Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France (French Politics, Society and Culture)

Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France Rainbow Murray

French Politics, Society and Culture Series General Editor: Robert Elgie, Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies, Dublin City University France has always fascinated outside observers. Now, the country is undergoing a period of profound transformation. France is faced with a rapidly changing international and European environment and it is having to rethink some of its most basic social, political and economic orthodoxies. As elsewhere, there is pressure to conform. And yet, while France is responding in ways that are no doubt familiar to people in other European countries, it is also managing to maintain elements of its long-standing distinctiveness. Overall, it remains a place that is not exactly comme les autres. This new series examines all aspects of French politics, society and culture. In so doing it focuses on the changing nature of the French system as well as the established patterns of political, social and cultural life. Contributors to the series are encouraged to present new and innovative arguments so that the informed reader can learn and understand more about one of the most beguiling and compelling of all European countries.

Titles include: Gill Allwood and Khursheed Wadia GENDER AND POLICY IN FRANCE Sylvain Brouard, Andrew M. Appleton, Amy G. Mazur (editors) THE FRENCH FIFTH REPUBLIC AT FIFTY Beyond Stereotypes June Burnham POLITICIANS, BUREAUCRATS AND LEADERSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS Lessons from Regional Planning in France Jean K. Chalaby THE DE GAULLE PRESIDENCY AND THE MEDIA Statism and Public Communications Pepper D. Culpepper, Bruno Palier and Peter A. Hall (editors) CHANGING FRANCE The Politics that Markets Make Gordon D. Cumming FRENCH NGOs IN THE GLOBAL ERA France’s International Development Role David Drake FRENCH INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS FROM THE DREYFUS AFFAIR TO THE OCCUPATION David Drake INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR FRANCE Graeme Hayes ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST AND THE STATE IN FRANCE

David J. Howarth THE FRENCH ROAD TO EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION Andrew Knapp PARTIES AND THE PARTY SYSTEM IN FRANCE A Disconnected Democracy? Michael S. Lewis-Beck (editor) THE FRENCH VOTER Before and After the 2002 Elections John Loughlin SUBNATIONAL GOVERNMENT The French Experience Mairi Maclean and Joseph Szarka FRANCE ON THE WORLD STAGE Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey and Jon Press BUSINESS ELITES AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN FRANCE AND THE UK Susan Milner and Nick Parsons (editors) REINVENTING FRANCE State and Society in the Twenty-First Century Rainbow Murray PARTIES, GENDER QUOTAS AND CANDIDATE SELECTION IN FRANCE Gino G. Raymond THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY DURING THE FIFTH REPUBLIC A Crisis of Leadership and Ideology Paul Smith THE SENATE OF THE FIFTH FRENCH REPUBLIC Francesca Vassallo FRANCE, SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM Sarah Waters SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN FRANCE Towards a New Citizenship Reuben Y. Wong THE EUROPEANIZATION OF FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY France and the EU in East Asia

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Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France Rainbow Murray Lecturer in Politics, Queen Mary University of London, UK

© Rainbow Murray 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-0-230-24253-1

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Murray, Rainbow, 1979– Parties, gender quotas, and candidate selection in France / Rainbow Murray. p. cm. – (French politics, society, and culture series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-230-24253-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Nominations for office–France. 2. Political parties–France. 3. Women–Political activity–France. 4. France–Politics and government–2007– I. Title. JN2997.M87 2010 324.244’015–dc22 2009048544 10 19

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Robin, Vicky and my family, with gratitude and love

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Contents

List of Tables and Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Chapter 1

Introduction Why gender quotas? Why parties? Why France? Parties as rational actors From multiple models to one Overview of the book

1 2 4 8 14 16 21

Chapter 2

French Parties and Parity in Context Introduction The French party system Party motivations in ratifying parity

26 26 27 38

Chapter 3

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand Party candidate selection procedures The significance of centralisation Selection procedures in French parties Does centralisation of candidate selection assist parity? The ‘supply and demand’ model in France

