• OwOarchist@pawb.social
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    2 days ago

    Third French Republic (1870–1940): Napoleon III is captured by Prussia; France sets up a highly unstable parliamentary democracy.

    Is it really that unstable, if it lasted for 70 years and only ended due to foreign invasion, not internal collapse?

    • Mordred_vat@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The highly unstable part is a selling point for the 5th republic, directly inherited from De Gaulle, who was more inspired by a military style chain of command. Parlementary negociations and proceeding are not optimal from this point of view (one of the reason why the French defeat is attributed to the 3rd Republic, which is somewhat exaggerated). Same for the 4th Republic, it didn’t fail because of the war in Algérie but was ended by De Gaulle as a condition to his return to power (at a time where generals in Algérie were organizing a coup to support him).