Éducation, représentation, tripartisme : la loi du milieu

Abstract

Representative democracy faces a dilemma, not to say a contradiction: all citizens are equal but some are more equal than others, whether they are chosen for their greater ability, or whether having been elected without a specific mandate, they have more power than the others. The representative system adds an extra imbalance in the weighting of vote-counting, which favours certain parties. This article shows how this currently works in France. The swing from a right/left two-party contest to a three-party one as a result of the rise of the far right gives a false picture of the election results because of the two-round system. The middle trend, in this case the right, benefits from transfers from either side—from the far right when it stands against the left, and from the left when it stands against the far right, as shown in detail in the case of departmental elections. This same mechanism accounts for the victory of Fillon in the right’s primaries, situated as he was between the two extremes—Juppé close to the centre and Sarkozy close to the far right. The candidatures in the left primaries followed the same pattern, although in this case surely in vain as the two extreme candidatures fell outside the median, Macron towards the centre and Mélenchon towards the far left.

Keywords

• electoral system
• France
• Front National
• modernity
• social determinism
• vote