Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T00:43:21.822Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Constitutional Reform in France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Robert K. Gooch
Affiliation:
University of Virginia

Extract

The Stavisky affair in France was, it would now seem, one of those national crises with which students of French politics are familiar. In cases of the kind, a chronic condition becomes acute. A latent anti-democratic sentiment and a dormant antiparliamentary movement appear to become suddenly aroused. A concatenation of apparently superficial circumstances causes an emergency to exist.

The many persons who, like M. Charles Benoist for example, have for a long time insisted that the inevitable ultimate outcome for a system suffering from a chronic condition marked by periodic crises must be revolution, dictatorship, or reform seemed in February of 1934 to be supported by unusually important facts. In conditions such that anticipation of revolution or dictatorship was prevalent on an exceedingly large scale, M. Doumergue assumed power, as is well known, with the definite understanding that he would direct his efforts seriously and unconditionally towards reform.

Type
Foreign Governments and Politics
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1935

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.