France: the republics, the Fifth Republic, the President, the Prime Minister and the prefects

1. History, very briefly

1. The Revolution, 1789. The Estates-General becomes the National Assembly; the storming of the Bastille (14 July); the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (26 August 1789), still part of French constitutional law. Liberty, equality, fraternity.
2. First Republic, 1792–1804. Monarchy abolished; the Terror; the Directory; Napoleon’s Consulate (1799) and Empire (1804). It failed through internal violence, war and the rise of a military dictator.
3. Second Republic, 1848–1852. Universal male suffrage and a directly elected President, Louis Napoleon, who seized power in 1851 and became Emperor Napoleon III.
4. Third Republic, 1870–1940. Founded after defeat by Prussia; constitutional laws of 1875; a dominant parliament, weak President and short-lived ministries. Ended with defeat in 1940 and the Vichy regime.
5. Fourth Republic, 1946–1958. Parliamentary government under a multi-party Assembly; over twenty governments in twelve years. It collapsed during the Algerian crisis of May 1958.
6. Fifth Republic, 1958–. General Charles de Gaulle returns; a new Constitution drafted under Michel Debré is approved by referendum on 28 September 1958 and promulgated on 4 October 1958.

2. The de Gaulle Constitution: features

1. Written and fairly rigid (amendment under Article 89 by referendum, or by a three-fifths majority of Parliament meeting as Congress).
2. Unitary. Power is centralised in Paris, though decentralised to regions, departments and communes since 1982; Article 1 now states that the organisation of the Republic is decentralised.
3. Semi-presidential (Maurice Duverger’s term): a directly elected President with real powers, plus a Prime Minister and government responsible to Parliament.
4. Rationalised parliamentarism. Parliament’s law-making domain is limited (Article 34) and the government controls the agenda, to end the instability of the Fourth Republic.
5. Incompatibility of ministerial office with membership of Parliament (Article 23).
6. Constitutional Council to review laws, mainly before promulgation, and since 2010 on referral from the courts.
7. Referendum as a means of direct appeal to the people (Article 11).
8. Dual judiciary: ordinary and administrative courts.
9. Secular, democratic and social republic (Article 1); the 1789 Declaration and the 1946 Preamble are part of the constitutional block.

3. The President: selection, tenure and removal

• Election. Originally by an electoral college of about 80,000 notables; since the 1962 referendum, directly by universal suffrage. A candidate needs an absolute majority of votes cast; failing that, a run-off between the top two is held two weeks later.
• Tenure. Seven years (septennat) until the 2000 referendum reduced it to five (quinquennat), from 2002. Since the 2008 revision no one may serve more than two consecutive terms.
• Vacancy. The President of the Senate acts as interim President until a new election within 20 to 35 days.
• Removal (Article 68, as revised in 2007). Parliament sitting as the High Court may remove the President for a breach of duty manifestly incompatible with the exercise of the office. The decision needs a two-thirds majority. Otherwise the President enjoys immunity during the term for acts done in that capacity.

4. Powers and functions of the President

Article 5: the President ensures respect for the Constitution, the proper functioning of public authorities and the continuity of the state, and is the guarantor of national independence and territorial integrity.

Powers exercised alone (no countersignature).

1. Appoints the Prime Minister (Article 8).
2. Submits bills to referendum on the proposal of the government or Parliament (Article 11). De Gaulle used it in 1962 and resigned after losing one in 1969.
3. Dissolves the National Assembly after consulting the Prime Minister and the presiding officers (Article 12); no new dissolution within a year after the resulting election.
4. Emergency powers (Article 16) when the institutions or the nation are under serious and immediate threat; used once, in 1961.
5. Refers laws and treaties to the Constitutional Council; appoints three of its members and its President.
6. Messages to Parliament, and an address to Parliament in Congress (since 2008).

Other powers (countersigned by the Prime Minister). Presides over the Council of Ministers; appoints ministers on the Prime Minister’s proposal; signs ordinances and decrees; appoints senior civil and military officers; commander of the armed forces; negotiates and ratifies treaties; grants pardons; promulgates laws within fifteen days and may ask for reconsideration.

Role. In practice the President sets the main lines of policy, especially in foreign affairs and defence (the “reserved domain”). Power depends on whether the President’s camp controls the National Assembly. When it does not, there is cohabitation: the President must appoint a Prime Minister from the opposing majority, and domestic policy passes to the government. This happened in 1986–88, 1993–95 and 1997–2002. The five-year term, aligned with the Assembly’s, was meant to make cohabitation less likely. The 2024 snap election produced an Assembly with no majority, showing a new pattern of weak governments.

5. The Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers

• Appointed by the President; formally ends office on tendering the government’s resignation.
• The government “determines and conducts the policy of the nation” and has the administration and armed forces at its disposal (Article 20); the Prime Minister directs its action (Article 21).
• Responsible to the National Assembly: the Assembly may overthrow it by a motion of censure carried by an absolute majority of members (Article 49).
• Article 49.3: the government may stake its responsibility on a bill, which then passes unless a censure motion succeeds. Since 2008 this is limited to budget and social security financing bills and one other bill per session.
• Ministers may not sit in Parliament (Article 23); a member who becomes minister is replaced.
• The Council of Ministers, presided over by the President, meets weekly at the Élysée.

6. The prefect and the prefectures

Napoleon created the prefect (préfet) in 1800 as the agent of the central state in each department. There are now 101 departments, grouped into regions, each with a prefecture.

• Appointed by decree of the President in the Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior; a senior civil servant, removable at will.
• Represents the state and every minister in the department; maintains public order and security; directs the decentralised state services; manages emergencies.
• Supervises the legality of acts of local authorities. Before the Defferre decentralisation laws of 1982 the prefect exercised prior control (tutelle) and was also the department’s executive. Since 1982 the elected president of the departmental council is the local executive, and the prefect can only refer illegal local acts to the administrative court.
• The regional prefect coordinates state action in the region.

The prefectoral system is the instrument of French administrative centralisation; the prefects of the nineteenth century were often described as emperors in miniature in their departments.

How this is examined

The President is the main essay (February 2025, Q.4(a)): election, tenure, removal, Article 5, the solo and countersigned powers, and the role with cohabitation. The Fifth Republic as a short note (February 2025) wants the 1958 background and five features. The prefect appears as a short note in older papers; give origin, appointment, functions and the change in 1982.