16 May 1877 Crisis - Aftermath

Aftermath

The crisis sealed the defeat of the royalists. President MacMahon accepted his defeat and resigned in January 1879. The Comte de Chambord, whose intransigeancy had ruined the alliance between Legitimists and Orleanists, died in 1883, after which several Orleanists would rally to the Republic, quoting Adolphe Thiers' words according to which "the Republic is the form of government which divides the least". These newly rallied would become the first right-wing republicans of France – see René Rémond's classic distinction of the three right-wing families in France. After World War I (1914–18), some of the independent radicals and members of the right-wing of the late Radical-Socialist Party would ally themselves with these pragmatic republicans, although anticlericalism remained a gap between these long-time rivals (and indeed continues, to this day, to be a main criterion of distinction between the French left-wing and its right-wing).

In the constitutional field, the presidential system was definitely rejected in favor of a parliamentary system, and the right of dissolution of parliament severely restricted, so much that it was never used again under the Third Republic. After the Vichy regime, the Fourth Republic (1946–1958) would again be founded on this parliamentary system, something which Charles de Gaulle despised and rejected (le régime des partis). Thus, when general de Gaulle had the opportunity to come back to power in crisis of May 1958, he designed a constitution which would restore the separation of powers, strengthening the President. His 1962 reform to have the president elected by direct universal suffrage (instead of being elected by deputies and senators) further increased his authority. The constitution designed by de Gaulle for the Fifth Republic (since 1958) specifically tailored his needs, but this specificity was also rested on the President's personal charisma.

Even with de Gaulle's disappearance from the political scene a year after the May 68 crisis, little changed until the 1980s, when the various cohabitations under President François Mitterrand renewed the conflict between the presidency and the prime minister. Subsequently President Jacques Chirac proposed to reduce the term of the presidency from seven to five years (the quinquennat) to avoid any further "cohabitation" and thus conflict between the executive and legislative branches. This change was accepted by referendum in 2000.