new French Constitution, a discussion, and an appendix containing the Preamble of 1946 and the text of the new Constitution.
Brogan on Constitutions and Their Unforeseen Lives
D. W. Brogan’s introduction sets the temper for everything after it. Constitutions, he observes, have their own history and destiny, and the French one had barely been born before it was overtaken by events: it emerged from a crisis that went on shaping French political life, and its new organs had to work amid the very forces that had destroyed the old order. The Algerian war, which had discredited the Fourth Republic, was not ended by the Constitution; at best the new text created better conditions for finding a solution. External problems—France’s place in Europe and the world, its relations with Britain, West Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union—remained whatever the internal adjustments, and the defeat of the European Defence Community stood as an example of how badly the old regime made decisions. Brogan endorses Aron’s judgment that the Fourth Republic was less ineffective than it was easy to damn in May 1958: much was done well and in time, and the rising birth rate, the industrial take-off, and the cracking of the cake of custom mattered more than constitutional change. The political machine had not prevented growth and in some sectors had helped it—the Renault car was made by a nationalized corporation—and French entry into the coal and steel pool and the common market was the work of the Fourth, not the Fifth, Republic, which was not short of men of vision; Robert Schuman and Pierre Mendès-France are named.
The details of the new Constitution, Brogan continues, are best read against old experience. The belief that governments were overthrown so that new ministries could be formed explains why ministers are excluded from the Assembly and why a substitute holds a deputy’s seat until the next election—though Aron is more confident than Brogan that these substitutes will accept their humble role. Nearly everyone agreed that the Fourth Republic’s Constitution had unduly weakened the executive and given the Assembly an initiative it used badly; the new text weakens the Assembly by strengthening the Senate and giving the executive more power over the Assembly’s life and business. Brogan agrees with Aron that the effects of ministerial instability were exaggerated: the Assembly seized up because a majority for an adequate policy was hard or impossible to identify and organize. Much thought went into the executive, and as the American presidency owed much to Washington’s being the first President, so the Fifth Republic’s executive owes much to de Gaulle’s being known as an effective head—though in the autumn of 1958 Paris debated whether he would choose to be President or Prime Minister. The Constitution is neither presidential nor parliamentary but a mixture; de Gaulle chose the presidency, and precedent—the bold new Algeria policy announced as a presidential act—stresses presidential initiative and decision. Open questions remain: whether the President’s choice of Prime Minister will command Assembly support, whether President and Assembly may clash, and whether a Senate over-representing rural, conservative, backward areas supplies too many brakes rather than a streamlined model. Brogan is less alarmed than Aron by the emergency-powers article, since its use presupposes revolutionary circumstances already.
The Gaullist victories of autumn 1958 showed that the people wanted the new Constitution, but the verdict expressed trust in de Gaulle more than in his vociferous partisans, and local elections showed the voter tenacious of local liberties. Faced with the breakdown of state authority in May 1958, the country turned to the only man who could restore it and perhaps avert civil war—yet the French voter was no hysterical mob, and France in 1958 was not Germany in 1932 or Italy in 1923; authoritarian elements existed but were neither assembled nor used. The new Assembly already showed signs of wanting to expand its powers and resented limits on legislative initiative; Fourth Republic leaders washed out of the Assembly returned through the Senate; towns that voted for de Gaulle and humiliated the Communist Party returned old Communist councillors and mayors, much as Tammany ruled New York and the Solid South survived. The Communist Party might decline with lower prices and more supermarkets, being incapable of adjusting to the technological age, and on the Fifth Republic’s ability to adjust to that age success depends. Among the necessary adjustments is one to the rising world of coloured peoples; thanks to de Gaulle’s boldness, whatever solution is adopted will not be imposed or opposed by arms. On Algeria, since de Gaulle’s offer the temperature has risen but so has hope; if a non-ruinous solution is reached the Fifth Republic will be justified, and if it fails no constitutional ingenuity will help.
Against the American Model
Aron’s own analysis begins by clearing away a false alternative. The American Constitution, he argues, works through tradition and team spirit rather than through its text, and its text is in fact designed to paralyze power; French deputies and a French President would be unlikely to cooperate as Americans do. Since France can have neither strong parties on the British model nor a strong President on the American, the drafters devised a compromise: a complicated set of relations among President, Prime Minister, and Assembly, limiting the Assembly so that it cannot become all-powerful and intervene constantly in government. The principle is separation of powers, but unlike Britain and America, both of which rest on party systems, the new French Constitution seeks strong government based on elections but not on parties—a design that might suit countries unable to create strong parties. Its provisions fall under three headings: reinforcing presidential authority, parliament-government relations, and the new Constitutional Council.