46 47 47 49

The Electoral Competition Approach Introduction Overview of the electoral competition approach Electoral competition in France How electoral competition affects candidate selection Evaluating the performance of types of candidate

75 75 76 81

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

The Institutional Approach Introduction Examining the ‘institutional’ approach France’s institutions and their impact on candidate selection vii

56 57

85 89 104 104 106 109

viii Contents

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

The Ideological Approach Introduction Examining the ideological approach ‘Familles spirituelles’: Comparing ideologies and attitudes to quotas Can ideology explain the implementation of parity? Applying the ideological approach to French parties

125 125 126 131

Conclusion and the ‘Party Priorities Model’ Introduction Overview of the key themes Models of party behaviour The party priorities model Overall conclusions

148 148 148 153 157 163

134 137

Appendix: Interviews

167

Notes

169

Bibliography

175

Index

186

List of Tables and Illustrations Tables 2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 6.1

Overview of key party characteristics Overview of party selection procedures Percentage of women in parties and politics Vulnerability of seats in French elections Measuring candidate impact on party performance Success rates of incumbents and inheritors Female incumbents and inheritors Sex and safety of seat Electoral systems and parity in France The impact of parity Ideology and implementation of parity

38 55 61 82 92 94 95 98 112 118 135

Figures and illustrations 5.1 Effects of electoral systems on women’s representation The Party Priorities Model

ix

110 159

Acknowledgements Elements of Chapter 4 were published in Party Politics (2008), vol. 14(5): 539–54. Elements of Chapter 7 were published in Parliamentary Affairs (2007), vol. 60(4): 568–84. Many people have contributed to this book in various ways. While it is not possible to produce an exhaustive list, I would like to acknowledge certain people without whom the book would not have been possible. This book emanates from my research work at Birkbeck, University of London. I would like to thank my supervisors, Joni Lovenduski and Rosie Campbell, for their wisdom, guidance and support throughout my study. Early inspiration and encouragement came from Jill Lovecy and Mariette Sineau. Robert Elgie has contributed in many ways to my work, not only through being the editor of this book series, but also as an examiner, journal editor and supportive colleague. My other examiner, Amy Mazur, has also been a pillar of support and a nurturing influence in the profession. Together, their constructive criticism and encouragement was crucial in the development of this work into a book. Vital and much-appreciated financial support came from the ESRC, who sponsored my studies through a 1+3 studentship. I am immensely grateful for this award. Many people have given feedback on various aspects of my work and some have also supported my work through conferences, publications and guidance on sources. In particular I would like to thank Tim Bale, Marc Calvini-Lefebvre, Sarah Childs, Ben Clift, Jocelyn Evans, Florence Haegel, Jennifer von Heerde, Peter John, Jerry Johnson, Hussein Kassim, Andrew Knapp, Mona Lena Krook, Katherine Opello, Judith Squires, Aurélia Troupel and Alan Ware. Many people played an invaluable role in helping me with my fieldwork. I would like to thank every person who kindly gave up their precious time to be interviewed for this thesis. In addition to the politicians listed in Appendix B, several academics generously gave me their time, including Claudie Baudino, Laure Bereni, Julien Fretel, Eléonore Lépinard, Janine Mossuz-Lavau and Lea Sgier. Further, many of the interviews x

