Paris Talk

I will be speaking Paris on Oct. 26, 12:30-2 PM, at CEVIPOF. The subject is a comparison of the US and French presidential elections of 2012. Registration is required at the CEVIPOF Web site.

Le Pen Minister?

Did Nicolas Sarkozy consider offering Marine Le Pen the ministry of the interior on the eve of the final presidential debate? According to Bernard Girard, this is the message of a forthcoming book--and the proposal came from Camille Pascal, a centrist, not from one of Sarkozy more extremist advisors such as Patrick Buisson. Remarkable if true. Ã suivre.

The Right to Vote for Foreigners

Seventy-five Socialist deputies have called on the president to make good on his promise to grant the right to vote in local elections to legal foreign residents of France. His interior minister, Manuel Valls, is hesitant to do so, however, because, as he euphemistically puts it, "there is no strong demand from the society" for such a move. Less delicately, he warns that any move in this direction would drive the right into the arms of the extreme right, possibly strengthening the enemy by weakening the deep internal division on the right that has done so much to empower the left. The reasoning is that, since foreigners would be expected to vote overwhelmingly for the left, even the non-xenophobic right would bitterly oppose the vote for reasons of self-interest rather than prejudice.

Yet a principle remains a principle. The 75 deputies are right. Hollande promised to grant the right to vote on principled grounds: legal residents of France should have a say in how they are governed. And if foreigners voted, all parties might be obliged to take greater account of their concerns and therefore take steps that could promote better integration.

More on the Dutch Elections

Here and here.

Dutch Elections

The Dutch election results are unequivocal: the pro-EU parties of the center-right and center-left won a resounding victory, Geert Wilders' xenophobic and Europhobic extreme-right party will lose 1/3 of its seats, and Emile Roemer's Euroskeptic Socialists fared poorly.

To be sure, the Netherlands is one of the lucky ones: a northern economy in trade surplus. Still, it's interesting that wherever "Europe" has been put to a test vote, a referendum on the Europe question, as this election was billed, Europe has won--even in Greece. This should give pause to those who argue that Europe is an anti-democratic project, that the European Central Bank has become the supreme autocrat, and that "the people" would reject Draghi's program if only they could. These are the sentiments of people who confuse their own judgments with "the people's." The latter are often confused, ambivalent, and far less certain of what they want than their self-appointed spokespersons. And this, as I say, has been the case not only in the fortunate Netherlands but also in the unfortunate Greece, albeit less univocally. The people just want this torment to end.

The ECB's recent actions will of course become wildly unpopular--unless they work. Since there seems to be nothing else afoot at the moment, the people are not about to be panicked by the cries of "anti-democratic" usurpation of power. Their approval may be quiet, but it is approval. Not only the Dutch but the German Constitutional Court seem content with only the mildest of checks on the bank's power (future increases of ESM funding must be submitted to the Bundestag, the court said). And for now, that is where things stand, pending either an easing of market tensions or a heightening of social tensions. I'm sure there is a pithy Tocquevillean generalization to be uttered about democracy's response to the deep redistributional dilemmas posed by a major financial crisis, but the right formula eludes me at the moment. It seems that the people are more forbearing than they are sometimes given credit for, more willing to experiment in times of high uncertainty, and perhaps rather more optimistic than they have a right to be that things will work out in the end.

They are not, however, eager to plunder the rich, as they are sometimes accused of being. They know that the banks have already taken serious writedowns, and they also know that their own savings are tied up in the banks. They may want to help those in difficulty but are wary of bankrupting themselves in the process. So they temporize while rejecting the extremes. As Tocqueville might have observed, such inaction lacks the decisiveness of the hotheaded aristocrat sure of himself and persuaded that he knows where honor lies. Sometimes patience is a virtue. Could this be one of those times?

