RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
French nationalists; they believe in a strong, stable state, built around a
strong executive who represents the national interest; and they consider
themselves to be modern and progressive in comparison with the “prophets
of the past” of the traditional parties.19
If Gaullism means anything more than simple obedience to de Gaulle,
certainly it means attachment to the General’s “certaine idée de la France,"
to the notion of an active and independent French role in world affairs.
“. . . France is not really herself unless in the front rank,” writes de Gaulle
in the first paragraph of his War Memoirs. “. . . [O] nly vast enterprises are
capable of counterbalancing the ferments of dispersal which are inherent
in her people; . . . our country, as it is, surrounded by the others, as they
are, must aim high and hold itself straight, on pain of mortal danger. In
short, to my mind, France cannot be France without greatness.”20 In a sim-
ilar vein, in the conclusion to his book, Au Service de la Nation, former
Gaullist Prime Minister Michel Debré writes, “The doctrine of this work,
as the reader can verify, is a national doctrine. Its first principle is the exis-
tence of the French Nation. Its first objective is the independence, the
progress, the prestige of that nation.”21 Similarly for former cabinet minister
Edmond Michelet (one of the purest of the Gaullist “inconditionnels”),
for former Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, and even for most of the
“Gaullists of the Left,” Gaullism is at least in part a form of nationalism.22
To be sure, the Algerian problem demonstrated that the Gaullist notion
of grandeur is sufficiently vague to permit conflicting interpretations.
Secondly, and in part in order to allow the French nation to play its
proper role, Gaullists from 1946 onward have insisted on replacement of
stalemate assembly government with new institutions centering on a strong
executive. This was the doctrine — in fact the raison d'etre — of the RPF.
In turn the UNR, in its first National Congress in November, 1959,
adopted the following resolution: “The fundamental doctrine of the Union
for the New Republic has its sources in the Bayeux speech of 1946, where
are defined the major designs for a restoration of the state, founded upon
separation and balance of powers.”2’ Though Gaullists believe that French
society must remain liberal and pluralistic, they believe in the necessity of
an independent president, created to serve as arbiter between rival interests,
as guardian of the national interest, and as a constant check upon partisan
ambitions. The constitutional amendment of 1962 — generally accepted
by Gaullists — added popular election of the president to the Gaullist con-
stitutional creed. Again, even the Gaullists of the Left (the former Union
Démocratique du Travail) agree with this party stand, though at times they
wish the government had more faith in representative associations, both
political and economic.21
A third doctrinal link in the Gaullist chain is commitment to moderniza-