Acknowledgements xi

with politicians would not have taken place without the assistance of friends and colleagues who helped set them up. In addition to those mentioned above, special thanks must go to Emmanuelle de Champs, Emilie Mazzacurati, Gwenaëlle Perrier, Julie Savary, and an extra big thank you to Réjane Sénac-Slawinski for unlocking several important doors for me. Good peers and colleagues are a godsend, and I have been fortunate to work with some wonderful people. My thanks go to colleagues at Birkbeck and latterly at Queen Mary, University of London, for their support throughout the preparation of this book. I am indebted to Alison Howson, Liz Blackmore, and Shirley Tan at Palgrave for their patience, efficiency and hard work in helping this book take shape. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their helpful insights. As is customary with such things, I have left thanking my family and friends till last. However, it is probably to them that I owe the greatest debt of all. I am fortunate enough to have more people to thank than I can list here, but want to make a few special mentions. Firstly, my parents for their unwavering support through every crisis, constant encouragement, their time, their love, and for providing me with the many essentials that enabled me to complete my research. Mum, Dad, thank you – I hope this brings you nachas! Secondly, my dear friend Vicky, who has been by my side from beginning to end, cheering me on, making many sacrifices for me and my work, and providing every kind of support imaginable with great patience and love. Finally, Robin Thomas Pettitt, who as a colleague has given me academic inspiration and guidance, and as a partner has given me unconditional love and support. Tak for at være min solskin. Without these special people, my world would be a darker place and this book would be non-existent. Receiving the help and encouragement of so many wonderful people has been a privilege and a blessing. Thank you all.

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1 Introduction

This book looks at how political parties have responded to the demands of gender quotas, using France as a case study. Gender quotas are a rapidly growing phenomenon and they affect politics in a number of ways, from shaping the composition of legislatures to influencing the legitimacy of the political system. Parties are the central actors at the heart of this process – they are the ones who introduce quotas, either on a piecemeal voluntary basis or through enacting legislation, and they are then the actors charged with quota implementation. Quotas have a huge impact on parties, influencing their recruitment and selection practices, their electoral prospects and their image. However, despite the critical influence of parties on the introduction and implementation of quotas, and of quotas on the practices of parties, the interaction between the two has gone largely unstudied. Scholars of parties have not taken adequate account of the impact of gender quotas on party behaviour, while scholars of quotas have focused on the normative arguments and practical consequences of quotas rather than considering the central role of parties. This book fills this gap in knowledge by illustrating how quotas affect parties, and using theories of party behaviour to explain whether, why and to what extent parties will implement gender quotas. The case study of France is particularly pertinent, as France was the first country in the world to introduce a ‘parity’ quota – that is, a quota set at 50 per cent. Despite the global interest triggered by France’s attempt to become the world’s first parity democracy, the reality did not live up to the hype. Parity produced very variable results from one party and one election to another. In addition, although the ‘parity’ law is compulsory, it is enforced in different ways for different elections. The introduction of a compulsory quota for all elections means that France illustrates the complexity of quota implementation across a 1

2 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

variety of electoral systems and levels of government. Meanwhile, France’s varied party system allows parity’s impact on a number of different parties to be observed. This makes France a fertile testing ground for exploring the causes and consequences of these variations, and what we can learn about party responses to gender quotas as a result. This book builds on the insights provided by parity in France and brings together knowledge from the literatures on political parties and gender and politics in order to provide a comprehensive account of the interaction between quotas and parties. The first section of this chapter will explore the rationale behind the book in greater detail. Firstly, it will briefly explain the significance of gender quotas to democracy. The chapter will then explain how parties are a critical actor in the study of gender quotas, looking at the twoway relationship between quotas and parties. The specific case study of France will then be explored in more detail, before introducing the framework used for analysing the mutual relationship between quotas and parties. Parties are considered as rational actors who incorporate the demands of gender quotas into broader organisational, ideological and electoral imperatives. These different imperatives are explored using gendered approaches to candidate selection practices along with three mainstream theories of party organisation, namely the electoral competition approach, the institutional approach and the ideological approach. An overview of the core arguments of each of these approaches is offered. A central argument made is that each approach is useful but incomplete when considered in isolation from the others, resulting in the creation of an overarching model which is the first to provide a comprehensive illustration of how parties incorporate gender quotas into their broader strategies. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book, illustrating how the core ideas are organised and tested.