The President’s Powers and Article 16
On paper the President is less powerful than the American President, and the Fifth Republic remains parliamentary, since the government is responsible to the Assembly and not to the President. Still, the President is stronger than under the Third and Fourth Republics, though he does not head the executive; he is head of state with personal powers he can use without the Prime Minister’s approval. He chooses the Prime Minister, may dissolve the Assembly, and in certain circumstances may take full powers—something like a dictatorship. Article 16, the exceptional-power clause, was hotly debated: the President alone judges the circumstances for assuming full powers, and though he must consult the Constitutional Council he is not bound by its advice. Aron finds this legal dictatorship less dangerous than commonly believed. Either the President wants a dictatorship, in which case he must prepare a coup d’état, or the legal right to assume full powers bars a coup; if he wishes to remain legal he cannot assume power without justification, for he would be impeached for abandoning the legal dictatorship. De Gaulle’s intent reflects the sentiment of 1940—going into the future while looking back toward the past: in case of invasion, the President should assume the role and functions of a monarch as in former times. The President may also submit a law voted by the Assembly to referendum without the Prime Minister’s signature, and he names civil and military officials and state councillors, sometimes alone and sometimes after consulting the government. He is elected by eighty to a hundred thousand people—municipal councillors, members of parliament, and representatives of the overseas territories—so that rural areas are better represented than the big towns, and he will be chosen largely by local councils. He cannot run daily affairs, but he can influence the government and pressure the Assembly through the double threat of referendum or dissolution, and he heads the French Community of metropolitan France and black Africa.
Two Possible Presidencies
Aron sketches two possible evolutions of the relation between President and Prime Minister. An ordinary President might come to resemble the President of the Third Republic, conceived as a constitutional monarch—the 1875 Constitution was drafted by a monarchical majority hoping for a king’s return—and the present text goes further, though an ordinary President may not dare to use his powers. Dissolution is the test: the President’s risk is enormous, for if the country returns an opposing Assembly his position becomes impossible and he must resign; as arbiter he cannot enter battle, and if beaten he must go. This happened in 1877, when Marshal MacMahon, a monarchist and the first President, tried to use his office to influence the working of the Constitution, clashed with a republican majority, dissolved the Assembly, and saw the country return an Assembly still in opposition; he had to take a Prime Minister acceptable to it and then resign. The same might happen in normal times—meaning after de Gaulle’s disappearance; while de Gaulle is there, times are not normal, for a man accepted and recognized by everybody as wise, virtuous, and great can do anything, even draft a Constitution. Following the letter, the President may become a supreme adviser and arbiter and the regime evolve toward normal parliamentary government; or, if he exercises power, conflict may arise first with the Prime Minister and then with both Prime Minister and Assembly.
Disciplining the Assembly
The second aspect of the Constitution is the machinery preventing the Assembly from permanently aggrandizing itself or intervening in government. Under the old rules a member could delegate his vote, so that twenty or forty deputies might cast six hundred votes; the new text requires presence to vote. Sessions are cut to five and a half or six months a year, giving the government room to act when Parliament is not sitting. A deputy or senator who becomes a minister must resign his seat—not new for presidential government like America’s, but almost without precedent in parliamentary government, where a member may become a minister; the only other such Constitution Aron knows is the Dutch. The simplest way to fill the vacant seat would have been a local election, but the Minister of Justice, hostile to his fellow parliamentarians, feared that too many elections would steep the Assembly in election atmosphere and make government impossible; so each candidate now has a substitute presented simultaneously, two candidates per seat, the alternate taking the seat when the deputy becomes a minister. Aron calls this the worst possible regulation: instead of five thousand candidates there will be five thousand candidates and five thousand alternates, and the alternate has no right to stand himself next time; he believes most ministers will still be members of Parliament whose alternates keep their seats. Other rules define the legislative process, fixing exactly where Parliament must intervene and make law. Article 34 lists matters where law decides the rules in detail—civil rights and fundamental guarantees of public liberties, obligations of national defence, nationality, matrimony, inheritance, gifts, criminal law, taxation, the electoral system, public institutions, fundamental guarantees for civil servants and soldiers, nationalization of enterprises—and matters where law determines only general principles: the general organization of national defence, the free administration of local communities, education, the status of property, employment law, social security, and so on. The line between what in the twentieth century belongs to law and what to governmental or administrative decree remains to be drawn.
