The Founding of the French Third Republic

• Author: Stephen E. Hanson
• Published date: 01 August 2010
• Date: 01 August 2010
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414010370435

Comparative Political Studies
43(8/9) 1023 –1058
The Founding of the
© The Author(s) 2010
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French Third Republic
DOI: 10.1177/0010414010370435
http://cps.sagepub.com
Stephen E. Hanson1
Abstract
How France became a consolidated democracy after the Franco-Prussian War of
1870 has received little attention from students of comparative democratization.
Contrary to earlier structural theories, the French case shows that in periods
of high social uncertainty, political elites with clear ideological visions of
the future have a strategic advantage over their more “pragmatic” opponents.
Clear and consistent ideologies can solve the col ective action dilemma facing
initial party activists by artificial y elongating the time horizons of those who
embrace them. Successful party ideologies have the character of self-fulfil ing
prophecies: By portraying the future polity as one serving the interests of those
loyal to specific ideological principles, they help to bring political organizations
centered on these principles into being. In the early Third Republic, ideological y
consistent republicans and legitimists built ef ective networks of party activists,
whereas ideological y inconsistent Orléanists and Bonapartists failed to do
so, al owing the victorious republicans to design new state institutions—with
pro-democratic consequences.
Keywords
France, constitution making, French Third Republic, critical junctures, ideology
The story of how France became a consolidated democracy after its defeat
and occupation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 has received little atten-
tion from students of comparative democratization. It is difficult to understand
1University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Stephen E. Hanson, University of Washington, Department of Political Science, Box 353530,
Seattle, WA 98195-3530
Email: shanson@u.washington.edu

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Comparative Political Studies 43(8/9)
why. The case is of obvious historical significance: The Third Republic was
the first stable electoral democracy with universal male suffrage on the
European continent, and its example inspired republicans throughout Europe
and beyond. From a theoretical point of view, the consolidation of French
democracy from 1870 through 1940 poses fascinating puzzles: Surely one
would not ordinarily have predicted the long-term success of democratic
institutions in a country emerging from a century of dictatorship and violence,
in a geopolitical neighborhood dominated by well-established monarchies,
and with powerful economic and social elites staunchly opposed to democratic
ideals. As comparativists move away from overarching and often overgener-
alized theories of democratization in Europe as a whole and instead focus on
crucial “episodes” of democratic reform in the study of European democrati-
zation, the early years of the Third Republic surely deserve far greater
theoretical scrutiny (Ziblatt, 2006).
That the origins of the Third Republic have nevertheless so rarely been
subjected to political science analysis may reflect in part the bad reputation of
that regime in the wake of its collapse during World War II. Given France’s
capitulation to Hitler, the burning issue for comparativists was to explain the
fragility of French democratic institutions rather than to account for the suc-
cess of French democracy in the first place. During the postwar period, schol-
ars tended to portray the Third Republic as marked by perpetual governmental
instability, periodic scandals, and latent fascist sympathies such as those evi-
dent in the Dreyfus Affair. France’s relatively slow economic development in
this period, too, appeared to indicate a general loss of social dynamism. In
Stanley Hoffmann’s (1963) memorable phrase, France under the Third Repub-
lic could be summed up as a “stalemate society”—a system incapable of mak-
ing a full breakthrough to dynamic capitalism because of its dependence on
small-scale agriculture combined with its weak executive capacity, inefficient
bureaucracy, and pervasive official corruption (Crozier, 1970).
Yet given France’s domestic turmoil and international isolation in the mid-
19th century, the fact that the Third Republic managed to maintain genuinely
democratic institutions for seven decades seems a nearly miraculous achieve-
ment. Although corruption and instability were indeed serious throughout the
Third Republic, the regime was nevertheless able to create a national system
of free, secular public education; to develop a rich artistic tradition in litera-
ture, painting, music, and theater; and to establish enduring symbols of French
national citizenship that remain at the core of contemporary French democ-
racy (Nord, 1995). In foreign affairs, democratic France was able to build a
powerful colonial empire comparable in scope (and cruelty) to that of Great
Britain, and ultimately to emerge victorious over Germany in World War I. The

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Third Republic can even be seen as the “natural” culmination of French dem-
ocratic aspirations dating back to the French Revolution of 1789: As Francois
Furet (1992) has put it, with the consolidation of republican rule in this period,
the French Revolution had finally “come home to port.”
If political scientists have neglected the Third Republic during the crucial
decade of the 1870s, then, this is not so much because of that regime’s later
institutional problems but rather the ways in which previously dominant social
science paradigms failed to highlight the importance of its early years for
French democratization. The two main approaches to explaining the “first
wave” of democracy in Europe—modernization theory and the class coalition
approach inspired by Barrington Moore—both saw the French case as a clas-
sic example of democratization as a response to long-run structural socioeco-
nomic and cultural changes. As Capoccia and Ziblatt (2010) point out, such
theories tended to see the dynamics of short-term political struggle during key
democratic episodes as devoid of causal or theoretical importance.
For modernization theorists, democracy in Europe was the inevitable polit-
ical effect of the increasing division of labor and resultant individuation of
West European society in the industrial era, which produced growing social
demands for political participation and citizenship.1 From this point of view,
the breakdown of the French ancien régime and the proclamation of the Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789 were best understood as
byproducts of increasing urbanization and education in 18th-century France.2
Naturally, the subsequent effect over the course of the 19th century of rapid
industrialization, the creation of more efficient modes of transportation such
as railways, and the growing popularity of newspapers further accelerated
social demands for inclusive politics. The ultimate success of the republicans
in institutionalizing a constitutional democratic order by the end of the 1870s,
then, hardly appeared puzzling from this point of view—even while the noto-
rious instability and corruption of the Third Republic could be seen as reflect-
ing the still relatively dominant role of the rural sector in the economy and
society of 19th- and early-20th-century France (Almond & Verba, 1963, p. 7).
Despite its emphasis on the importance of revolutionary violence as
opposed to gradual social evolution, Moore’s own account of French democ-
ratization ultimately arrives at similar conclusions about the roots of the
Third Republic. Moore’s (1966) chapter on France in Social Origins of Dic-
tatorship and Democracy concludes with the end of the French Revolution
itself portrayed as a democratic success story—despite the fact that the ensu-
ing century was dominated by various forms of dictatorship and monarchy.
With the marketization of agriculture ensured by the breakup of noble estates
and the increasing commercialization of the countryside, Moore implies, the

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Comparative Political Studies 43(8/9)
structural prerequisites of French democracy were already in place under
Napoleon. From this point of view, again, the democratic achievements of
the 1870s become mere footnotes to the much larger and bloodier historical
drama of a century before—a perspective reinforced by subsequent social
scientific treatments of 1789, but not 1870-1871, as one of the “great social
revolutions” in human history.3 Later comparative treatments of European
democratization that build on Moore’s insights also focused on class coali-
tions that emerged slowly over the course of the 19th and early 20th century,
rather than examining specific “critical junctures” such as the fall of the Sec-
ond Empire, when the history of French regime change might have turned
out quite differently.4
These teleological approaches to understanding French democratization
gloss over the contingencies and turbulence of the early years of the Third
Republic. A closer analysis of French politics in these years clearly demon-
strates that the ultimate victory of democracy was by no means a sure thing.
As Mitchell (1979) has argued,
The republican tradition in France was far from being unified or
omnipotent. Both of the republican experiments before 1870 ended in
disarray after brief and troubled tenures. Moreover, as Tocqueville
among others perceived, French democracy derived strength from an
egalitarian surge that also sustained its...