French Parliamentary Elections Research Articles

Firm Donations and Political Rhetoric: Evidence from a National Ban

We study France’s 1995 ban on firm donations to politicians. We use a difference-in-differences approach and a novel dataset combining the campaign manifestos issued by candidates running in French parliamentary elections with data on their campaign contributions. We show that banning firm donations discourages candidates from advertising their local presence during the campaign, as well as economic issues. The ban also leads candidates from nonmainstream parties to use more extreme language. This suggests that private donors shape politicians’ topics of interest, and that campaign finance reforms may affect the information made available to voters through their impact on candidates’ rhetoric. (JEL D22, D72, D83, K16)

Individual drivers of toxicity in radical right-wing populist legislative campaigns

Most studies of political rhetoric examine only political leadership or treat parties as unified actors. However, what happens where electoral systems incentivise candidates to diverge from stated party messaging during campaigns? This article uses novel data on political experience and candidate backgrounds from the 2022 French parliamentary elections to explore the individual drivers of campaigning behaviour. The choice of France, with its multiple and prominent radical right-wing parties, allows for the consideration of both within- and between-party differences in individual campaigning. Using the salient example of toxic rhetoric, findings demonstrate that even when party leaders publicly urge moderation, individual candidates do not necessarily follow along. This implies the need for additional focus on the individual-level drivers of political semantics, especially where candidates are apt to campaign independently, using social media platforms to communicate directly with citizens.

FRANCE 2022: PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS OUTCOME

The purpose of this study was to analyse the results of the French parliamentary elections of 12 and 19 June 2022 and their implications for the main political forces involved. The author summarises the results of the 2017–2022 electoral cycle, highlighting the changes that have affected the main incumbent actors. The author analyses separately the impact of the election results on Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bloc, Jean-Luc Melanchon’s bloc NUPES, the Rassemblement Nationale behind Marine Le Pen’s leadership, the Republicans, the Socialists, Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête, etc. The conclusion looks at the prospects for a new tripartite potential government and its sustainability. This year, populist parties collectively received almost 49 per cent of the vote, very close to the figures for the last presidential election. Today, populist movements are closer than ever to becoming the new systemic opposition.

Are gender quotas on candidates bound to be ineffective?

This article studies the short- and long-term effectiveness of gender quotas applied to candidates in elections based on single-member districts. I exploit the introduction of gender quotas in the French parliamentary elections in 1997 and 2002. Using election data from 1978 to 2017 and a difference-in-differences strategy, I show that the main political parties all reacted by nominating women in less winnable districts in the short term but these strategies gradually disappear for the left-wing party while they persist up to 15 years later for the right-wing party. I argue that these nomination patterns are partly explained by the persistence of incumbents and the inexperience of new female candidates as well as different compliance levels by the main parties.

When Politics Abroad Turn Local. A Study of French Parties Campaigning Abroad During the 2017 French General Elections

ABSTRACT Through the analysis of French parties campaigning abroad during the 2017 French parliamentary elections, the paper offers a better understanding of the conduct of electoral campaigns abroad, with an emphasis on their local dimension. With its comparative focus on three very different constituencies abroad – Northern America, North-West Africa and Switzerland –, it shows how differentiated campaign strategies, rather than mere duplication of national or centralised strategies, attuned to local political dynamics and the diverse sociology of French electorates abroad are critical for electoral success.

Onwards to the new political frontier: Macron’s electoral populism

This speaking out article argues that populism is not only a phenomenon that characterizes extremist figures such as Farage, Trump or Le Pen. Drawing on Laclau’s conceptualization of populism, we show how French President Emmanuel Macron developed in 2017 a form of anti-extreme electoral populism relying upon (1) the creation of a new political frontier between ‘progressive reformers’ and ‘backward-looking conservatives’, and (2) a number of key empty signifiers, such as ‘Revolution’, ‘(The Republic) onwards’ and ‘and at the same time’. These discursive levers allowed Macron’s campaigns to incarnate a gradually larger plurality of demands, modulating the openness of equivalential chains over three successful electoral steps: the presidential first round, the presidential second round and the parliamentary elections. In parallel, his movement gradually moved from emergent organizing through a partial organization to a bureaucratized and hierarchized party. Thus, our analysis illuminates how Macron organized his own populism, based on a completely new movement: Macron’s electoral populism exploited the middle space left vacant by all other candidates, it relied on its own anti-establishment discourse, and in doing so it succeeded in unifying much more demands than other populisms, leading to a landslide win in the French parliamentary elections.

