> The fourth republic had a symbolic president, and the fifth republic has a very powerful president, because DeGaulle demanded executive power as a condition o

> The fourth republic had a symbolic president, and the fifth republic has a very powerful president, because DeGaulle demanded executive power as a condition of assuming the presidency during the Algerian crisis of the late 1950s. That's why the fourth republic ended and the fifth republic began -- DeGaulle had a new constitution written. It's a bit more complicated than that, to be fair. A big part of de Gaulle's motivation for the semi-presiential system of the Fifth Republic was due to the instability of the parliamentary system of the Third and Fourth Republics. Whatever else you might say about de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic has been remarkably stable and orderly compared to the regimes that preceded it after the revolution.