Why gender quotas? Women’s under-representation in politics is a global phenomenon, with a range of negative repercussions. These include an incomplete democratic process, where women’s viewpoints are overlooked; an injustice against the majority of the world’s population; an inefficient use of resources, with women’s talents going to waste; and a symbolic sense of exclusion for women voters and citizens. Attempts to redress women’s under-representation, such as positive action and a gradual evolution of societal attitudes towards women, have contributed to the

Introduction 3

gradual rise in women’s political presence around the world, but the rate of change produced by such measures is frustratingly slow. Quotas are widely advocated as a more rapid and effective means of increasing women’s presence in politics. Gender quotas have grown rapidly in popularity over the past 20 years, and there are now at least 100 countries around the world using some form of gender quota (Quota Project; Krook 2009). Quotas are increasingly seen as a ‘fast track’ solution to women’s under-representation, compared to the slower, incremental model of societal change (Dahlerup 2006; Dahlerup & Freidenvall 2005). In countries where attitudes and/or institutions are slow to adapt to a feminisation of politics, quotas may be the fastest means of increasing women’s numerical representation. However, it is acknowledged that not all quotas have the same impact. There are many variations of gender quota – for example, some are compulsory and state-wide, whilst others are introduced voluntarily by political parties. France is one of 15 countries to have a constitutional quota for its national parliament, and one of 45 countries to have national quota legislation (Quota Project). Some quotas are reinforced with penalties for non-compliance, whilst others are symbolic and reliant on parties’ will to implement change. Some quotas reserve an exact number of seats for women, while others focus on the proportion of women candidates, with or without a measure to ensure that women are placed in winnable constituencies or in winnable positions on party lists. Finally, quotas may be set at any level up to and including 50 per cent. The rapid influx of quotas around the world is starting to transform politics in a number of ways. The proportion of women in parliaments of countries where a quota is used has usually risen, sometimes dramatically. Parties using quotas have had to adapt their candidate selection practices in order to recruit and promote higher proportions of women. Men have sometimes found themselves forced to step aside in order to permit the political renewal of quotas. Symbolically, the concept of women politicians has been normalised to a greater extent. However, quotas are certainly not a panacea to the problem of women’s under-representation. They have courted a lot of controversy, both from opponents of women’s representation (who consider quotas to be unmeritocratic, discriminatory against men and a perversion of the democratic process) and feminists (who consider quotas to be essentialist and patronising, and fear that election through a quota will undermine a woman’s authority and credibility as a politician). In addition, quotas have not always been successful. Sometimes they have been introduced as a symbolic gesture, with insufficient measures to

4 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

ensure their effectiveness; for example, Brazil has a national quota law requiring 30 per cent women candidates, yet its parliament still contains only 8.8 per cent women (Quota Project). In many instances, the target proportion of women has not been met, and even more rarely has it been exceeded. Quotas are therefore interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, their potential transformative effects for democracy are considerable. Secondly, their impact is variable and their success is not guaranteed. Thirdly, their relative newness means that research on quotas is a rapidly evolving field of study, with rich potential for further exploration of the impact of quotas and explanation for their variable success.

Why parties? One of the major actors concerned with gender quotas is political parties. They are responsible, either individually or collectively, for the introduction of quotas. They are the actors charged with quotas’ implementation, and it is parties who determine whether or not quotas will succeed. In most democracies, political parties are responsible for political recruitment and candidate selection. In many respects, then, parties are pivotal actors in explaining women’s under-representation and the effectiveness of quotas in increasing women’s presence. Parties are critical to understanding quotas, and quotas are also an increasingly important aspect of the study of parties, as more and more parties around the world choose or are forced to adopt quotas. Quotas affect many aspects of a party’s life, from its candidate selection practices (which also link to its relationship with its members) through to the composition of the parliamentary party. In the instance of compulsory quotas such as those in France, there are also financial repercussions. The effects of quotas on parties (and vice versa) may be profound, but are heavily under-theorised. Studies of gender quotas have concentrated primarily on quotas’ effects on other aspects of the political process, such as individual candidates, legislatures and voters, rather than parties. Meanwhile, the study of political parties remains largely gender-blind and has not taken sufficient account of the radical upheaval of political personnel generated by gender quotas. Let us look at each of these areas in more detail.