The Dutch Elections

Now that the German Constitutional Court has approved the ESM, the next hurdle for the EU is the Dutch election, held today. Here is a good summary of the debates (the article is worth reading in full):

Debates should be great opportunities for populists. Although normally boring, the populist may spark some fire in a debate by making bold and harsh attacks on the mainstream. A debate gives an opportunity to stick out and to juxtaposition the elite interests of traditional politics with the ones of the man on the street. Furthermore, populists get unedited access to a fairly sizable portion of the common people they want to represent. With little journalistic intervention, what is being said gets straight to the audience. This begs the question of how the two populists on the far right and the not-so-far-anymore left anymore of Dutch politics have actually been performing over the past weeks. Did the debates help their campaigns?
The simple answer is no. So what happened, and why did Geert Wilders from the Freedom Party (PVV) and Emile Roemer from the Socialist Party (SP) apparently fail to seize the opportunities provided by a sheer debate marathon?
Wilders, like him or not, he is a great debater. With largely prepared one-liners and bold attacks on multiculturalism and Europe, Wilders is always good for laughter and for spectacular debate moments. No different this time, Wilders certainly had his moments. For instance referring to the Labour Party – the Partij van de Arbeid – as the Partij van de Arabieren, the Party for the Arabs, or in a debate about health insurance costs saying rising costs should be paid for by the Greeks, not by the sick people – de rekening bij de Grieken, niet bij de zieken. But there were also moments when this strategy appeared to be working less well. A moment in the RTL debate for instance, when, although the topic was a different one, Wilders slipped in this year’s mantra, a strong anti-EU message. People started laughing, not about his statement but about the ridiculous boldness with which Wilders repeats this message in the most unsuitable situations. They were not laughing with him, they were laughing at him. The campaign did not help Wilders in the polls, but did not damage him either, showing a stable 12 percent of the electorate supporting him. It seems as if people are getting tired of his style, his rhetoric, so more than the core of his voters would not be mobilized (which is not to say that he was irrelevant – the PVV and Wilders were just not the big players in the campaign).
Former primary school teacher Roemer in terms of appearance and expression is much closer to ordinary man than Wilders. The campaign showed dramatic consequences for the SP. In the debates, in particular the first debates, Roemer had to face a strategic problem. The positioning as the populist left opposition had boosted the SP into hitherto unknown heights in opinion polls. For some weeks during the summer it looked as if the SP would become the biggest party, with Roemer having a good chance of becoming Prime Minister. So he had to look “prime ministerial”. By going in that direction, Roemer lost authenticity in the first debates and dramatically lost support in the polls after the first debates. The SP electorate wants a populist, and if they don’t get the populist they can just as well go with the more serious alternative on the left. And with PvdA candidate Diederik Samsom there was an alternative that became more and more viable, closing a 10-percentage point gap between the Labour Party and the Liberal front-runner VVD within a matter of two weeks.
If one were to advise the PVV and the SP on the strategy for the next campaign, on basis of what we saw over the past weeks, one should probably tell Roemer to go back to who he was when he was successful, a left-wing populist, and tell Wilders to go out and re-invent himself if he wants to continue playing a significant role in Dutch politics. But let’s see whether the polls are in fact reflected in the outcome tonight.

Interesting Electoral Data from INSEE

INSEE has published data on participation in the 2012 presidential election. The young and the old were most likely not to vote, either because they were not registered (in the case of the young) or abstained (in the case of the old). Since older voters were expected to be a core group in Sarkozy's base, this high abstention rate is surely one factor in his defeat:

(h/t Laurent Bouvet)

A Political Renewal

It was more than a victory that the Socialist Party scored today; it was a political cleansing. A whole new generation of Socialists has come to office, as Bernard Girard notes. Of the 291 Socialist deputies, moreover, 108 are women. Two elephants were eliminated: Jack Lang and Ségolène Royal. All the ministers were elected, however. On the right, the older generation suffered defeats as well: Bayrou and Alliot-Marie are gone. Arun Kapil has a full rundown.

