Parliament and the French Government's Domination of the Legislative Process

For those both within and outside France who are inclined to judge the standing of parliament under the Fifth Republic by comparison with its Fourth Republic predecessor, there is a tendency to describe it in terms of decline and decadence, subordination and humiliation. Those who, like Philip Williams, had deplored the instability of French governments, suffering from daily harassment that threatened their existence, turned to deploring parliament’s abasement. It had not merely lost the capacity to make and unmake governments; it was constitutionally subjected to an array of procedural constraints, with the result that ‘the Parliament of France, once among the most powerful in the world, became one of the weakest’. ¹