La problématique de l'incompatibilité des fonctions ministérielles et du mandat de député en système politique étatique de type parlementaire

Abstract

The author explores the socio-political implications of the rule of the incompatibility of ministerial functions with the member's mandate in political systems of the parliamentary type. Taking as a hypothesis recourse to the aforesaid norm of the system, he tries to highlight the sociological factors that shape the decision-making capacity of the system's authorities as well as the sources of legitimation of their value-allocating functions.At the conceptual level the model rests on the identification of five variables: the incompatibility rule (A); strengthening of the executive (B); technological rationality (C); decision-making capacity (D); and sociological legitimacy (E). He explores, in another connection, different linkages between these variables, accenting particularly the relations A → D and A → E.From the methodological point of view, the present analysis relies on both inductive and deductive reasoning. Resting, in effect, on an observation of the French case which reduces incidents to their historical-political essentials and which separates out certain general socio-political aspects of the incompatibility rule, the author permits himself some generalizations expressed in terms of provisional hypotheses, the verification of which, it should be emphasized, would require “longitudinal” historical-political studies and comparative analyses of decision-making.In conclusion, the author states that the advance in schematization which this study represents is limited to the formulation of a “pre-model” whose essential purpose is to make available to those who have become interested in the sociological analysis of the components of this problem the variables which seem to permit the ultimate reconstitution of the observed phenomenon: the exploration of the specific way in which the designated variables are related to one another, the identification of the rules covering their interaction, and evaluation of the intensity of factors which affect them constitute the principal levels of development of this theoretical framework.