Introduction 5

There is a rapidly expanding literature looking at women in politics, and at quotas in particular. Mansbridge (1999) and Phillips (1991, 1995) are amongst many authors that make convincing theoretical arguments to justify the use of gender quotas in order to increase women’s representation. Other works, such as those by Childs (2004), Childs and Withey (2006), Dahlerup (1988), Dolan (1997), Franceschet and Piscopo (2008), Lovenduski (2005), Lovenduski and Norris (1996), Mateo Diaz (2002, 2005) and Meier (2000), have explored the impact that women politicians can make once elected, offering a more empirically-based argument in favour of women’s presence in politics. A recent edited volume by Dahlerup (2006) provides an overview of gender quotas from a variety of perspectives, including theoretical arguments for and against quotas, and detailed case studies of quota implementation in a range of countries. Krook has looked both at theoretical aspects of quotas and at comparative case studies around the world (Krook 2004, 2006, 2007a, 2008, 2009). Despite this growing literature on quotas, there are surprisingly few works that look directly at the role of political parties in women’s representation. Baer laments that ‘the concept of political party in women and politics research is missing where one would most expect it – in studies of recruitment and public office holding’ (1993, p. 562). She argues that the costs of this ‘myopia’ include a misunderstanding of parties by scholars on women in politics, a hostility towards women by scholars of political parties, and a continued failure to understand why parties select more men than women. Since then, a few authors such as Kittilson (née Caul) (1999, 2001, 2006), Lovenduski and Norris (1993) and Opello (2006) have written explicitly about the relationship between political parties and women candidates, and their influential works are referred to in greater detail throughout this book, but the majority of writings focus on whether women should be present in politics, the extent to which they are present, institutional and sociological variables that influence the likelihood of their being present, and what they do once they do succeed in getting elected. While all of these are essential questions that need to be answered, it is important not to forget the instrumental role that political parties play in the recruitment, retention and promotion of women politicians. However, turning to the literature on political parties for a clearer understanding of how they have responded to demands for feminisation provides only limited insights, as most works on political parties suffer from gender blindness. Many of the classic works on parties make no reference at all to women (such as Blondel 1978;

6 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

Downs 1957; Michels 1915; Sartori 1976; von Beyme 1985), and those that do tend to make only scant reference to women without integrating gender more comprehensively into their work (such as Epstein 1967; Katz & Mair 1995; and Webb et al 2002). However, I argue that no work on political parties can be complete unless it takes questions of gender into account. Gender has become an increasingly important variable for parties to take into consideration over recent decades, even prior to the introduction of quotas. Since the granting of female suffrage, parties have needed to be mindful of the needs of women voters. Well-documented studies of the ‘gender gap’ have demonstrated that women do not always vote in the same way as men, and shifts in the gender gap from right to left demonstrate that women’s votes are susceptible to influence (Achin & Lévêque 2006; Campbell 2006; Inglehart & Norris 1999; Mossuz-Lavau 2007; Norris 1999; Sineau 2006, 2007). Parties have learned that they cannot ignore female voters; for example, Mitterrand’s victory in the presidential elections of 1981 was attributed to his ability to appeal to female voters, who had previously been more right-leaning than their male counterparts (Helft-Malz & Lévy 2000, p. 38). Indeed, one of the reasons for introducing gender quotas has been as an attempt by parties to woo women voters (and appear progressive). These quotas have had a substantial influence on candidate selection procedures, and no account of political parties is complete without explicit acknowledgement of the changes to party policy and practices that feminisation has introduced. Although this book is the first to use classic approaches to party behaviour to explain quota implementation, it follows in the tradition of a small but distinguished set of works seeking to feminise the literature on political parties. Ware is one of the few authors to provide a more inclusive account of gender in his own work on political parties (1996). A work that actually dedicates itself to discussing the relationship between women and political parties is Lovenduski and Norris (1993). In the final chapter, Norris explores factors affecting parties’ relationships with women, including the institutional environment as well as the impact of different types of internal party organisation. She provides an initial suggestion that low internal democracy permits (but does not oblige) a party’s leadership to introduce more women candidates. This idea is explored in greater detail in Chapter 3 of this book. She also begins to develop ideas of supply and demand, and of parties as gatekeepers, that are explored further in Norris (1997) and Norris and Lovenduski (1995); these ideas are also tested and developed here in Chapter 3. Finally, she considers the role of ideology in parties’

