Historical and political debates on the election of the President of the Republic and executive bodies since the French Revolution

The presentation by the two jurists focused on three key moments: the French Revolution, 1848 and 1962. While the election of the President of the Republic is now such a natural feature of French political life, the speakers recalled that it had long aroused strong resistance on the grounds, inherited from revolutionary thinking, that the legislature should express the will of the nation, while the executive should be responsible for implementing it. Throughout the revolutionary period, the executive was seen as subservient to the legislature, and executive bodies as necessarily collegial. a major break came in 1848, when the election of the President by universal suffrage was seen as a mechanism for transmitting the electoral will to the body it elects, following a process of constant increase in the powers of the executive bodies. Agreement on the need for a strong executive (i.e. sufficiently legitimate to oppose the possible encroachments of a single assembly) outweighs the objective of a balance of powers.

The speakers recalled that it was only at the start of the^Fifth Republic that the discredit that tainted the election of the president by universal suffrage after the coup d'état of December 2, 1851 was partially forgotten. Drawing the conclusion from the ^Third Republic that the party system was a perversion of the normal state of society, de Gaulle imposed, against his political opponents, the idea that this election was no ordinary election: it became a form of coronation, the expression of a communion with the people. He was supported by the intervention in the debate of constitutionalists who, in retrospect, found justification for this election by universal suffrage: under the new Constitution, the President would have such powers that the incumbent should be elected by universal suffrage. But, in the view of the contributors, this leads to a paradoxical situation in which the office determines the election, rather than the other way round. In conclusion, A. Le Pillouer and P. Brunet deplored the fact that the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage has led to a presidentialist reading of his power.

The discussion returned to the meaning of election (as authorization, legitimization, social form) and recalled that certain democratic powers may not be elected under conditions of publicity, accountability, collegiality, etc., and that a distinction must therefore be drawn between democratic institutions and election.

Biographies

Pierre Brunet is Professor of Public Law at the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre, where he heads UMR CNRS 7074 (Center for Legal Theory and Analysis). He is a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). His publications include Vouloir pour la Nation. Le concept de représentation dans la théorie de l'État (LGDJ-Bruylant, 2004), and Droit public des interventions économiques (with Richard Moulin, LGDJ, 2007).

Arnaud Le Pillouer is a lecturer in public law at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, and has been seconded to the Collège de France since September 2010. He is the author of Les pouvoirs non-constituants des assemblées constituantes - Essai sur le pouvoir instituant (2005), and has published widely in legal theory and constitutional law.