“Strong Government” in the Constituent Processes of France and Italy: Ideas, Projects, and Resistance

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Published

2026-07-06

Issue

Vol. 51 (2026): The 'strong government': building and legitimizing executive power in the twentieth century. A comparative perspective

Section

Itinerari

License

Creative Commons License

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The issues are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) which allows re-distribution and re-use of a licensed work on the conditions that the creator is appropriately credited and that any derivative work is made available under “the same, similar or a compatible license”.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63277/gsc.v51i.5344

Authors

  • Gabriele Maestri Università di Roma Tre

Keywords:

Prime Minister, President of the Republic, Parliamentary confidence, Fourth French Republic, Italian Constitution

Abstract

The essay considers the (partially overlapping) processes that led to the drafting of the Constitutions in France and Italy in the 1940s, focusing on executive power. Specifically, it examines the genesis and effectiveness of solutions aimed at strengthening and stabilizing Government (especially compared to the political-constitutional experiences that preceded Fascism and the Vichy regime), but without risking new authoritarian experiences. With regard to France, the contribution also considers the reform proposals formulated between the late 19th century and the 1930s, as well as the constitutional revisions approved during the Fourth Republic, up to the process that led to the drafting of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic in 1958 and subsequently (especially after the provision for the direct election of the President of the Republic in 1962) to its reconfiguration as semi-presidentialism.