L'effet candidat lors des élections parlementaires

En partant d’une analyse approfondie de la littérature scientifique existante, l’article souligne la nécessité d’étudier rigoureusement l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’évaluation des candidats par les électeurs affecte significativement leurs choix électoraux, ce que nous dénommons l’effet candidat, et ceci tout particulièrement dans le cas des élections législatives françaises, où celui-ci est considéré comme improbable. Les résultats de nos analyses basées sur une enquête inédite dédiée à ce projet lors des élections législatives de juin 2012 accréditent l’hypothèse d’un effet candidat en France, qui s’ajoute aux facteurs explicatifs habituellement utilisés dans la littérature. Au-delà de l’identification partisane et de l’idéologie, les candidats comptent lorsque les citoyens élisent leurs parlementaires.

Testing the accuracy of the Downs’ spatial voter model on forecasting the winners of the French parliamentary elections in May–June 2007

This paper emphasizes a method of forecasting electoral outcomes based on the spatial approach of Harold Hotelling and Anthony Downs’ basic model of democracy. This method of forecasting the outcome of presidential elections departs from the standard approach that uses regression models of the popular vote based on a reward–punishment analysis for citizens, as well as other methods like Delphi experts surveys or futures markets for election and probability methods based on opinion polls. Anthony Downs discusses at some length the crucial role of the form of the distribution of preferences along the political left–right scale (unimodal, bimodal or multimodal) and the key role of the location of the overall median voter on this distribution in selecting the winner. The median voter theorem says the winner of the election will be the leader of the camp whose own median voter is closest to the overall median voter. We test the accuracy of this argument “à la Downs”, both on a small sample of eight French presidential elections and on a large sample consisting of the 577 constituencies of the French parliamentary election of 2007.

Campaign resources and electoral success: Evidence from the 2002 French parliamentary elections

We examine the factors that improve the candidates’ likelihood of winning an election by drawing on information from campaign resources used by candidates running in the 2002 French parliamentary election. The main effects that we wish to analyze are the candidates’ gender, political affiliation and possible incumbency. We find that the contributions the candidates received and their political affiliations determine their acceding to the second round of the elections. But surprisingly once they make it to the second round, the contributions cease to be relevant; only the candidates’ gender, incumbency and the actual spending rather than the contribution levels matter.

Proportional but bipolar: France's electoral system in 1986

President Mitterrand's decision to restore proportional representation for French parliamentary elections for the first time in 30 years raised fears of a return to the parliamentary instability of the Fourth Republic. This article examines the motives behind the change, and explains how the detailed (often not very proportional) workings of the system and the parties’ use of it gave France a narrow right‐wing majority in the March 1986 election.

Jean‐Marie Le Pen and the new radical right in France

The radical right Front National of Jean‐Marie Le Pen is expected to do well in the forthcoming French parliamentary elections. A thorn in the flesh of the French political establishment, Le Pen is tirelessly anti‐immigrant but appeals to something much wider: an entire system of values which is seen to have been eroded by an insidious process of political and moral compromise.

War Will Not Take Place: The French Parliamentary Elections, March 1978. By J. R. Frears and Jean-Luc Parodi. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979. Pp. x + 147. $17.50.)

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Game theory and the french apparentements of 1951

The French apparentement electoral system is modeled as an-person cooperative game without side payments. The players are seat-maximizing political parties. Each electoral district constitutes an independent game. The Von-Neumann and Morgenstern solution is applied to generate theoretical postdictions for a cross section of observations from the 1951 French parliamentary elections. In statistical terms, this solution has a modest, but significant, degree of explanatory power.

