The French Elections of January 2, 1956

FOLLOWING heated days of increasingly bitter debate over electoral reform, the French National Assembly, on November 29, 1955, refused to vote confidence in the Government of Premier Edgar Faure. Since the negative tally of 318 votes exceeded by four an absolute majority of the Assembly, the Government was forced to resign, in keeping with the terms of Article 49 of the Constitution. The action of the Assembly was neither unexpected nor unusual. However, since the Faure Government was the second to be overthrown by an absolute majority within 18 months, and since these actions occurred after the first 18-month period of the Parliament, the possibility of dissolution under Article 51 arose. After a moment of indecision, the Council of Ministers decided to request dissolution, and by decree of December 2 this was accomplished. New elections were scheduled for January 2, 1956. The normal life of the Assembly was therefore shortened by six months. The dissolution, the first under the 1946 Constitution of the Fourth Republic, resulted in vehement charges of bad faith from politicians opposed to M. Faure, especially from his arch rival, Pierre Mendes-France. Despite frequent mutterings of opportunism and unfairness, the weight of legal opinion held that the dissolution was thoroughly constitutional. On the other hand, those French who always see a man on horseback just over the horizon sought to revive memories of Marshal MacMahon's illfated dissolution of the Parliament during the earliest period of the Third Republic. Previous elections had done little to encourage the belief that the elections of January 2, 1956, would result in firm Parliamentary coalitions.1 As a result of the first elections under the Constitution, those of November 10, 1946, the Communists, Socialists, and the MRP had among them three-quarters of the seats in the Assembly. This coalition of three highly disciplined parties, unique in French history, fell apart during 1947, largely over the questions of economic policy and of Indo-China. On May 4, the

Constitution · Decree · Faith · Government (linguistics) · Parliament · Political science · Sociology · Theology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

• Democracy-Reinforcing Hardball

  Open Access•David A Bateman•Comparative Political Studies•2025

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