Two things trouble me. First, I'm not sure what the Socialist Party did to deserve such a victory. Its program remains vague, its leadership untested, its commitments confused. Its victory might be seen as an expression of revulsion against the Sarkozy years--except Sarkozy himself did better than expected in the presidential. The new leadership of the UMP is hardly inspiring, and this crushing defeat opens the way for a challenge to Copé by Fillon and/or Juppé. With the Socialists now in control at every level of government, they would benefit from a renewal on the right; otherwise all the blame for failure is theirs.u

Second, the party system seems out of kilter. The FN enjoys strong support but has only 2 seats. Similarly, the extreme left is underrepresented in the Assembly. The Greens, by contrast, are overrepresented. And the center, alas, has all but disappeared. Ayrault has spoken of the need for a more balanced exercise of power between legislature and presidency. Such a change will require a lot of work on the Assembly internally. The imbalance is institutionalized and reflected in budgets, office space, and staffing. It won't be easy to change.

Finally, a word about Bayrou and Royal. Both deserved better than they got. To be sure, Royal's bitter speech was graceless, and she probably sealed her own fate by making a poor tactical choice, but I find it hard to believe that Falorni couldn't have been dissuaded from his challenge if the will had been there at the national level. And clearly Bayrou could have been saved as a gesture of gratitude and respect, which he deserves. But politics, as they say, is not beanbag.

Le Pen Loses in Hénin-Beaumont

Hallelujah!

Absolute Majority for the Left, Royal, Bayrou Lose

The Socialists will have 291 seats. Ségolène Royal lost her seat, as did François Bayrou. François Hollande now has all the support he needs to enact a program of the left. It remains to be seen what that program is.

Left Wins Legislatives

Législatives : de 305 à 353 sièges pour la gauche parlementaire

La gauche emporterait de 305 à 353 sièges aux élections législatives d'après des projections réalisées par Ipsos pour "Le Monde", Radio France et France Télévisions. Le PS aurait de 270 à 300 députés, EELV de 8 à 14 et le Front de gauche de 14 à 20. La droite parlementaire aurait de 227 à 266 sièges dont 210 à 240 pour l'UMP. Le résultat du Front national oscille entre 0 et 2 députés. La majorité absolue est à 289 sièges.

Couple of things to note. The PS by itself does not have a majority. The Front de Gauche did better than EELV. And the turnout was extremely low.

Six Ministers in Jeopardy

There are legislative elections in France tomorrow, in case you've forgotten. The campaign has gone all but unnoticed, and, even more than in the presidential election, the issues have been avoided, as Arun Kapil notes. Since ministers must win their seats in order to remain ministers, there are six who may be in trouble:

Pour d'autres sortants, la situation est plus incertaine. C'est le cas d'Aurélie Filippetti (culture et communication) dans la 1re circonscription de Moselle, où M. Hollande a obtenu 52,3 % le 6 mai ; de Jérôme Cahuzac (budget) dans la 3e de Lot-et-Garonne (51,8 % pour M. Hollande) ; de Marisol Touraine (affaires sociales et santé) dans la 1re d'Indre-et-Loire (51,8 %) ; de Pierre Moscovici (économie et finances) dans la 4e du Doubs (51,27 %) ; et de Sylvia Pinel (artisanat, commerce et tourisme), seule ministre membre du Parti radical de gauche, dans la 2e de Tarn-et-Garonne (50,9 %).

Of course they're in trouble only because Hollande and Ayrault decided to emulate Sarkozy's gambit of imposing this rule on their ministerial choices. It kept Juppé from becoming a super-minister in 2007, as originally intended (or perhaps it was Sarko's intention all along to neutralize Juppé by naming him to an important post but imposing a rule that was likely to prevent him from assuming it, as turned out to be the case). But what was the purpose of the rule? Later in his presidency, when he wanted Juppé for a different ministry (foreign affairs), "respect for democracy" apparently no longer required his surviving a baptism of fire.

The whole business is faintly demagogic. The French government, unlike the British, is not an emanation of the legislature. It is a distinct constitutional entity, and there is really no good reason why ministers should be required to win elections if they happen to run but, if they don't, to serve without impediment.

Socialist Could Win in North America Constituency

In something of a surprise, the Socialist candidate has a chance to win a seat in the National Assembly to represent the new North American district covering the US and Canada and comprising some 155,000 French nationals.

Fess up, François!

