National Assembly (French Fourth Republic)

The National Assembly (French: "Assemblée Nationale") was the lower house of the Fourth French Republic, established by the French Constitution of 1946 and dissolved by the Constitution of 1958.

The institutional nature of the parliamentarian Fourth Republic has been described as a source of political instability by historians and jurists.[1][2] The proportional voting system of the 1946 legislative election led to a "tripartisme" dominated by the Communists, the Socialists and the Popular Republican Movement, that ended up with the step down of communist ministers from the government in 1947.[3]

The electoral law of 9 May 1951 introduced a voting system based on affiliations: it combined proportional representation with the possibility for the ballots to join forces in the counting and distribution of votes. This system was intended to give a stable majority to the government, as well as to reduce the influence of the Communist Party and the Rally of the French People in the parliament.[3]

By creating the French Union, the 1946 constitution allowed a rising number of black deputies from French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa and French West Indies to be elected in the Assembly: from only one Senegalese representative in the Third Republic, black deputies were 21 in 1946 and 30 in 1958, the year of the funding of the Fifth Republic.[4]

Composition
Term Composition
I (1946 election)
II (1951 election)
III (1956 election)

References
  1. Colliard, Jean-Claude (1978-01-01). Les régimes parlementaires contemporains (in French). Presses de Sciences Po. ISBN 9782724685923.
  2. Lascombe, Michel (2005). Le droit constitutionnel de la Vème République (in French). L'Harmattan. p. 26. ISBN 9782747594141.
  3. "L'instabilité politique - Histoire - Histoire de l'Assemblée nationale - Le Gouvernement provisoire et la Quatrième République (1944-1958) - Assemblée nationale". www2.assemblee-nationale.fr. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
  4. Guillemin, Philippe (1958). "Les élus d'Afrique noire à l'Assemblée nationale sous la Quatrième République". Revue française de science politique. 8 (4): 861–877. doi:10.3406/rfsp.1958.392489.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.