The Renovation That Failed: Mendès-France and the Radical Party

Abstract

Y MAY, 1958, there was virtual unanimity in France and elsewhere concerning the need to modify, perhaps drastically, the Constitution of the Fourth Republic. The insurrection in Algiers brought General de Gaulle to power in circumstances requiring both a solution to the Algerian problem and a renovation of French political institutions. Pierre Mend s-France, throughout the short life of the Fourth Republic and especially after the termination of his brief period of service as premier, devoted himself to these twin problems. Unlike De Gaulle, he made no frontal attack on the political system with its multiplicity of parties. The Third and Fourth Republics, for him, were the Republic, constituting a tradition of parliamentary democracy worthy of preservation. What was needed was a renovation of the existing system in order to resolve the major problems of economic reconstruction and the recasting of the links between France and her overseas possessions. Cabinet instability was the characteristic vice, but if it were to be reduced and more affirmative government to develop, the place to begin was not the formal constitution but the structure, the appeal, the representation, and the co-ordination of the larger political parties, especially those of the non-Communist Left who traditionally were the defenders of the Republic and who were the most likely sources of a reformist policy capable of constructive action at home and overseas.