Introduction 7

willingness to recruit women, an idea that is developed in works by Kittilson (née Caul) (1999, 2001, 2006) and Opello (2006) and examined in detail in Chapter 6. Much of the existing theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between women and parties takes inspiration from this important volume. Within more specialist works on candidate selection, the landmark volume by Gallagher and Marsh (1988) considers gender along with a large number of other factors, and provides some interesting insights, although many of these are drawn from the literature on gender and politics. For example, they note that women tend to fare better under proportional representation systems due to the need to balance tickets, rather than under single member plurality systems where ‘selectors might feel, accurately or otherwise, [that women] could be electoral liabilities’ (1988, p. 260). However, they add that ‘while a PR electoral system obviously makes the selection of women more likely…the active role of the selection process in determining how many women enter Parliament should not be overlooked’ (ibid, p. 268). They also acknowledge the role of quotas in facilitating women’s entry, and the role of incumbents in impeding this. Norris and Lovenduski (1995) develop an important theoretical framework including the ‘supply and demand’ model, a more advanced and sophisticated version of the ideas referred to above by Norris (1993). They also seek to model the stages at which women face barriers in the recruitment process in order to explain how a large pool of potential candidates is reduced to a small pool of elected women. Some of these theories are applied in a more comparative context in Norris (1997). Together, these works offer a number of revealing insights into the gendered nature of the recruitment process that form foundations on which this book builds. However, none of these works relates specifically to the interaction of parties and gender quotas. Opello (2006) is an exception to this rule, and her work is considered in greater detail below. Overall, there is much to be learned from existing studies of parties and of gender quotas, but there is a dearth of theorisation as to how the two interact. This book aims to draw on the strengths of the literature described above, and to end the false dichotomy between research on gender and research on political parties. Indeed, it is a central tenet of this book that neither area of research can be complete unless it incorporates elements of the other. As parties are often responsible for introducing quotas as well as being the actors charged with their implementation, understanding their motivations for supporting (and, in some cases, resisting) quotas needs to be incorporated into any

8 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

study of gender quotas. Similarly, as quotas become more widespread, no study of political parties can be complete unless it takes into account the multiple impacts that quotas have on political parties. These include the integration of quotas into parties’ candidate selection practices, and the wider repercussions for other aspects of their organisation, such as renewal, internal democracy, unity, electoral appeal and financial stability.

Why France? France was the first country in the world to introduce a compulsory 50 per cent (‘parity’) gender quota for all parties in almost all elections. As discussed below, this has made France a fascinating case-study for scholars and practitioners alike. France may be a pioneer in terms of ambition, but its track record is rather more mixed when it comes to the successful implementation of parity. The variations of parity’s implementation from one party to another and from one type of election to another add to France’s intrigue. In addition, French parties have imposed large fines upon themselves by introducing a law which they could or would not implement. For all these reasons, France is an ideal case study of the interaction between parties and quotas in different types of election. The French parity law rose under unusual circumstances, considered in greater detail in Chapter 2. The driving motivation for a ‘parity’ quota, set at 50 per cent, was to overcome the previous legal rejection of gender quotas on the grounds that they ran contrary to the constitutional principle of universal citizenship. A quota which reflected the natural distribution of the sexes within society was based as much on an attempt to make quotas acceptable within the context of French universalist thought as it was on more principled grounds of equality and fairness (although it is on these latter arguments that other countries considering a 50 per cent quota have focused). While certain elements of ‘parity’ were specific to France, its origins were also located in an international context (Krook 2007b), with discourses on parity originating from the European Union, and France comparing unfavourably to her European neighbours in terms of women’s representation (prior to the law’s passage in 2000, France had fewer women in the lower chamber of Parliament than any other member state of the European Union except Greece1). The ‘parity’2 law specifies that French parties must field an equal number of men and women candidates to all elections. Since its intro-

