AHC: Prevent the Decline of the Directory

Peter McPhee calls the Coup of 18 Fructidor (1797) a turning point in the French Revolution when the center leadership, those rejecting both royalism and "anarchism", abandoned liberal constitutionalism* in favor of "liberal authoritarianism".

With no PoDs prior to October 1795, is it possible to avoid this transition? Not just "can the coup be avoided", but can the slide toward authoritarian dictatorship be stopped before it starts? Could the royalist electoral victories have been avoided? Or conversely, was the threat of th 1797 results to the republic overblown; in which case, could the coup itself have been stopped and constitutionalism as under the Directory preserved? Could the French political establishment have learned to incorporate political factions, like the Neo-Jacobins, in a sustainable way? And if this is broadly possible, what would be the effects (aside from Napoleon not coming to power)?

*before anyone says it, being constitutional isn't equvalent to being democratic, so issues of limited suffrage of the two-thirds rule aren't germaine here
 
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It's going to be hard : Directoire was really stuck as an umpraticable compromise between popular republicanism that, not that hugely universal was still recovering from Thermidor; and from conservative (up to monarchism) stance among notability.
Néo-Jacobins (not Jacobites, that's another thing) will still be viewed no matter what, as an immediate threat by the main establishment, as much as royalists or potential support for restauration : it was one of the cause of Brumaire's coup, and eventually "imperialisation" of the Consulate.

Eventually, Directoire was bound to be a transitional, not that stable, regime : the question is more what it would give birth to, rather than how it could prevent to outlive its usefulness.

The crisis is mostly political, a bit (all proportions kepts) what happened at the end of the IVth French Republic : less an obvious decline of institutions and political society, than a general militancy against institutions seen as umcomfortable for a part of the political class (Néo-Jacobins, or even monarchiens, would have been fine with keeping part of the Directoire for a longer while, at their benefit tough).

Bonaparte's takeover wasn't bound to happen, tough, altough the army is going to play an important role. Army tended to be republican, and more or less leaning toward Neo-Jacobinism, altough it could follow any big general with enough credibility and prestige (not without reserves, of course). We could see either Sieyes (along with Ducos and maybe Joubert or Fouché) forming sort of "constitutionalist junta", South America-style in a "shortened Directoire".
 
Bonaparte's takeover wasn't bound to happen, though...
Well no, naturally; we've already got a thread focusing on the Directory being "revised" without his input; I figured, since Fructidor is considered (or has been argued to be) an important turning point in its own right, I figured it and the months leading up to it could use their own thread.
 
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