Runoff elections are a useful method for solving coordination problems in majoritarian electoral systems based on single-member districts in that they provide a formal mechanism for ideologically similar parties to coordinate on a single candidate. The mechanism is, however, not free of problems as it places ideological neighbors in competition with one another on the first ballot. The temptation to campaign against the members of one’s own bloc carries risk, as it may reduce the willingness of the supporters of the losing party on the first ballot to cast their vote for the party that will represent its ideological bloc on the second ballot. We revisit and extend Tsebelis’ (Br J Polit Sci 18(2):145–70, 1988a) work on the conditions under which parties are able to curb their incentives to engage in intra-bloc campaigning by deriving additional testable hypotheses and expanding the analysis temporally to include elections from 1958 to 2012.

Abstract Since the mid-2000s, several higher education institutions in France have used merit and diversity as complementary principles in implementing equal opportunity programs. Through an ethnographic approach and an intersectional framework, this article examines how Sciences Po’s Conventions éducation prioritaire (CEP) program is received by candidates participating in preparatory workshops at high schools in Seine-Saint-Denis. The CEP candidate profile is shaped by a delicate balance of distinction from and resemblance to the imagined profile of an elite student. As a result, candidates experience both advantages and challenges depending on their intersecting identities and identifications throughout the admissions process. Their strategies for navigating the admissions process reveal the paradoxical expectations placed on students, who are required to negotiate diversity in a seemingly color-blind context where difference is simultaneously reified and denied. More broadly, this paper argues that while Sciences Po’s territorially based policy allows students to showcase diverse aspects of their backgrounds, it simultaneously places an uneven burden on the candidates and forces them to negotiate intersectional ascription, stereotypes, and expectations throughout the admissions process.

Abstract Drawing on a study of men who engage in sexual and romantic relationships with other men and who currently live or have lived in large housing estates in the Île-de-France region, this article examines their occasional movements and interactions within commercial gay spaces in Paris. In a context where the injunction to be visible is often considered a hallmark of what is generally termed homonormativity (Duggan in: Castronovo, Nelson (eds) Materializing democracy, Duke University Press, Durham, 2002), this study adopts a “situated intersectionality” approach (Yuval-Davis in Raisons Politiques 58(2):91–100, 2015), which considers various power dynamics and is attentive to the specific geographical, social, and temporal contexts of individuals. This framework is used to interrogate the notion of “fleeing to the city”. The aim is to illustrate the social, economic, racial, and spatial factors that contribute to the mobility of sexual minorities in the French context. Additionally, we demonstrate that the “gay spaces” of major urban centres, often frequented at the beginning of one’s “gay career” (Becker in Outsiders: studies in the sociology of deviance, Free Press, Glencoe, 1963), are swiftly rejected due to both the racism within these minority spaces and their over-sexualisation.