The French National Assembly's Oversight of the Executive: Changing Role, Partisanship and Intra-Majority Conflict

Abstract

This article analyses the evolution of the Assemblée Nationale's oversight activities under the Fifth Republic. The chamber increased its oversight capacity during two critical periods: the 1970s and between 1988 and 2002. Moreover, oversight has become more and more a bi-partisan activity. Institutional and party-based hypotheses fail to account for these trends. The institutional hypothesis (which argues that oversight represents the legislators' new role under the Fifth Republic) fails to account for the late and punctuated development of oversight activities. Conversely, the party-based hypothesis fails to explain why the majority would allow the opposition new means to harass the government. The article argues that variations in the cohesiveness of the majority provide a more compelling explanation for this evolution. Intra-majority dissensions created the impetus for the expansion of the chamber's oversight power, a power still used in large part by the opposition, but also by dissenting members of the majority.