Das Mouvement Républicain Populaire in der Vierten Republik

Gerhard Lehmbruch’s study of the Mouvement Républicain Populaire, the French Christian-democratic party, is a very important, yet rarely acknowledged contribution to the understanding of Political Catholicism, to the functioning of the Fourth Republic, and to the tensions between ideology and practical politics with which a ‘Weltanschauungspartei’ is confronted. His study is also an important document of German post-war political science and intellectually paves the way for Lehmbruch’s seminal contribution, the Proporzdemokratie, which appeared five years later.