III. Why the majoritarian system is not adequate to France

The fact that majoritarian rules exist in France mainly for strategic reasons doesn’t mean automatically that this system is bad. It means however that it should be examined. Therefore we will examine the arguments of the supporters and of the opponents of this.

A very interesting study shows that there is a closer relationship between the electors and the candidates in single member constituencies than in multi-member constituencies. It could be thought that this is a good thing because it shows that in single-member constituencies (like in the present French majoritarian system) “each citizen matters”. But on the other hand, it could be argued that not “each citizen” but “each vote” matters. In fact, deputies very often look for a contact with citizens during campaign in countries in which there are single-member constituencies but they forget very quickly their promises once they are elected. It is why the same study reveals that citizens in these countries are less satisfied with their representatives.[15]

Moreover, it is specified in the French constitution that deputies are representatives of the whole nation and not only of their specific constituencies and that they should defend the “general interest” of the country. However, you can obviously see that deputies coming from the regions where wine is produced try to decrease the taxes on wines and favour its production. This is the so-called “pork barrel”. This phenomenon can be seen easily in Germany. In fact, some deputies are elected through the majority rule system and some through the PR system in this country. We can observe differences in behaviour between the FPTP and the PR legislators. Representatives elected in constituencies take more care of the interests of their constituencies than deputies elected through PR.[16] This is due to the fact that there is an incentive to cultivate personal reputation in the majority rule system because there is a desire of reelection and this can occur easier if the running deputy of a constituency can prove that he has taken care of the problems of its citizens.[17] Such desire to be reelected can lead to clientelism. You can quote the example of Brazil where the desire to be reelected leads to a clientelistic corrupt system[18] (even if Brazil doesn’t have a majority rule electoral system). But this depends of course on the political culture of the country: it has been shown that clientelism is much stronger in South Italy than in North Italy, whereas these both parts of the country have the same electoral system.[19] France has a quite high level of civic-ness and political clientelism is quite limited. However, it exists there as in each country.

But the partisans of the majority rule electoral system in France argue that it can’t be easily compared to other countries systems. According to them, it should be seen as a part of a set of institutions. They think that this is consubstantial to the Fifth Republic institutions. Michel Debré, the architect of the Fifth Republic Constitution, always claimed that the majority rule of the National Assembly election is necessary to give a large majority to govern easily to the President. With an Assembly in which there would not be one party with a majority of seats supporting the President, the head of the state would not be able to endorse his policy.[20]

This argument seems to be very weak. First, because we could imagine some kind of proportional representation system which would not be strictly proportional but which would tend to it. In this system, larger parties would be favoured and smaller discriminated. A 30% -votes-party would get for example 50% of the seats and a 10%-votes-party would get only 5%-of the seats. This is a totally imaginary system but this is just to show that the PR system also can be flexible. Moreover, at the time of Michel Debré it didn’t exist yet but something that has not been foreseen when the constitution was written occurred in the 80s: cohabitation (between a President and a Prime Minister from two different political camps). Cohabitation didn’t mean the collapse of the country or civil war. On the contrary, it has shown that the President can be from another political party than the Prime Minister without major problems. Furthermore, it is unreasonable to organize two separate elections if it is known already before who the winner of the National Assembly election should be. In this case, let’s just organize a presidential election and remove the National Assembly election.

One more argument against this statement of Debré is that if it is impossible to remove the majority rule electoral system without removing the Fifth Republic and if the majority rule is bad as we try to show it in this part, it just means that the Fifth Republic should be replaced by a Sixth Republic with brand new institutions. The Fifth Republic is not a holly thing that should stay forever. If some of its mechanisms don’t work well, it should be replaced.

The first National Assembly election of the Fifth Republic which occurred in 1958 shew already how unfair the system is. The Gaullist candidates gat 3 900 000 votes in the first round and the Communists 3 600 000 votes. However, the UNR gat 207 seats in the second round and the PCF only 10 seats.[21] This is a perfect illustration of what was argued in the first, theoretical part of this paper, even if it is less caricatural in this real case.

Besides, we have a so-called “Gerry Mandering” in France. This consists on making the constituencies where the opponents have a huge support larger and the constituencies where the running party is powerful smaller. At the moment of the division of the country in constituencies, each one was supposed to be inhabited by 100 000 people. But only twenty years after this division the gap between larger and smaller constituencies was enormous. The third Essonne department constituency was inhabited by 179 000 citizens and the first Lozère constituency was inhabited by 30 000 people during the 1979 election. It is not surprising that the Lozère deputy belonged to the ruling party and the Communists have been elected in the most populated constituencies.[22]

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 952