The Community, Guinea, and Algeria
The Constitution also attempts something unprecedented: to move from colonial status to full independence by constitutional means, possibly keeping territories inside the French Community while not preventing them from leaving. Three steps are required—a majority vote of the Territorial Assembly, a referendum in the territory, and acceptance by the French Assembly—and Madagascar has already proclaimed itself a state. Aron expects many territories to evolve slowly toward complete statehood; West Africa is divided into many small territories, with much discussion whether they will federate or remain separate. Black Africa’s problem is largely solved except for Guinea, whose “no” puts the French government in an awkward position.
The Strategic Argument for North Africa
The dialogue turns first to the question of North Africa and European defense. Aron’s interlocutor presses a hard military case: North Africa is indispensable to the defense of France and of Europe as a whole, and no viable Western Europe can exist alongside a hostile North Africa. The soldiers understand this, he says, even when the other governments of Western Europe do not; the region must not slide into the wider Arab world under strong Communist influence. Why, then, has a man of de Gaulle’s experience never conceived of making North Africa another country bound into the Western European system? It cannot be permitted to go the way of Egypt.
Aron agrees with every word and then qualifies it. The Western world, he observes, has grown accustomed to affirming abstract political principles without reference to opportunity or military necessity. He can name no Western government capable of limiting another people’s independence even when strategy demands it—the United States has never declared it would hold Panama by armed force for the defense of North America. The justification of a political move by military expediency has simply vanished from what he calls a hypocritical world. Tunisia and Morocco wanted independence, and given Western principles and the tide of anti-colonial feeling, independence was granted; expediency could not be placed ahead of principle. Algeria is another matter: nine million Moslems and one million French. If France announces that she keeps Algeria for military reasons, she will stand alone, with no Western government behind her. Washington is divided between its military men and the State Department’s Moslem Desk, which fears the entire Moslem world turning against the West; Britain, Germany, and Italy each calculate short-term advantages, with the former colonial powers regarding their lost empires as a blessing. Aron’s proposal is that the French government draft a policy acceptable to Western ideology while preserving military security, with the whole NATO alliance seeking base rights through negotiation—though he expects the French to insist on handling their difficult affairs alone.
The Algerian Knot
Asked whether Algeria was ever a potential nation embodied in metropolitan France, Aron reaches back to 1830. Nobody knew at the outset why France went into Algeria; it was entered for a diplomatic incident, almost an accident. Marshal Bugeaud, who carried out the conquest, told the Assembly that the most reasonable course would be to abandon Algeria altogether—but the government in Paris was too weak to do so, and so the country had to be conquered completely. The present government is likewise too weak to abandon Algeria, and so must conquer it again, a task already four years old. Within the territory live a small French society of a million, perhaps one to two million Moslems integrated into French life, and seven million more outside French civilization—a diabolical situation, hard to maintain by force and harder still to abandon. Integrating the remainder would cost enormous sums with dubious returns, since the French-educated Algerians are precisely the most nationalistic. Britain in Asia held power indirectly and could hand government to independence parties; France granted independence in Tunisia and Morocco, with the economic deterioration that followed. The French minority in Algeria refuses to be treated like the minorities of Tunis and Rabat, and so France must stick—a problem Aron calls almost insoluble.
The Constitution Against the Parties
On the Constitution, Aron grants that it may improve the functioning of government in the short run while judging it, over the longer term, a dangerous device that will restore the old system. A modern democracy requires coherent parties, and the Constitution makes them nearly impossible: the return to the single-member constituency, in place of election by list, prevents strong parties and preserves a multiplicity of loosely organized groups, restoring a Parliament of personalities rather than parties. The Constitution, he says, is an attempt to apply the mechanism of constitutional monarchy to the chaos of a party-less system. He doubts that representation by personality, without party organization, can survive in an industrial France where two-thirds of the population lives in great cities. If the party system is the key to democracy, the essential task is to reorganize the parties—though the electoral law works against it.
Industrial Society and the Shrinking Stake
The interlocutor suggests that major economic groups now tend toward negotiated settlements, as in Austria or Holland’s Foundation of Labor, leaving the parties little to fight over. Aron broadly agrees: industrial society produces a party system with almost no stake in the argument, only secondary questions. The great political battles of the past twelve years in the West have been fought over foreign policy—Britain’s convulsion over Suez, America’s quarrel over communism, MacArthur, and Korea. In France since 1952 strikes have been few, with fundamental agreement among unions, managers, and peasants, save a marginal conflict over the price of wheat. Foreign policy remains outside that implicit accord. The British, reasonable and pragmatic, saw that Suez had failed and found another way; the French, of a different temper, insisted it would have worked had the Americans been less stupid.
