Charles de Gaulle and the Revolution of 1962: Caesarism in Search of Republican Order.

In 1958, Charles de Gaulle, with no official standing other than his personal charisma, returned to power with the help of the military. For this reason, Raymond Aron and others, without necessarily criticizing de Gaulle, have interpreted the origin of the French Fifth Republic as a revolution or regime change. In recent years this interpretation has become less common, but this essay aims to defend it. However, most interpreters regard the regime change as completed in 1958, when de Gaulle returned to power and rewrote the constitution. Instead, this essay argues that the circumstances of 1958 created serious ambiguities in the new Fifth Republic. It did not specify what kind of regime the new republic was. These ambiguities were resolved by the constitutional change that de Gaulle executed in 1962, when he called a referendum to establish the direct election of the president through universal suffrage. 1962 completed the regime change begun in 1958. Because of the present popularity of direct universal suffrage, the referendum of 1962 now has the aura of a footnote to the events of 1958. But for the participants, 1962 was a high-stakes, regime-level struggle, and this essay explains why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]