From Gaullist Exception to Standard Model
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French Republic and president of the French Union, an alliance of fran cophone nations created by the Fourth Republic to replace the old colo nial system. Formally, then, the Constitution of the Fifth Republic had a federalist dimension (some experts, Capitant among them, actually spoke of a “Franco-A frican federation”). Election by universal suffrage would have posed the problem of determining the population of eligible voters. Would all Union nationals be qualified to cast ballots on the same basis? Or would it be necessary to devise different modes of election, one for Metropolitan France and another for the confederated territories? The case of war-torn Algeria presented still more perplexing difficulties. But these were not the only reasons the issue was not broached in 1958. Even if de Gaulle was subsequently to say more than once that he had “long” believed that universal suffrage was the only possible method for electing a president,18 he could not help but recognize that both tactical and strategic considerations counseled caution. He was, of course, well aware that many of his adversaries feared him as a poten tial dictator, and therefore thought it prudent to take into account the “passionate prejudices” that for more than a century had held sway in France.19 “Furthermore,” he was to later emphasize in explaining his frame of mind in 1958, not without a certain hauteur, “I had intended to assume the duties of head of state myself at the outset, in the belief that, by reason of past history and present circumstances, the manner of my accession would be a mere formality having no consequence with regard to my role. On further consideration, however, I resolved to com plete the edifice in this respect before the end of my seven-year term.”20 There is a sense, too, in which the four referendums conducted between 1958 and 1962 amounted to a substitute for direct popular election, by effectively sanctioning the bond between the people and the Gaullist regime.21 By 1962, decolonization had mostly been accomplished and Algeria had won its independence. The technical obstacles having now been re moved, de Gaulle was able to turn his full attention to the task of se curing the future of the Republic he had founded. His successors, he felt sure, would not enjoy the advantage of what he grandly called his “per sonal equation.”22 The time had come at last to place the constitutional reform authorizing direct election of the president before the people. Re action was swift. The left was adamantly opposed. The indignation of the Communist Party, which had already hinted at a coup d’état, was
