Conclusions

Abstract

How did France change between 1934 and 1970 and how lasting were these changes? In political terms France has achieved a degree of stability that would have seemed surprising to those brought up during the 1930s. This stabilization has three dimensions. The first of these is the decline in political violence. The second relates to constitutional change. The Fifth Republic has survived the death of its founder and outlived all but one of the regimes that have governed France since 1789. Constitutional practice has been slightly altered by events such as the cohabition of right-wing prime ministers with a Socialist president, but the constitution itself has remained almost unchanged. Few people now argue in favour of significant constitutional change. Indeed François Mitterrand was president of the republic, which he had once criticized so bitterly, for 14 years. The third form that stabilization has taken in France relates to the party system. During the 1960s some commentators believed that France was moving toward an Anglo-Saxon two-party system. This has not happened. The right remains divided between the Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République and the Centrist Union pour la Démocratie Française, a division that was exacerbated by the personal animosity between Jacques Chirac and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.