34
RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
leader, a banker, Georges Pompidou, who was not even a UNR member.
Pompidou increasingly played the role of party leader, and after 1964 or
1965 was generally so recognized. At the height of his prestige within the
party, following the sweeping Gauilist victory in the legislative elections of
June, 1968, Pompidou was summarily dismissed by President de Gaullc to
make way for Maurice Couve de Murville, a dedicated diplomat and civil
servant who, like most other ministers, had given scant attention to party
affairs.
In the legislative elections of March, 1967, and June, 1968, ministers at
last were required to present themselves as Gaullist candidates for parlia-
ment. Twenty-six of the twenty-eight ministers ran under the Fifth Republic
label in 1967. In the government formed in April, 1967, twenty-one of the
twenty-nine members joined the new Gaullist parliamentary group, the
Democratic Union for the Fifth Republic, until they were required by the
incompatibility rule of the constitution to resign their Assembly seats at
the end of thirty days in favor of their replacements. One more minister
(Maurice Schumann) “attached” himself to the Democratic Union, and an
additional three members of the government joined the Independent Re-
publican group. Although two defeated candidates were kept on in the
cabinet (Maurice Couve de Murville as Foreign Minister and Pierre Mess-
mer as Defense Minister), de Gaulle at last had taken an important step
in the direction of party government.171 Again in the June, 1968, elections,
all members of the government save André Malraux were candidates for
the National Assembly. In the postelection government headed by Couve
de Murville, all except Malraux had run successfully on the UDR ticket,
including three Independent Republicans.
VI. Conclusion
In certain respects the UDR is, as it claims to be, a new type of French
political party. In its blending of stability and progress, it borrows from both
the Left and the Right. With the UDR as its central force, the Gaullist
parliamentary majority has introduced into French politics the notion of
the government party, whose primarj' purpose is to produce the electoral
and parliamentary support necessary to allow the government to survive
and to act. With regard to its electorate, Gaullism’s voting strength in many
of the economically most dynamic and prosperous areas of France is indi-
cation of its appeal to modernizers. In its commitment to a pragmatic
striving toward economic growth and progress, it shares in that ideology
which masquerades as the end of ideology.1 '- Though de Gaulle rejects the
vision of European political unification, in many ways he and his followers
belong to the new, not the old, Europe.
In four significant respects the UDR resembles those pragmatic, ma-