Benevolent Oligarchy and Strong Power
Asked about a benevolent oligarchy, Aron notes the French habit of swinging from extreme anonymity to extreme personal power, handing full authority to whoever happens to be at hand when urgency is great. The French do not object to strong power on three conditions: the man must declare himself the expression of the people, he must be benevolent, and he must not interfere with ordinary living. Parliament’s disappearance for a few months caused little shock, since everyone knew it would return.
The Two Preambles
The book then sets beside these arguments the founding texts themselves. A proclamation issued on the morrow of the victory of the free peoples over the regimes that sought to enslave and degrade the human person reaffirms that every human being, without distinction of race, religion, or belief, possesses inalienable and sacred rights, and solemnly confirms the rights consecrated in 1789 and the fundamental principles recognized by the laws of the Republic. It goes on to proclaim that the law guarantees women rights equal to men in every domain; that anyone persecuted for the cause of freedom has the right of asylum; that all have the duty to work and the right to obtain employment, and none may suffer in work because of origin, opinions, or beliefs; that everyone may defend his interests through trade-union action and join the union of his choice; that the right to strike is exercised within the framework of governing laws; that workers, through delegates, take part in collective bargaining and the management of business; that property and enterprises bearing the character of a national public service or a de facto monopoly must become the property of the community; that the nation ensures the individual and the family the conditions of their development and guarantees to all—notably the child, the mother, and the aged worker—health protection, material security, rest, and leisure; that anyone unable to work by reason of age, physical or mental condition, or economic situation has the right to a decent existence from the community; that the nation proclaims the solidarity and equality of all Frenchmen before the burdens of national disasters; and that it guarantees equal access to education, professional training, and culture, establishing free, secular public education at all levels as a duty of the state. The Republic abides by international law, renounces wars of conquest, and will never turn arms against the freedom of any people; on condition of reciprocity it accepts the limitations of sovereignty necessary to organize and defend peace. With the peoples of its overseas territories it forms a union founded on equality of rights and duties without distinction of race or religion, composed of nations and peoples willing to pool or coordinate their resources to develop civilization, increase well-being, and ensure security. France proposes to guide the peoples for whom she has assumed responsibility toward freedom to govern themselves and manage their own affairs democratically, setting aside any system of colonization based on arbitrary power, and guarantees them equal access to public office and the exercise of the proclaimed rights and liberties.
The second text is the Preamble and opening articles of the new Constitution. The Preamble declares attachment to the Rights of Man and the principles of national sovereignty as defined in 1789, reaffirmed and complemented by the Preamble of 1946; by virtue of these principles and that of the free determination of peoples, the Republic offers to the Overseas Territories that desire to adhere new institutions founded on liberty, equality, and fraternity, conceived for their democratic evolution. Article 1 establishes a Community between the Republic and those peoples who adopt the Constitution by an act of free determination, based on equality and solidarity. Article 2 defines France as a Republic, indivisible, secular, democratic, and social, ensuring equality before the law without distinction of origin, race, or religion and respecting all beliefs; its emblem the tricolor, its anthem the “Marseillaise,” its motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” its principle government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Article 3 vests national sovereignty in the people, exercised through representatives and referendums, with suffrage always universal, equal, and secret, open to all citizens of both sexes who have reached majority and enjoy civil and political rights. Article 4 makes parties and political groups instrumental in the expression of the suffrage, free to form and operate, bound to respect national sovereignty and democracy.
The Presidency and the Electoral College
Title II turns to the President of the Republic. Article 5 makes him the guardian of the Constitution, ensuring by his arbitration the regular functioning of the public authorities and the continuance of the State, and the guarantor of national independence, territorial integrity, and respect for Community agreements and treaties. Article 6 fixes his seven-year term and erects an electoral college of Parliament, the General Councils, the Assemblies of the Overseas Territories, and elected municipal representatives, with representation graded by the size of the commune—from the mayor alone in villages under a thousand inhabitants, through mayors with deputies and councillors in towns of increasing size, to all municipal councillors in communes above nine thousand and, above thirty thousand, delegates appointed at one per thousand inhabitants beyond that figure. Elected representatives of the councils of overseas administrative units also sit in the college under conditions set by organic law, the participation of Community member States is settled by agreement, and the detailed procedures are left to organic law. Article 7 requires an absolute majority on the first ballot, or a second ballot otherwise.