The Effect of Broadcasting on Political Campaign Spending: An Empirical Investigation

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommunicationsThe Effect of Broadcasting on Political Campaign Spending: An Empirical InvestigationBurton A. Abrams, and Russell F. SettleBurton A. Abrams Search for more articles by this author , and Russell F. Settle Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 84, Number 5Oct., 1976 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/260498 Views: 14Total views on this site Citations: 13Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1976 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Dmitry Shapiro, Arthur Zillante Contribution Limits and Transparency in a Campaign Finance Experiment, Southern Economic Journal 84, no.11 (Apr 2017): 98–119.https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12220Enrique García Viñuela, Joaquín Artés Caselles Reforming campaign finance in the nineties: a case study of Spain, European Journal of Law and Economics 25, no.33 (Feb 2008): 177–190.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-008-9044-zJoaquín Artés, Enrique García Viñuela Campaign spending and office-seeking motivations: an empirical analysis, Public Choice 133, no.1-21-2 (May 2007): 41–55.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-007-9176-7Gil S. Epstein, Raphaël Franck Campaign resources and electoral success: Evidence from the 2002 French parliamentary elections, Public Choice 131, no.3-43-4 (Jan 2007): 469–489.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-006-9130-0 W. Mark Crain , and Brian L. Goff Televising Legislatures: An Economic Analysis, The Journal of Law and Economics 29, no.22 (Oct 2015): 405–421.https://doi.org/10.1086/467125Gregory A. Caldeira, Samuel C. Patterson Bringing home the votes: Electoral outcomes in state legislative races, Political Behavior 4, no.11 (Jan 1982): 33–67.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987118W. P. Welch Money and votes: A simultaneous equation model, Public Choice 36, no.22 (Jan 1981): 209–234.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123781Burton A. Abrams Political power and the market for governors, Public Choice 37, no.33 (Jan 1981): 521–529.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00133749W. P. Welch The allocation of political monies: Economic interest groups, Public Choice 35, no.11 (Jan 1980): 97–120.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154752William A. Luksetich, William B. Riley The effects of economic factors on presidential elections: 1900–1972, Journal of Behavioral Economics 7, no.22 (Dec 1978): 11–25.https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-5720(78)90003-7Burton A. Abrams, Russell F. Settle Broadcasting and the political campaign spending “Arms Race”, Journal of Broadcasting 21, no.22 (May 2009): 153–162.https://doi.org/10.1080/08838157709363825Burton A. Abrams, Russell F. Settle A modest proposal for election reform, Public Choice 28, no.11 (Dec 1976): 37–53.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01718456Russell F. Settle, Buron A. Abrams The determinants of voter participation: A more general model, Public Choice 27, no.11 (Sep 1976): 81–89.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01718949

The French Radical Socialist Party and the Republican Front of 1956

SWO SIGNIFICANT FACTORS characterized the French parliamentary elections of January, 1956. The elections followed the first dissolution of a French Assembly since 1877. Equally important in terms of French political development was the fact that, for the first time in postwar France, the voter was able to choose between a future moderate right government and a reformist left coalition. This choice was made possible by the formation of an electoral alliance between the Socialist and Radical Socialist parties, which its principal architect, Pierre Mendes-France, named the Republican Front. In an electoral system characterized by its complexity and lack of clear choice for the voter, the Republican Front represented a serious attempt to link the individual's vote to a specific future government combination. While opposition to the Communists and Poujadists was taken for granted, the major opponent of the Republican Front alliance was the outgoing government coalition led by Edgar Faure and Antoine Pinay. This coalition was pictured as symbolic of the center governments which had ruled France during the Fourth Republic, largely by inaction. As an alternative, the Radicals and Socialists offered the voter a future moderate left ministry. Such a ministry would at long last enact fundamental social and economic reforms, conduct a realistic foreign policy, and liquidate French liabilities in North Africa. Thus, the stalemate from which recent French politics has suffered would be broken within the existing parliamentary framework. The key group in the formation of the Republican Front was the Radical Socialist party, if not from the point of view of electoral and parliamentary strength, at least for strategic purposes. The SFIO went into opposition in the National Assembly shortly after the elections of 1951. By themselves, however, the Socialists offered no realistic alternative to the center party governments which continued to rule France. On the other hand, the Radical Socialist party had been an integral part of the center party governing coalition. No government since 1947 has been without a Radical minister, and for more than a third of the time since 1945 a Radical has been premier. Therefore, the important fact of the 1956 elections was not that the SFIO had joined in an electoral alliance opposed to the exist-