At least since Tocqueville's book, the French associated the United States with democracy, without always asking themselves too many precise questions about this subject. Yet the institutional tribulations that forced them in 1830 as in 1848, and again in 1870, to consider the problem of the timeliness of a Republican regime quite naturally led them to study the only great democratic republic of the era, and even to develop strong feelings about the established form of government of the United States.

Thus the Second Republic made use of the American example, at least for the election of the President by universal manhood suffrage, and it is not without interest that in the Constituent Assembly Tocqueville was among the supporters of this measure. However, the Coup d'Etat of 2 December [1851, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte] and the ensuing repression contributed to a clear decline of admiration for the United States, especially among the Republicans, and it was only after 1860 that Republicans once again became propagandists for American-style democracy. By way of strengthening their attack on the Second Empire, even after it had become liberal, they decked out the Great Republic with all the virtues; this continued until 1870, when the new imperial constitution actually came closer to the American model than the drafts proposed by these same zealous Republicans. How would French opinion feel about the democracy across the sea once the Republic had been restored in France itself? In the few years preceding the consolidation of the Third Republic it was not at all clear whether deputies and jurists would turn to the American example, as their earlier stance would indicate.