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Political Change in France and Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Mario Einaudi
Mario Einaudi
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

In the simultaneous elections held on June 2, 1946, in France and Italy, it is not difficult to see a symbol of the community of destiny which, even now, seems to link the two countries. France and Italy are the two largest western European countries to emerge intact from the ordeal of fascism and war, and the political decisions they will make in the near future are bound to affect to a large extent the course of events in Europe. To find out what chances exist of a significant contribution by the continent of Europe to the solution of the political and economic problems of our time, it is legitimate to look to France and to Italy. To analyze in some detail the conditions under which the two countries voted, the issues presented to them, and the consequences likely to flow from the results of the elections—all this appears to represent an inquiry into developments vitally affecting one of the great areas which, if much impoverished and weakened at present, may still come back to influence the political structure of the world.

As an expression of the popular mind, the vote on June 2 was unprecedented for both countries. Never before had so many men and women taken part in elections: forty-five millions exercised their right to vote (in Italy their duty as well), while the greatest number (with men only voting) in pre-war France was less than ten millions and in pre-fascist Italy less than seven millions.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 40 , Issue 5 , October 1946 , pp. 898 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1946

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References

1 Lavergne, Bernard, “Élections et Lois Électorales de 1945 et de 1946,” Revue Politique et Parlementaire, Apr., 1946, pp. 6 ff.Google Scholar

2 To Albert Milhaud, “Le Bouleversement du 21 Octobre 1945,” ibid., Dec., 1945, p. 198, this seems the main reason for the defeat of the Radical Socialists.

3 For a summary of the debates in the Constituent Assembly, cf. Études de Presse, No. 3–4, 1946, pp. 342 ff. The present policy of the French Provisional Government has not been one, however, to inspire confidence. See the brilliant article by Herriot, , “La Liberté de la Presse,” Revue de Paris, May, 1946, pp. 3–10Google Scholar, and especially his criticism of the government's attempt to use a doctrine of “public interest” instead of “penal culpability” for the transfer of newspaper properties to the state. The new Bidault government formed after the June, 1946, elections seems to be aware of the need of establishing a truly free press, to judge from the statement of Bidault himself that the goal will be to do away “both with previous authorization and with what I have heard described as financial oligarchies.” L'Aube, Paris, June 28, 1946.

4 While all major political parties were in favor of proportional representation, the ordinance of 1945 met with considerable criticism among publicists, as was to be expected. Siegfried, André (“Que Veulent les Français?,” Figaro, Paris, Jan. 18, 1946)Google Scholar spoke of deputies elected in October on “blocked lists” which allowed no real choice on the part of the elector. Hauriou, André (“Vers la Dictature des Partis,” Revue de Paris, Feb., 1946, p. 42)Google Scholar sees proportional representation as having filled the Constituent Assembly with “secretaries of local party committees who, with another electoral system, could never have aspired to be elected.” Bastid, Paul (“Le Rassemblement Nécessaire,” Revue de Paris, Apr., 1946, p. 23)Google Scholar calls the deputies “humble servants of party bureaucracies without a mandate.”

5 Text in Journal Officiel, No. 89, Apr. 14, 1946, pp. 3126–3129.

6 Article 7 reads: “In the event that the electoral body should reject the constitution drawn up by the Assembly, or in the event that the latter would have failed to draw up a constitution within the period of time provided in Article 6, a new Constituent Assembly having the same powers would immediately be elected according to the same procedure and would meet the second Tuesday following its election.”

7 Articles 4 and 16. In the words of Lavergne, this meant that “the remainders belonging to small political groups are directly benefiting those great parties against which the elector voted. If this is not a pure and simple theft of votes, we ask what meaning words have in the French language” (Art. cit., p. 18).

8 The Committee was created on August 31, 1945, by the minister for the Constituent Assembly, Nenni, on authority of Articles 2 and 5 of the decree of July 31, 1945. The Committee, made up of party representatives and of independent experts, met from September 1 to October 27, 1945. For a detailed summary of its work, cf. Bollettino di Informazione e Documentazione del Ministero per la Costituente, Rome, nos. 1, 2, 3.

9 When the committee draft was transmitted to the Head of the Allied Commission in Rome, Admiral Stone replied in a letter of November 8, 1946, that the project was “in keeping with modern developments of democratic practice” (Bollettino, no. 3, p. 11). The Allied Commission contributions to the electoral law appear to have been mainly two: (1) no propaganda to be allowed within 200 meters of polling booths; (2) all lists of candidates to be posted in town-halls twenty days before election day (Bollettino, ibid.).

