Parliamentary dissolution (France)
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In France, the right to dissolve a chamber of parliament—i.e., prematurely terminate its term to trigger an election—has been vested in the Head of State or, in exceptional cases, the Government or even one of the chambers. Dissolutions have occurred under various regimes since 1802, including the First Empire, the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Third, Fourth and Fifth Republics.
First introduced in the Constitution of the Year X, 1802, for the benefit of the Conservative Senate, dissolution in the truly parliamentary sense in France originated during the Restoration in Article 50 of the Charter of 1814. At first, the use of dissolution was fairly in line with parliamentary theory, before eventually becoming an authoritarian tool under Charles X. Under the July Monarchy, Article 42 of the Charter of 1830 again provided for dissolution, but this time, a genuine system of government accountability was introduced. Two procedures balanced each other out—motions of no confidence versus dissolution—enabling France to experienced its first authentic parliamentary system, where the Government became the real point of contact between the two fundamental bodies: the Monarch and the elected Chamber.
Outside the parliamentary tradition, the authoritarian regime of the Second Empire gave the Emperor the right to dissolve the Legislature.
The Constitutional Acts of 1875 took up the Orleanist mechanism of dissolution, but adapted it. However, the crisis of May 16, 1877 made the procedure tedious to the Republicans, and the tool was abandoned for the rest of the Third Republic. This created great instability in the Chamber of Deputies to develop without sanction, resulting in government instability that worsened with each decade.
In 1946, the Constituent Assembly, informed by France's recent history, retained the right of dissolution but made it automatic in the event of the chamber's instability—rather than a discretionary prerogative of the executive. The constitutional practice of the Fourth Republic showed the limits of the right of dissolution: while governments fell continuously fell, only one dissolution took place, which was in 1955. The Constitution of 1958 therefore put an end to this restriction upon dissolution: from then on, it would be a discretionary prerogative of the President of the Republic, as defined in Article 12.
However, the relative stability of parliamentary majorities since the 1962 legislative election has effectively removed the threat posed to governments by of a motion of no confidence to governments. Dissolution under the Fifth Republic thus has taken on a different use from that taught by traditional parliamentary government theory. It has only been used once, in 1962, to resolve a conflict between the executive and legislative branches of government, while the other dissolutions carried out obey different logic.