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This is a chronological list of political systems in France, from Clovis (481 CE) to modern times. A series of different monarchies spanned 1300 years from the Early Middle Ages to the French Revolution in 1789. The Revolution was followed by five periods of republicanism alternating with periods of imperial monarchy and one bout with authoritarianism during the Second World War. The Fifth Republic began in 1958 and is the political system in France as of 2024.
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A political system (French: système politique[a]), also known as a "form of government" [b][c] is a way of organizing a state. Some different political systems are: democracy, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, theocracy, feudalism, monarchism, republicanism, and various hybrid systems. Each of these may be further subdivided, for example: absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, and feudal monarchy, all of which have been present in France. Many of these forms of government were known in Classical antiquity, and pre-date the existence of France.
Classical French historiography [fr] usually regards Clovis I (r. 509–511) as the first king of France, however historians today consider that such a kingdom didn't begin until the establishment of West Francia in 843.[1][2] For the purposes of this article, all political systems from Clovis on are considered to be in scope.
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The Franks were a group of Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. Clovis I established a single kingdom uniting the core Frankish territories, and was crowned King of the Franks in 496. He and his descendants ruled the Merovingian dynasty until 751, when it was replaced by the Carolingians (751-843).
After the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, the Carolingian Empire (800–888) gradually came to be seen in the West as a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire. After the Treaty of Verdun in 843, the Kingdom of the Franks ("Francia") was divided into three separate kingdoms, merging into two: West Francia and East Francia. The latter became the Holy Roman Empire, and West Francia eventually became the core of the Kingdom of France, which was structured as a feudal monarchy and lasted for eight centuries (987–1792).
During the French Revolution, the last pre-revolutionary monarch, Louis XVI, was forced to accept the French Constitution of 1791, thus turning the absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. This lasted a year, before the monarchy was abolished entirely in September 1792 and replaced by the First French Republic, marking the beginning of republicanism in France.
For roughly the next eighty years, there was an alternating series of empires, republics, and a kingdom, until the 1870 establishment of the Third Republic. From that point on, it was republics down to the present day, with the exception of the authoritarian Vichy regime during World War II. The Fifth Republic, established as a semi-presidential system in 1958, remains the political system in France as of now.
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