Introduction 9

duction, the law has had a very variable effect, depending both on the party and the type of election concerned. At its most successful, the law induced near-parity in the composition of local councils, with 47.5 per cent women elected in 2001 and 48.5 per cent women elected in 2008 where the law applied (Fabre, Le Monde 27 March 2001a; Zimmerman 2008a). However, the law has been less successful at other levels, and its biggest failure has been in the legislative elections, where the proportion of women elected to the National Assembly rose from 10.9 per cent in 1997 to just 12.3 per cent in 2002, followed by a moderate improvement to 18.5 per cent in 2007. This variable performance between elections is interesting in itself, and the legislative elections are of particular interest for a number of reasons. Firstly, the overall percentage of women candidates tends to exceed greatly the percentage of women elected (in 2002, there were 38.9 per cent women candidates compared to 12.3 per cent women elected; in 2007, there were 41.6 per cent women candidates for 18.5 per cent women elected (Zimmerman 2003a, p. 10; Zimmerman 2007b, p. 4)). Secondly, there was huge variation between the different political parties, with parity being respected by some parties even though they were opposed to it in principle (such as the far-right Front National (FN)), while some parties, including the two main parties of the right (the UMP and the UDF) fielded fewer than 20 per cent women in 2002, and well below their target of 30 per cent women in 2007. Thirdly, the parties that did not respect parity lost millions of euros as a financial penalty for breaching the law. This raises two core questions: why parity had a variable impact from one election and from one party to the next; and why parties would consider it preferable to lose a large sum of money rather than to select more women candidates. Both of these questions are considered throughout the book. There are also several institutional factors which make France a particularly rich case-study for examining parties’ roles in quota implementation. Firstly, the ‘parity’ legislation is unusual in that it is constitutionalised and enforced upon all parties. This means that every single party in France is subject to its constraints, regardless of their beliefs and circumstances. Secondly, France has a variety of electoral systems depending on the election in question, and as a consequence, parity is applied in a range of different ways. This allows for a fruitful exploration of the efficiency of the law under different circumstances. Thirdly, the relatively large party system enables comparisons to be made between different types of party within the same country. Unlike other countries, where gender quotas have been voluntary and

10 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

piecemeal, France provides the opportunity to compare the impact of the ‘parity’ law across all parties and virtually all elections.3 Given that a focus on a single-country case study inevitably results in a small n, I deploy the ‘comparable cases’ approach of Lijphart (Collier 1993; Lijphart 1971, 1975). He argues that in small n studies, it is useful to focus on cases that are ‘similar in a large number of important characteristics (variables) which one wants to treat as constants, but dissimilar as far as those variables are concerned which one wants to relate to each other’ (Lijphart 1971, p. 687). By controlling here for shared institutional variables such as the electoral system, it is possible to focus on the variables that explain why different parties will react differently to the same situation – in this case, why some parties are more likely than others to implement the ‘parity’ law. Looking at different parties within the same system is the most useful methodology as it is their different behaviour under similar circumstances that is of theoretical interest. France also permits comparisons across different elections, allowing an assessment of whether and how parties adjust their strategy according to the status of the election in question and the electoral system in play. Understanding what effect different independent variables (the pragmatic and ideological concerns of parties and the institutional environment) have on the dependent variable (the successful implementation of a quota) is illuminating both within and beyond France. Within France, a much clearer understanding of how parity works may be gained, with the benefit of understanding why the law does not work perfectly and how it might be improved. Broader comparative insights into the benefits and obstacles of compulsory quotas may also be obtained, providing an idea for those researching or contemplating the introduction of compulsory quotas outside France as to how effective they might be under different circumstances. France is central to discussions of gender quotas (see, for example, Krook 2009, forthcoming; Lovenduski 2005; Stevens 2007), both for the audacity of its 50 per cent target and its inability to come close to reaching this target. Similarly, countries such as Spain and Italy have drawn open inspiration from the French example when debating quotas in their own country. Scholars have even come in from other disciplines such as economics in an attempt to explain the seemingly curious case of a country where parties introduced such an ambitious quota without appearing to have genuine commitment to gender equality (Fréchette et al 20084; Pemstein and Bernhard 2005). However, the existing literature on parity in France has been fairly silent on the

