ABSTRACT
Among the changes in French politics during the past thirty years, none has been as dramatic as the changes in the party system. The key to the stability of the regime during the Fifth Republic can be found in the party system: by redefining and altering the content of political discourse, political parties created support for the institutions of the Fifth Republic; by negotiating agreements among themselves, the parties constrained real electoral choices in a way that stabilized the electoral and policy arenas; and by attracting loyal and stable electoral followings, the party system established an important nexus between the state and society. Indeed, the Fifth Republic became what the Fourth Republic never was—something close to a regime dominated by political parties. In most ways, the parties (rather than the constitution) have given the regime its present character, and this happened in spite of an electoral system that could have favored localism and party weakness. Indeed, much of the constitution of the Fifth Republic is predicated on the assumption that strong, consolidated parties were not in France's future. As Michel Debré argued in 1959;
Ah! if we had the possibility to make a clear and constant majority spring up tomorrow ... it would not be necessary to impose order and stability by cutting the ties between the parties and the government. . . . But ... no one has the right in France, at the present time, to issue a check against a future that we know too well will be marked for a long time yet by political divisions—that is, by majorities menaced too readily by collapse and which must be forced to be wise. Because, in France, governmental stability cannot result initially from the electoral law, it must result, at least in part, from constitutional regulation. 1