Le Monde thinks François Hollande isn't coming clean with the voters:

En dépit de prévisions d'une croissance du PIB faible et d'une pluie d'avertissements de la Cour des comptes, de l'inspection générale des finances ou de la Commission européenne sur le dérapage des dépenses, le gouvernement s'abrite derrière un audit sur l'état des finances publiques opportunément attendu fin juin, après les élections. En attendant, il n'annonce que des nouvelles sympathiques : hausse du smic, majoration de l'allocation de rentrée scolaire, retraite à 60 ans pour ceux qui ont travaillé jeune...
La zone euro est en feu. Non seulement ce flou persistant n'aide pas à maîtriser l'incendie, mais les électeurs français seraient en droit de connaître, au moment de retourner aux urnes, les véritables intentions du gouvernement. Le devoir de vérité incombe à la gauche comme à la droite.

But why should Hollande change what has been a winning strategy until now? Vagueness served him well in the primaries; ambiguity won the presidential election; and polling shows that evasiveness, along with a policy of announcing only good news, is winning the legislatives. So we won't really know how Hollande plans to govern before the end of June and perhaps not until the rentrée. There's just no incentive to honesty. It's a pity that Hollande's models are François Mitterrand and Jacques Delors rather than Pierre Mendès France. But then again, PMF didn't last very long as président du Conseil, did he? Honor in politics rarely translates into effectiveness, and Hollande may well have a better idea of what it will take to govern effectively than I do.

Legislatives: Looking Good for the Left

Polling shows the Left doing well in the upcoming legislative elections. The French apparently don't like cohabitation and, despite J.-F. Copé's ominous warnings, seem prepared to let the Left has its chance to see what it can do. Surprisingly, the Left is also doing well in the overseas districts created by the UMP in the hope of adding to its majority during the fat years.

Three Frances

Yet another sociological analysis of the vote. No surprises here, but interesting nonetheless.

Sociology of the Vote

Sondage jour de vote T2-Sociologie du vote

View more presentations from contactOpinionWay

(h/t Arun Kapil)

Hollande Loses Silicon Valley

Arun Kapil reports some fascinating data:

In the US, Nicolas Sarkozy pummeled François Hollande 61% to 39%. Sarkozy cleaned up in eight of the ten polling stations in New York City, winning upwards of 74% of the vote. But in two—no doubt on the Upper West Side and the Village—Hollande whipped Sarko 57-43. They were pretty evenly divided in San Francisco, though Hollande won Berkeley (duh) in a 57-43 landslide. But Sarko won an even bigger landslide in Palo Alto’s two polling stations (60 and 64%). Hollande’s 75% top tax rate proposal was clearly not plébiscité in Silicon Valley. Hollande’s worst US scores were in West Palm Beach FL (16%; hmmm, I wonder why?…), Las Vegas (17%), Miami 2 (18%), and Tampa (19%). In the last one, pour l’info, Marine Le Pen came in second place ahead of Hollande in round one. Must have been those military folks stationed at CENTCOM.

A Remarkable Coincidence

Hollande and Mitterrand were elected with almost identical scores:

Il a si bien réussi à "faire" François Mitterrand qu'il a reproduit, à quelques dixièmes de point près, le score du premier socialiste à avoir réussi à se faire élire président de la République sous la Ve République. Il est devenu le second en obtenant 51,68 % des suffrages exprimés, alors que François Mitterrand en avait totalisé 51,76 %, dans un contexte de participation sensiblement plus élevé : près de 86 % des électeurs inscrits s'étaient déplacés, le 10 mai 1981, pour départager François Mitterrand et Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, tandis qu'ils n'ont été que 81,03 % à le faire, dimanche, pour choisir entre M. Hollande et M. Sarkozy.

The Legislative Elections

Will the left win the June legislative elections? It's by no means certain, despite the French dislike of cohabitation and the logic of the constitutional reform and presidential system. Hollande's margin of victory was narrow, and, as noted in a previous post, his victory depended on the strength of anti-Sarkozy sentiment. The rejection was personal and not necessarily political, and the poor report des voix among MoDem and Le Pen voters to the Socialists suggests that the Left may have a hard time putting its candidates across in some districts. In addition, Mélenchon will now be an adversary rather than an objective ally of the Socialists. What an absurd irony it would be if the French turned out their unpopular energumen only to hamstring his hapless successor.