Representation in Trouble

Abstract

Over the period 2002–2004 France experienced two electoral earthquakes. For political scientists who believe that the forces shaping the electorate mainly change gradually, with the entry of new generations of electors, new issues, and new contenders for power, and only infrequently change radically, in elections of critical realignment, this is one earthquake more than the usual accounts can manage. The puzzle this chapter hopes to unravel is how the same underlying factors could produce such contradictory results as those of the 2002 presidential elections and the 2004 regional elections. More generally, it explores the stalled reform of French politics which lies at the origin of this apparent fickleness of the electorate. In the case of each of the elections, there were a host of contingent events like school holidays, misleading polls, and multiple candidacies that might explain outcomes. That these accidents could produce such wide variance in the results, however, reflects the underlying weaknesses of the structures linking society to politics in France today. With the disappearance of the old anchors of religion and class, the preferences of the electors now swing along with the tides of political discontent and distrust. This chapter starts, then, from the two elections; it goes on to propose, not an electoral analysis, but some ways of understanding the break-down in the system of representation. It is this break-down that makes the support of citizens for their elected representatives so tenuous and fragile.