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The weakness of the French parliament under the regime of the Fifth Republic is considered an impenetrable reality, despite the fact that it has not been the subject of any rigorous assessment and in the absence of any interaction between the sociology of public action and legislative sociology, still under-developed in France. Both these disciplines have moreover virtually ignored the question of the passage of legislation through parliament in the overall decision-making process. The article aims to help remedy this deficiency by preparing the ground for an empirical methodology for reassessing legislative capacity. After discussing the pertinence of methods for a quantitative assessment of MPs’contribution to lawmaking, the article presents a process-based approach which uses participatory observation of case studies, taking the example of the 2003 Planning and Environment Act. The premises of such an approach are established in North American research and are here transposed to a French example in order to characterise this room for manœuvre. This approach enables us to test the hypothesis that MPs’capacity to amend bills is greater in the case of technical texts, since these have less potential for ideological polarisation and politicisation.