ABSTRACT
Political continuity – from General de Gaulle to Georges Pompidou – is most evident in institutional matters. If the ‘reserved’ field of policy means the area of policy the President is particularly interested in, then for Georges Pompidou this would be education rather than national defence. The fact that under Pompidou relations between the majority and the government improved substantially, compared with what they had been under Michel Debre, was due to a very great extent to the personal influence of Georges Pompidou himself. The margin of manœuvre left to Georges Pompidou among his political friends, is exceedingly narrow in a field which, furthermore, arouses no great enthusiasm in him. There is certain significance in the fact that the first important political decision made by the new presidential team – devaluation – was of an economic and financial nature.
