French Fifth Republic members of the Senate. From that date, the opposition has been able to have controversial new statutes examined for constitutionality. Source: Source: French Fifth Republic The Fifth Republic, France's current republican system of government, was established by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the Fourth Republic, replacing the former parliamentary republic with a semi-presidential, or dual-executive, system that split powers between a Prime Minister as head of government and a President as head of state. De Gaulle, who was the first French President elected
French Second Republic French Second Republic The French Second Republic was a short-lived republican government of France under President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. It lasted from the 1848 Revolution to the 1851 coup by which the president made himself Emperor Napoleon III and initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto of the First Republic, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité". The Second Republic witnessed the tension between the "Social and Democratic Republic" () and a liberal form of republicanism, which exploded during the June Days uprising of 1848. The 1848 Revolution in France, sometimes known as the February Revolution, was one of a wave of revolutions