10 For the debates, see Bollettino, nos. 5 and 6.

11 Article 1 of the decree merely read: “The exercise of the vote is a duty which no citizen can avoid without failing the country at a decisive moment of its life. Those who without sufficient cause will not vote in the Constituent Assembly elections shall have their names posted for one month in the town-hall, and for a period of five years the words ‘did not vote’ shall be inscribed in the good conduct certificates which may be issued to them.”

12 To this end, Article 62 provided for the creation of a so-called “national constituency.” After all possible seats had been assigned in the local constituencies, the unallocated seats were to be assigned to the national constituency and distributed among the national party lists in proportion to each party's national total of unused votes.

13 The name derives its origin, of course, from the fact that Pierre Cot was the rapporteur for the constitutional committee. Cot succeeded the MRP leader, François de Menthon, as rapporteur at the end of March, when the MRP found itself constantly in a minority against Communist-Socialist majorities. The appellative of “Cot constitution” seems preferable to that of “Communist constitution,” since the Socialists joined the Communists in its defense, as well as fairly strong local groups of Radical Socialists, especially in the south. Pierre Cot, himself a radical, was re-elected on June 2 in Savoie as a candidate of the Union des Gauches, a joint Communist-Radical list. This was one of the only three instances (the other two occurring in Haute-Saône and Lozère) in which Communist candidates did not run under their own banner.

14 Author of the new MRP constitutional draft presented to the constitutional committee of the second Constituent Assembly.

15 L'Aube, Paris, Apr. 21–22, 1946.

16 Ibid., May 7, 1946.

17 In the Bidault cabinet after the elections, Le Troque was replaced as minister of the interior by another socialist, Depreux.

18 Gonella, Guido, Il Programma della Democrazia Cristiana per la Nuova Constituzione (Rome, 1946).Google Scholar

19 Il Popolo, Rome, May 12, 1946.

20 L'Unità, Rome, May 8, 1946.

21 Il Globo, Rome, May 23, 1946.

22 L'Unità, Rome, May 29, 1946.

23 See open letter from De Gasperi, to Togliatti, , Il Popolo, Rome, Apr. 16, 1946.Google Scholar Humorists pointed out that in order to hear the names of Lenin and Stalin pronounced at all, it was necessary to attend meetings of either the Christian Democrats or the Liberals.

24 Epoca, Rome, Jan. 31, 1946.

25 At a meeting of the central party committee, Nenni had stated: “Ever since August, 1944, the Socialist and Communist Parties have invited Christian democracy to broaden the common field of agreement from the syndicalist to the political field. Today, as in 1920–21, a democratic solution in Italy dependa upon the reaching of an agreement with, the Catholic masses. We are not forgetting our friends, the Republican and Action Parties. But the alliance of the left does not solve the problem of the Constituent Assembly and of the Republic. This is a formula which has been proved void even in the France of Voltaire. In Italy, it is entirely inadequate. The new fact of Italian politics since 1919 is the existence of a mass Catholic party with which we must come to terms” (Avanti!, Rome, Jan. 8, 1946).

26 Avanti!, Rome, Apr. 14, 1946.

27 La Voce Repubblicana, Rome, Feb. 16, 1946.

28 A close parallel exists between the percentage of votes favorable to the constitution in the referendum of May 5 and the percentage of Communist and Socialist votes in the elections of June 2, although in the center, east, and south fairly large numbers of Radical Socialists voted for the constitution, while at the same time a certain number of Socialists everywhere voted against it.

29 Monti, Augusto, Realtà del Partito d'Azione (Turin, 1945), p. 91.Google Scholar

30 The political inexperience of its members and its lack of organization also explain the failure of the movement, which succeeded in sending nine deputies to the Constituent Assembly thanks only to the charitable working of the electoral system. Of the 556 deputies to the Constituent Assembly, 476 were elected in the various local constituencies, while eighty were elected in the national constituency, where the unused votes of all parties had been pooled (see note 12, supra). These national elections meant a good deal, of course, in the case of the smaller parties: forty per cent of the total number of deputies of the Republican party and one-third of the deputies of the extreme right were elected in this fashion. The Action party was, however, the only one which failed to elect a single deputy locally and had to rely on the pooling of its scattered vote for representation in the Assembly.

31 Bandinelli, R. Bianchi, “Saluto agli Intellettuali Italiani,” Società (Florence, 1946), no. 5, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

32 Quoted in Salvatorelli's, Luigi “Comunismo e Democrazia,” La Nuova Europa, Rome, Jan. 13, 1946.Google Scholar

33 L'Aube, Paris, July 9, 1946.

34 La Vie Intellectuelle, Paris, June, 1946, p. 3.

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