Legislative Procedure and the Weapons of Government
The constitutional articles then lay out the machinery of government. Article 44 allows the Government, at its request, to force a single vote on all or part of a text, retaining only the amendments it proposes or accepts. Article 45 sends every bill successively through both assemblies in search of an identical text; if disagreement persists after two readings by each—or one apiece when urgency is declared—the Premier may convene a joint committee of equal numbers to propose a text, which the Government may submit for approval, with no amendments admissible except by agreement. Should the committee fail or its text be rejected, the Government may, after a further reading in each house, ask the National Assembly to rule definitively. Organic laws require a fifteen-day waiting period before first deliberation; failing agreement, the National Assembly adopts on final reading by an absolute majority of its members, and organic laws touching the Senate must pass identically in both houses, with promulgation only after the Constitutional Council has certified them. Finance bills carry their own clock: forty days for the National Assembly’s first reading, fifteen for the Senate, seventy days in all before the Government may enforce provisions by ordinance; if the budget is not filed in time, the Government asks authorization to collect taxes and releases funds by decree for commitments already voted. Government bills have priority on the agenda in the order the Government sets, with one meeting weekly reserved for questions and answers.
Censure, Treaties, and the Guardians of the Constitution
Articles 49 to 51 govern responsibility. The Premier may pledge the Government’s responsibility before the National Assembly on its program or a general policy declaration; the Assembly may answer with a censure motion, admissible only if signed by a tenth of its members, voted only forty-eight hours after filing, and carried only by a majority of the Assembly’s members—a rejected motion barring its signatories from filing another in the same session. The Premier may also pledge responsibility on the vote of a text, which passes unless a censure motion filed within twenty-four hours succeeds; he may ask the Senate to approve a general policy declaration. A censure vote, or the rejection of a program or declaration, obliges him to tender the Government’s resignation to the President.
The Presidency, the Assembly, and the Machinery of Restraint
Aron reads the constitution as a compromise forced by French conditions. France could not have the disciplined parties that make British cabinet government work, and it could not have the American separation of powers, which he thinks depends on habits and team spirit rather than on paper and which in any case is designed to paralyze power. What the drafters built instead was a set of brakes: a president with personal powers he can use without the prime minister’s signature, a parliament whose sessions are shortened, whose members lose their seats on entering the government, and whose legislative competence is fenced in by articles that reserve whole domains to decree. The famous Article 16, allowing the president to assume full powers in an emergency, troubles many readers; Aron argues it is less dangerous than it looks, since a man bent on dictatorship would need a coup anyway, while a man who wants to stay legal cannot use the article without justifying it. His sharpest criticism falls on the substitute who takes over a deputy’s seat when that deputy becomes a minister—a device he calls the worst possible regulation, doubling the candidates and giving the stand-in no future of his own. Whether the presidency becomes an arbiter above the parties or an active executive depends, he says, on the man: the 1877 clash between Marshal MacMahon and a hostile Assembly shows what happens when an ordinary president tries to fight.
A Country Changing Faster Than Its Politics
The book’s most surprising argument is that France’s troubles were not chiefly economic. Aron’s interlocutors press him with the familiar picture of a backward France of small shops and peasant farms, and he answers with figures: tens of thousands leaving the land each year, industry growing at roughly ten percent, productivity climbing faster than almost anywhere. The dissatisfaction, he suggests, comes from the speed of that success, which uproots people faster than a stagnant population can absorb, and from the humiliation of watching French power shrink in the world. He is equally unsentimental about the empire. The Community offered the African territories a legal road to independence, and Guinea’s “no” exposed the awkwardness of a France that had just granted the right of secession and now had to decide whether to punish its exercise. Algeria he calls a diabolical situation: a million Frenchmen, a few million Muslims inside French civilization, and seven million outside it, too costly to integrate and too hard to abandon. On the Communist Party he is almost dismissive—the most conservative institution in the world, bureaucratic and passive, whose parliamentary weight could be reduced by a change in the electoral law. And he keeps returning to the British comparison: where the British treat a difficulty as a problem to be solved, the French treat each crisis as proof that the constitution is bad, which is why a country of intense coherence and intense conservatism has spent a century and a half without a constitution it generally accepted.
What the Book Leaves Behind
Brogan’s introduction supplies the counterweight. He thinks the Fourth Republic was less useless than it was easy to damn, and he lists what it accomplished—the steel and coal pool, the common market, the industrial take-off—before noting that the new constitution was born of a crisis it did not end. He also doubts that the voters who approved it in the autumn of 1958 were endorsing the Gaullist faithful rather than the general himself, and he watches the old political class filtering back through the Senate. Aron’s own warning is structural: a constitution that makes coherent parties nearly impossible may restore the parliamentary chaos it was meant to cure once the emergency, and de Gaulle, have passed. Read together, the two essays form a portrait of a political system improvising its way through decolonization and modernization at once—and a reminder that institutions, however ingeniously drafted, only buy a country time.
