Finally decided to polish this post off and post it.
Something I thought about while listening to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan.
During the French Revolution, whenever a new assembly was formed with the intended goal of reforming the government or creating a constitution for a new government, that same assembly took it upon themselves to govern the country until the constitution was realized. This resulted in delays in creating a new form of government and tyrannical rule by a body that was never intended to rule.
Whereas, in the United States, when a convention was called to reform the government, that convention did not assume any governing authority. The convention concerned itself only with the creation of a new government, and the old government was left in place until the new was ratified and implemented.
In France the conventions and assemblies got power hungry and wouldn't implement the new government even after a constitution was drafted. The politicians in France wanted to keep hold of the power they had obtained as governing bodies and didn't want to hand it over to a new government.
Of course the details are complex and this a generalization; it's just something I found interesting.
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