II. The history of an instrumentalization of electoral rules: the French example

One thing is obvious: the French electoral system has been manipulated for political reasons in the last 140 years. Between 1870 and 1940, the electoral system was changed seven times. Between 1945 and 1988, it occurred five times.[8]

The Constitution of the Fourth Republic which entered into force in 1946 established a PR system. Charles de Gaulle opposed this and withdrew from political life for twelve years because he supported a regime in which a strong President could govern with a clear parliamentary majority. A proportional system could not assure a one-party government. Of course, de Gaulle wanted to endorse such regime with a strong President because he wanted to become this President himself. The christian-democratic MRP and several conservatives supported PR because they wanted to avoid the threat of a communist-led government. The socialist SFIO and the communist PCF approved it because they were convinced that this would weaken local notables and strengthen the parties.[9] So, as we see, arguments of different political forces had nothing to do with making the National Assembly representative.

Then, still during the Forth Republic, a highly manipulated “proportionalism” appeared (1951-1956). New rules enabled so-called apparentements (the linking of party lists). This has been invented by centrist parties which could join in an alliance in order to marginalize two major threats: the Gaullists on the one hand and the Communists on the other. Gaullists and Communists could not create an alliance because they opposed each other.[10] One more time, we see a short term vision which has nothing to do with rational and abstract thinking about fair elections but whose goal is to discriminate some precise parties.

In 1958, de Gaulle finally managed to reform the institutions according to his vision with the establishment of the Fifth Republic. The majoritarian system has replaced the proportional one[11], which has been strongly criticized by the left. Even after de Gaulle’s definitive withdraw from political life in 1969, the right still supported majoritarian system, because it still had a majority of seats thanks to that unproportional system. The left criticized this system until 1981, when it won the election. Surprisingly, it didn’t oppose this anymore once it won the election because its government hoped a reconduction for one more term.[12]

However, in 1985, as it became clear that the Socialist Party will not win the 1986 election, the left changed its mind. It introduced a proportional electoral system because of the fragmentation of the right with the emergence of the nationalist National Front (FN). It hoped that the right (not including the FN) would not have seats enough to govern freely.[13] Finally, the Republican right gat more than the half of the seats but the plan of the left almost succeeded and the governmental majority in the National Assembly would be much stronger with the majoritarian system.

The right came back immediately to the previous (1958-1986) electoral system. Therefore, since 1988, France has an unchanged majoritarian electoral system in National Assembly elections. However, no change occurred just because neither the conservative RPR and then UMP nor the socialist PS saw an interest in changing that. Between 1988 and 2002, the running party lost the election each time but the manipulation of the electoral law would not enable to avoid a defeat, therefore it would be useless. It is probable that it would have changed when it could favour to a large extent one of these parties.

Of course, almost all the other political forces (the centrist UDF (transformed recently into the MODEM), the extreme left LCR, the extreme right FN) protest violently against this system that they perceive as unfair.[14] All of them support either a proportional or mixed system. However, even if there can be a dose of ideological reasoning explaining these criticisms, it is obvious that these parties support PR also because it would favour them.

We see that preferences of different political parties vary in function of strategic reasoning and not according to the democratic ideal they try to reach. As we will see later, this is very dangerous for democracy and politicians should definitely change their mentality. They should think about the long run threats and not just about the next election.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 919