WI: Louis XVI restores the parlements with only advisory powers

In our timeline, Lous XVI restored the parlements with full powers. They later blocked him raising taxes, which of course led to the French revolution.

But what happens if he never gives them these powers, and brings them back just as advisory bodies? If he can raise taxes at will, the French revolution never happens in the 18th Century, I think.

What would happen instead? I'm imagining an increasingly high tax base in France that strangles their economy. Potentially an economic crash around the 1820 period?
 
The parléments only had advisory power. The king could always override their veto with a lit de justice.

The latter doesn't mean the former. They had to register the laws, although the King could force them to. An advisory system would mean they only advise on the laws, meaning they can't subsequently refuse the lit.
 
The issue is that such compromise will be unsatisfactory for everyone involved :

- supporters of Maupéou reform would still call it a suicidal move as it would be the open door for return to full Parlementarian privileges. As @G.Washington_Fuckyeah said, the Parlementarian role was effectively more problematic less for the rules as they were written down, than for its general political (if extra-institutional) power.

- Parlementarian elites would be pissed to not have taken back their entiere privileges, even if largely formal, and would trouble continuously the "advisory" part with their demands (as, for exemple, refusing to advise laws and to pass them, even if extra-institutional to do so)

You more or less exchanged the possibilty of an efficient reform OR a return to an accepted institutional (if not that efficient) frame, for a unefficient and shaky compromise that would weaken more than strengthen the institutional frame of Late Ancien Régime
 
The issue is that such compromise will be unsatisfactory for everyone involved :

- supporters of Maupéou reform would still call it a suicidal move as it would be the open door for return to full Parlementarian privileges. As @G.Washington_Fuckyeah said, the Parlementarian role was effectively more problematic less for the rules as they were written down, than for its general political (if extra-institutional) power.

- Parlementarian elites would be pissed to not have taken back their entiere privileges, even if largely formal, and would trouble continuously the "advisory" part with their demands (as, for exemple, refusing to advise laws and to pass them, even if extra-institutional to do so)

You more or less exchanged the possibilty of an efficient reform OR a return to an accepted institutional (if not that efficient) frame, for a unefficient and shaky compromise that would weaken more than strengthen the institutional frame of Late Ancien Régime

Ok, so what would happen if the Maupeou reforms are kept in their entirety? This entirely defuses the financial issue for 50 years, right?
 
Ok, so what would happen if the Maupeou reforms are kept in their entirety? This entirely defuses the financial issue for 50 years, right?

Maybe, maybe not. With a more solid tax base, foreign policy is going to be much more aggressive and there is no guarantee this won't turn into a disaster. Furthermore, a lot of nobles have studied their Enlightenment philosophers and have paid attention to American demands for representation at the beginning of the Révolution. And so has the bourgeoisie. If there is more taxation, they will challenge the institutional and political status quo. Remember that a lot of nobles were in favour of the early Révolution because they saw it as a blow against so-called 'absolute' monarchy, a sort of Fronde, and thought this would mean more power to them.
 
Ok, so what would happen if the Maupeou reforms are kept in their entirety? This entirely defuses the financial issue for 50 years, right?
It would certainly make the financial reforms more easy to pull, but not automatically validated : similarily to how the Parlementarian power was more para-institutional than something they could legally pull but still did IOTL, you'd still have a political resistence to new fiscal reforms, from part of the nobility, clergy and grand bourgeoisie that would want to negociate almost every aspect of it.

And negociations you would have : Louis XVI was raised in a Fénelonian mindset, as in searching more compromise and negociations, searching a modus vivendi with nobility, than to resort to blunt royal authority. I wouldn't be that surprised if we still had a gathering of Estates Generals during his reign to search for an institutional support on forcing trough the issue when he would really needs to speed the process.
 
It would certainly make the financial reforms more easy to pull, but not automatically validated : similarily to how the Parlementarian power was more para-institutional than something they could legally pull but still did IOTL, you'd still have a political resistence to new fiscal reforms, from part of the nobility, clergy and grand bourgeoisie that would want to negociate almost every aspect of it.

And negociations you would have : Louis XVI was raised in a Fénelonian mindset, as in searching more compromise and negociations, searching a modus vivendi with nobility, than to resort to blunt royal authority. I wouldn't be that surprised if we still had a gathering of Estates Generals during his reign to search for an institutional support on forcing trough the issue when he would really needs to speed the process.

Under the Maupeou reforms, how would a law actually get passed? What resistance could actually be exercised?
 
Under the Maupeou reforms, how would a law actually get passed? What resistance could actually be exercised?
The legal process itself would be smooth : there would be no litteral institutonal resistance.
But it would be the processus of creating the law that would be problematic : court, cabinets, endless criticism from different groups (with conflicting interests), etc. With a king that favour negociation and compromise for what matter the immediate entourage and traditional elites; it could mean a lot of temporisation.

Of course, without parlementarian opposition, it would have no real formal institutional support, but it would have the usual extra-institututional base (remember that Parlements were essentially representating a bourgeois nobility and grand bourgeoisie, rather than the whole of Ancien Régime's elites).
 
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