PAOLA PICIACCHIA

Ambiguitą e  contraddizioni della riforma dello Stato alle origini della IV Repubblica francese

N. 168

Summary — The constitutional experience of the IV French Republic deserves an outstanding place in the European arena of the post-war period. And not only for the negative as well as dramatic results that this experience has brought about but even more for all the problems and difficult situations that have come to the surface and are still useful today for a global consideration of the evolution of the French constitution.

In particular, in the origin of the IV French Republic (and that’s the topic of this survey) it is possible to detect a complicated plot of ambiguities and contradictions These, since the drafting of the constitutional text, led to a deep conflict between the will of the French members of the constituent assembly, unquestionably directed towards situations implying democracy, stability, smoothness in the relations among the organs of the State and the reality of compromise emerging in the constituent phase which undermines the innovating potential of the reform in process.

This conflict has an important role in the events of the Fourth Republic and underlines the total inadequacy of the institutional approach, mostly marked by the fact that the French political forces are still inclined to ideas different from parliamentary system and to an inadequate interpretation of the need to be always faithful to the democratic, economical and social evolution of the country.

"Traditional" Republican culture conservative towards any form of innovation, lack of attention towards all the problems concerning the reform of the State produced in the Thirties, complete incapacity to follow a way that would really go through the concept of "democracy of the parties". These are the elements that will contribute to a sort of historical continuity between the Third and Fourth Republic, continuity in which the Fourth Republic will find its reason for existence to be broken only many years later by the proposal of a new Republican pattern of which De Gaulle will be the interpreter.