Under the Third Republic the president was at first quite powerful (mainly because the royalist party was strong when the constitutional laws of 1875 were established, and it was hoped that a member of one of the two branches of the royal family would be able to serve as president and turn France into a constitutional monarchy). However, the next legislature was dominated by Republicans, and after President Patrice de MacMahon had unsuccessfully tried to obtain a new royalist majority by dissolving the "Chambre des Députés", his successor promised that he would not use his presidential power of dissolution, and therefore lost his control over the legislature, effectively creating a parliamentary system that would be maintained for 80 years. Indeed, when the Fourth Republic was created, after the Second World War, it was a parliamentary system, in which the office of president of the Republic was a largely ceremonial and powerless one. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic, that replaced it in 1958, greatly increased the president's powers. A 1962 referendum changed the constitution, so that the president would be directly elected by universal suffrage and not by the electoral college established in 1958.