De Gaulle Becomes First President of Fifth Republic

Context

France’s Fourth Republic, founded in 1946, produced more than twenty cabinets in twelve years because no stable parliamentary majority could be sustained. Colonial wars, above all the conflict in Algeria that began in 1954, exposed the regime’s paralysis on questions of national security and overseas policy.

In May 1958, French army officers in Algiers seized local authority and demanded the return of General Charles de Gaulle, the wartime leader of Free France who had withdrawn from politics in 1946. President René Coty invited de Gaulle to form a government, granting him extraordinary powers to draft a new constitution that would shift authority toward the presidency.

What Happened

After a September 1958 referendum approved the new constitution by a wide margin and November legislative elections gave de Gaulle’s supporters a comfortable majority, an electoral college met on December 21 and chose him president with seventy-eight percent of the votes.

On January 8, 1959, de Gaulle took the presidential oath at the Élysée Palace in Paris before the Constitutional Council and assembled officials. He immediately appointed Michel Debré, a longtime collaborator and principal drafter of the constitution, as prime minister.

The Fifth Republic’s charter gave the president command of foreign affairs and defense, the right to appoint and dismiss the prime minister, and the power to dissolve the National Assembly, while leaving day-to-day legislation to parliament.

Aftermath

Debré’s government confronted the Algerian insurgency and launched economic modernization measures. De Gaulle traveled to Algeria shortly after taking office and signaled a willingness to consider self-determination, though the final settlement would require further political and military crises.

The new institutions ended the rapid turnover of governments that had characterized the Fourth Republic, providing France with a durable framework for decision-making.

Legacy

The semi-presidential system has remained in force for more than six decades, guiding France through decolonization, European integration, nuclear deterrence, and multiple periods of cohabitation between presidents and opposition prime ministers. It has served as a reference for other countries seeking to balance strong leadership with parliamentary oversight.

Historians regard the 1958–1959 transition less as a personal coup than as a pragmatic institutional response to an immediate threat of civil war, crediting de Gaulle with restoring governmental stability while preserving republican forms.