Multiple Officeholding in Local and National Elective Positions

Abstract

Combining a national electoral position with one or several local electoral positions is frequent among elected national officials in France, while it is legally prohibited or the object of cultural taboo in other European countries and the United States. This element of the French political system, for example being simultaneously a mayor, a regional councillor and a member of parliament, is referred to in this paper as “multiple officeholding” (cumul des mandats). It is an important part of the relationship betw-een those who govern and those who are governed, of the integration between the center and the periphery, and the quality of democratic representation. The thesis developed here is that multiple officeholding leads to distortion in territorial political representation. From a theoretical point of view, multiple officeholding constitutes the framework of an ideal-typical organization of powers, called here the “oligarchic overlapping model,” as contrasted against a model in which the power is more diffused and fragmented. For example, in the first model, there is little circulation of elites from and to the civilian society, but there is some circulation within the elite from and to various levels of government; In the latter one, each level of government has its own system for recruitment of political leaders, which means more circulation between elites and society