Yes they can: an experimental approach of diversity MP eligibility in France Sylvain BROUARD, Sciences Po Bordeaux, SPIRIT Vincent TIBERJ, Sciences Po Paris, CEE “If they failed, that’s because they do not have the skills for these elections”1. This is how Patrick Ollier, former president of the National Assembly explain the failure of MP diversity candidates to get elected in 2007. Leaving aside the validity of the argument for the moment, this is a very good example of the traditional wisdom regarding political representation in the republican France in general and the attitude toward minority candidates in particular. Election is a two-faces democratic Janus (Manin,1995). On the one hand election is a way to represent the people in its heterogeneity. The elected official has therefore to be representative to a certain extent of her voters. On the other hand, election is also a distinction and a selection process. Hence voters assess the qualities and intrinsic superiority of the candidate they decide to put in office. Definitely, this second face prevails in Ollier’s conception. And he is definitely not the only one to share it. Neither Parties nor voters could be blamed for the marginal number of Diversity MPs, he argues, the cause lies in the candidates themselves. Clearly Ollier refers to a meritocratic conception of election where candidates have the major role to play in their electoral fate, which is incidentally also a self-justification of his own success. Nothing would depend on the constituency and its electoral equilibrium or on the assignment to a particular constituency (for which French parties are still responsible. Everything would lie in the capacities and skills of candidates to convince voters. What begins to be troublesome regarding the French case, is the simple sociodemographic comparison of French MPS vis-à-vis others western democracies. According to various estimations, in 2007 the diversity MPs numbers evolves between 1 and 3 out of 555 metropolitan deputies (i.e. 0.18% to 0.58%) and would be 4 out of 305 metropolitan senators (1.31%). Taking the lower chamber as a reference, France would be in the situation of Italy (0.32% of diversity MPs), already behind Germany (1.14%) and United Kingdom (2.32%) and far behind Netherlands (8%) and the United States (15.45%)2. In terms of history of immigration and of models of integration (and particularly access to citizenships), France proposes a quite open Political Opportunity Structure: North-African migrants began to settle in the 30’s; generally second generations enjoy the French citizenship and therefore can enter in the political career just like any other citizen. Nevertheless France remains behind Italy, a very recent country of immigration, Germany, a jus sanguinis country, and definitely fails to compete with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom who share most of its characteristics. This lack of diversity representation is a part of a larger phenomenon: definitely the French politicians are selected from a particularly narrow part of the French society. The average deputy in 1 Quoted in Eric Keslassy 2009, p. 40. 2 Computations and sources are the following Keslassy, 2009, Escafé-Dubet and Simon, 2009, Michon, Tillie and Heelsum, 2007, 2002 is a male (87.5%), white, aged (58 years old on average), with a university education3 (82% vs. 17.5% in the general population) and, for one case out of two, belongs to the upper class (Sineau, Tiberj, 2007). In 2007, the proportion of female deputies has slightly increased (18.5%) but France remains 19th out of 25 EU member-states for women’s political representation in parliament. Regarding age, the 2007 National Assembly is still getting old. In 2010, the proportion of deputies aged 60 or more will be 9 times the one of deputies aged 40 or less. Let’s compare with the United Kingdom where this ratio will be 3, Italy (2.63) or Germany (0.68) (Chauvel, 2007). Definitely the French political elites are conservative in terms of gender, age, education, social class and ethnic diversity. Incidentally, it is difficult to assess that, together, women, young, non-upper-class and ethnic minorities lack the competences and skills for being elected. The reasons behind this French exception are beyond the scope of this chapter, but definitely weight on the political representation of ethnic diversity. If women, even backed by the parity law which force parties to endorse at least 50% of female candidates, are still underrepresented in parliament, the situation of ethnic diversity cannot be better, particularly since, in the republican framework, women equal representation has being accepted with difficulties (see Lepinard,2006 and 2007). Actually, representation of ethnic minority is even less acknowledged as a normative goal, backed by an associational network definitely less accepted and recognized than the women’s movement (Mazur, 1995) and historically more recent4. In a nutshell, leaving aside institutional factors (such as electoral rules, foreigners right to vote, etc…) three main actors can be together responsible for the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities (or any other social underrepresentation): parties and its role in candidate selection and geographical assignment, voters and her potential biases regarding candidates and candidates themselves in terms of personal qualities, policy platforms and strategies. Kittilson and Tate (2005) when they try to explain success and failure of ethnic political representation identify three models: one focusing on social change (Katz and Mair 1994), one based on partisan elites (Aldrich, 1995) and theirs, the political opportunity structure model, which combines intra-parties lobbying, change in the institutional settings and ideological climate. They argue, change of attitudes in the society is not enough for favoring ethnic representation. They also demonstrate that alone a partisan elite-led focus on ethnic representation is definitely not enough. Success is a combination between societal change, ethnic intra-parties organizations and therefore change in the partisan elite-level. This combination of factors is definitely important but the key variable for gathering all these favorable conditions lies in the voters attitudes whether true –i.e. voters in themselves disregard ethnic candidates- or supposed –partisan leaders presuming they would prefer a certain type of candidates, enjoying a traditional social profile. Our main assumption is that Parties whether intentionally or not, misperceive voters preferences vis-à-vis ethnic representatives. Parties would assume that electorate is not ready to choose such a candidate, and justify thereof their status quo policy on this matter. 3 14% of them are Sciences Po alumni when the official number of alumni reachs barely 53 000 individuals (i.e. 0.08% of the French population) 4 According to Geisser and Soum (Geisser and Soum, 2008), during a long time leftist parties were more concerned by the representation of social class rather than ethnic diversity. Authors place the first major ethnic engagement in electoral politics in 1989, a quite late date when compared with the century old working class struggle or the suffragettes and feminist movements. Actually evidences of such a preference are mixed in traditional opinion polls. Overall the French electorate voice the lack of responsiveness of the traditional political class. Regularly since the mid- 90’s, between 70% and 80% of the French interviewees consider that politicians care hardly or not at all about what people like them thinks (Bréchon, 2004). This distrust is strongly linked with the inefficiency regarding unemployment issue, the depolarization of the French political divide (Martin, 2000) and even with the rise of the critiical postmaterialist citizens (Norris, 1999). But it may also connect with the protest against social characteristics of the political elites: in october 2005, 89% of interviewees wish for an improvement of women representation in parliament, and 84% share the same position vis-à-vis the young. They were even still a majority (55%) when visible minorities’ parliament representation was at stake5. Clearly visible minorities are not as consensual as women and young but still are not as rejected as supposed. Nevertheless it seems that an important share of the French voters would have issues regarding such candidates. This is confirmed by other polls. TNS-SOFRES found out in march 2007 that 30% of French would refuse to vote for a candidate of Muslim culture or denomination whereas “only” 18% would do so for a gay candidate or a candidate of foreign origin. Such a penalty even, marginal, could actually cost the election for a major party particularly in the French two-round majority system where a small national score differences between the left and the right can be translated in a important MP seats differential (Dolez and Laurent, 2005). On the other hand, 85% of CSA interviewees in 2008 said they would be ready to vote for “a candidate belonging to a visible minority” but in the same time only 40% think the French as a whole could do the same. It seems confirming that minority candidates could suffer from an ethnic penalty. The last figures give an indirect sense of an ideological climate where ethnic prejudices may still be widespread in the public. All these results could back the behavior of mainstream political parties. After all, their (intrinsic or instrumental) goal is to maximize votes and not to propose an exact mirror