The history of France between 1945 and 1951 presents a paradox. On the one hand this is widely seen as a period of rapid social, economic and administrative change when the ‘Malthusianism’ of the ‘stalemate society’ that had characterized the Third Republic gave way to the dynamism of the trenteglorieuses. On the other hand, in political terms, 1951 seemed to mark the return not just of the political right but of a kind of right that was particularly backward looking and archaic. Some broad interpretations of French history look odd when examined in the light of Fourth Republic politics. Charles Maier writes: ‘After 1945 it would no longer be necessary or even comforting for conservatives to imagine the restoration of a bourgeois society as the endpoint of their efforts’; but can the election of Antoine Pinay as prime minister in 1952 be interpreted as anything other than a bid to restore bourgeois society? Stanley Hoffmann argues that the ‘republican synthesis’ that had united peasants, small shopkeepers and industrialists broke down after 1945, but what institution could have encapsulated the republican synthesis better than the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP)? The remainder of this chapter will attempt to place the detailed political history of the Fourth Republic in the context of broader social and economic changes.

The extent of change in post-war France can be made clear by a brief look at the historical context. Many bourgeois leaders had wanted to introduce radical change in France before 1940.