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Sandro Guerrieri
In this article, Sandro Guerrieri examines the evolution of the role of the French Parliament in the last years of the Third Republic, in a context dominated by the crisis of the traditional republican political model and by the worsening of international relations, which led to the Second World War. The article begins with the description of the main features of Third Republic's parliamentarianism. Then it describes the different factors that led to the reduction, in the first half of the 1930s, of the legislative functions of the Chambers, through the permission accorded to the government to act with the instrument of the décrets-lois. The victory of the Popular Front at the elections of spring 1936 led to an initial relaunch of the role of the Parliament, but afterwards the difficulties that the Blum government had to face brought it, too, to ask for permission to legislate by decrees. Refused to Blum, this permission was accorded to Chautemps and Daladier. The latter used it, from April 1938, in a very extensive way, so that the role of the Parliament became less important. The author then examines the role of the French Parliament after the outbreak of the war. At the beginning Daladier succeeded in reducing the influence of the Chambers even further, but afterwards they again played a major role. Yet the problem was that the French Parliament, after it had for several years lost its primary position in the political system, was not able any more to act in a constructive way in order to reinforce national cohesion.
