French instability: how long can it go on?

In our timeline, the French revolution was incredibly unstable. Power moved from the King to the National Assembly to the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety to the Directory to the Consulate. It was only with Napoleon's coup that some sort of stable government came in, and then there was another 15 years of reasonable stability under the Restoration.

But how long can the 1789-1804 style upheaval continue, if we get rid of Napoleon? Is twenty or thirty years of a constantly shifting political setup possible? What would that mean for France? Could we see separatist movements and local warlords spring up?
 
In our timeline, the French revolution was incredibly unstable. Power moved from the King to the National Assembly to the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety to the Directory to the Consulate. It was only with Napoleon's coup that some sort of stable government came in, and then there was another 15 years of reasonable stability under the Restoration.

But how long can the 1789-1804 style upheaval continue, if we get rid of Napoleon? Is twenty or thirty years of a constantly shifting political setup possible? What would that mean for France? Could we see separatist movements and local warlords spring up?

I think you ignore one thing : there wasn't much change in the assembly composition in the various change. The Comité de Salut Public was an extension of the convention, the first national assembly was meant to be temporary, after all it was a constituant one, most of the deputies under the directory were deputies in the convention, and a lot of them were also deputies during the consulate and the senate. One exemple : Carnot, he was first a member of the committe for public education under the first legislature, he was a member of the Comité de Salut Public, one of the directors and a minister under Napoléon.

I don't see it as instability, but more as an evolution of the political setup to enter into modernity, like every state that didn't experience a smooth tradition from medieval despotism to modern democracy. Try to remember that the structure of the ancien régime were so inneficient that France almost had to be build from the ground up in 1789.
 
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