ABSTRACT
For fourteen months after Charles de Gaulle’s triumphal return to Paris, the government of France was essentially a dictatorship by consent. There were no formal limitations on De Gaulle’s authority except those which he himself voluntarily accepted. The cabinet was hand-picked by De Gaulle and was responsible to him alone; he in turn was accountable only to the people. But this latter responsibility was totally without sanctions, and presumably the people could only exercise their powers by an uprising or a threat thereof. Thus the provisional Fourth Republic began its career as a presidential or even an authoritarian regime rather than a parliamentary one. This fourteen-month experiment, serving as immediate background for the constitutional debates, could hardly fail to exert a direct influence—either positive or negative—on the permanent structure of the Fourth Republic.
