The French democratic regime, while rooted in the soil of the Revolution of 1789, owes its establishment directly to the events, the ideas, the movements, and personalities that appeared in the 1840's and whose most intense activity took place during the 1860's. One of the principal factors that prevented the Republican or Democratic camp from challenging the political dictatorship that ruled France between 1800 and 1870 (with the exception of the Second Republic), was the internecine struggle between Revolutionary and Reformist currents within it. The revolutionaries preferred a violent revolution, thinking it was more likely to lead to the establishment of a democratic regime; while the reformists sought a gradual policy of social, political, and economic reforms, that would progressively lead the state to democracy. 

The abortive July Revolution of 1830 turned out to be the watershed, which made it clear to the majority of the republicans that even if power was successfully obtained through violence, this would still be inadequate to convert the regime to republicanism. Ten years of pondering the question convinced them that only a reformist policy was suited to a republicanization of the regime. This resulted in a search for an organizational framework that could accommodate the development, the dissemination and the implementation of reformist ideas. The freemason orders won the republicans' recognition as an appropriate framework for fulfilling such tasks. The advantage of freemasonry, from the republican viewpoint, was in its democratic outlook and relatively developed federative organization, which extended over most of France. Masonic lodges could become a focus of propaganda and political activity, which despite their wide geographical dispersion were not isolated due to their mutual affiliation through their Paris headquarters. Masonic spiritualism and symbolism held universal - humanistic values or, at least, were not opposed to republican political culture. In short, the Masonic lodges and the central Masonic network of communications created an available organizational framework that only required both a republican content and mode of action. 

The autonomy that the lodges enjoyed, as long as their Masonic identity was not compromised, allowed them to discuss the republican issue. Indeed, the first half of the 1840's was characterized by the transformation of some of them into political clubs that debated progressive political and social theories, most of which were Socialistic, with the aim of formulating a republican ideology capable of rallying the republican camp behind a general reformist policy. The only idea that survived the debate filter, received a general consensual approval and was adopted by all the republican Freemasons, was that of "sociabilité and association." Its advantage was in that it laid a theoretical base for the organizational framework of the Masonic lodges and their reformist activities, thereby fulfilling the common aim of creating a democratic political system. Beyond this, it supplied an explanation for the sociological phenomenon of "bourgeois sociabilité that during this time was at its peak, and ways to enlist it to the republican political camp. The Freemasons decided that the enormous organizational and intellectual potential that was latent in this phenomenon should be transformed into an instrument for the democratization of the regime. When the idea of sociabilité crystallized within the Freemason lodges in 1845, particularly in the Grand Orient - the largest Masonic order in France - and went on to become the central tool of the republicanization of the regime in the second half of the 19th century. The idea of Sociabilité helped the Freemasons to develop two instruments essential to the establishment of a democratic political system: the "regional Masonic congresses" and the "model of positivistic leadership". Both permitted them to initiate voluntary organizations dominated by republican political culture and to arrange them as the social base of the developing democratic regime. When the regime's survival was menaced, both instruments helped to organize the first political party - the Radical Party - as a barricade guarding democracy against its perceived enemies. This took place without causing significant changes to the organizational structure of freemasonry itself and that of the voluntary organizations. Sociabilité preserved these organizations' federative-democratic structure independently of that of the new party, and assisted in reinforcing civil culture all over France. 

The final result, as it appeared in 1901 with the founding of the Radical Party, was the entrenchment of a dominant socio-political system, possessed of a civil culture based on specialized voluntary organizations, led by freemasonry and ruled by a political party. Freemasonry orchestrated the socio-political activities of the voluntary organizations acting as a go-between whose power was grounded in the acceptance of its moral authority by both the voluntary organizations and the party. One of the salient sources of this authority was the fact that a large part of the Freemasons joined all these organizations simultaneously and shared similar political views.