France is often used as a typical example of the nation-State, a comparatively rare historical and geographical phenomenon in which the three essential elements in a country’s identity - territory, State and people - are melded into a united whole. For a country to reach this point, its citizens have to identify with a geographical area and a sufficiently stable and long-lasting political system - in this case the Republic. These circumstances are the result of a lengthy process of construction culminating with the advent of the Fifth Republic. 

The institutions of the French Republic have a long and turbulent history. The French Revolution of 1789 failed to provide France with institutions that lived up the principles proclaimed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 26 August 1789. For example, the Declaration sets out the separation of powers as the basis for any proposed constitution. France experimented with many systems. In the nineteenth century, attempts to institute a parliamentary monarchy followed the First Republic instituted by the National Convention. This was followed by Napoleon’s dictatorship, which became an imperial monarchy. It was not until the last third of the nineteenth century that the Republic took root in a parliamentary system featuring the omnipotence of the elected assemblies. This system, despite the defeat of 1940, was reconstituted in identical form after the Second World War.

The Fourth Republic, which had very unstable institutions, did not survive the colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria and France adopted a Constitution in 1958 that has lasted longer than any other, except the constitutional laws of the Third Republic. At the instigation of General de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic revamped the parliamentary system, striking a new balance between institutions to give the central government the means to undertake action in the long-term that is not vulnerable to political contingencies.

The Fifth Republic is the heir to France’s Republican tradition, but it also incorporates elements of the successive systems of government that have been tried over the last two centuries.