Introduction 11

role of political parties. This literature has focused on two distinct directions over the past 15 years – the case for parity, followed by analysis of its implementation. Both these trends are considered below, as they are illuminating for the arguments made within this book. Nonetheless, the lack of attention paid to parties within these works means that a central explanatory variable is missing from the analysis. Works written prior to the introduction of the parity law focused on philosophical and theoretical assessments of parity, with only limited assessment of the practical applicability of such a law. Some works (for example, Gaspard 1997; Gaspard et al 1992; Halimi 1994; MossuzLavau 1998) were unambiguous or even prescriptive in their support for parity, and were intended to persuade others of the need to introduce parity. The principal arguments put forward included the need for Parliament to reflect the gendered composition of society (although, interestingly, other notions of descriptive representation such as race were explicitly rejected in order to distance claims for parity from the criticisms that it was divisive and would split society into communities – a notion which runs counter to republican universalism). Parity was perceived as the best means for achieving the equal representation of men and women, firstly because of the constitutional rejection of gender quotas,5 and secondly because any quota below 50 per cent was perceived as inadequate and as having the effect of a ceiling. It was argued that only a demand for parity in principle would lead to the achievement of parity in practice. Moreover, they claimed that such a measure was necessary due to the invisible bias of the state towards men, with the seemingly gender-neutral ideal of the universal citizen concealing the underlying disadvantages to women that restricted their access to the political arena (Halimi 1994, pp. 14–18). Women’s inferior socio-economic status, the burdens of domestic life and women’s reluctance to put themselves forward as candidates were considered by some to be the primary causes of women’s underrepresentation (Halimi 1994; Roudy 1995; Sineau 1988). For others, France’s political institutions, such as the majoritarian electoral system, the ability to cumulate electoral offices, and the centralisation of power were seen as the most important explanatory variables (Guigou 1997, p. 85). Although the role of parties was not considered a central argument, a couple of party-related factors were highlighted, such as the difficulty posed to women by the preference for (male) incumbents, and the fact that women formed a minority of party members and an even smaller proportion of party officials. Parties were generally portrayed as anti-women, with the argument that men resisted women’s

12 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

entry into politics because ‘giving a place to a woman means taking it from a man’ (Dewavrin in Halimi 1994, p. 132). Sineau further argued that parties’ interest in women was limited to women voters and did not extend to women candidates (Sineau in Gaspard 1997, p. 113). In a similar vein, the Socialist minister Elisabeth Guigou was quick to condemn the sexism that was rife within her party and within the political arena in general (Guigou 1997). This sexism was simultaneously seen as an explanation for why women found it difficult to succeed in politics, and for why women were turned off politics in the first place. However, only Janine Mossuz-Lavau went as far as to claim that parties were the primary reason for women’s under-representation, arguing that they were ‘male cliques operating in closed circles, reproducing identical copies of themselves, and not being prepared to take a seat away from a man in order to give it to a woman. All accounts by female politicians heavily emphasise the fact that parties mainly agree to field women as candidates when the constituencies in question are deemed to be already lost’ (Mossuz-Lavau 1998, pp. 24–5). It was therefore argued that it was necessary to force parties to field more women, because otherwise women’s representation would not increase (Gaspard 1997, p. 32). In addition to the feminists advocating parity, a vocal minority of feminists added their voices to the wider philosophical objections to the introduction to parity. Authors such as Badinter, Ozouf and Pisier argued that parity was patronising, ineffective (because it focused on the symptom rather than the cause), and risked essentialising women and defining political candidates by their descriptive attributes rather than their beliefs or other qualities (Amar 1999). This final argument was linked to the concept of the universal citizen, which they argued was threatened by any attempt to gender citizenship. Despite their feminism, their arguments echoed those used in other countries to oppose women’s representation (Dahlerup 2006, pp. 297–9). The debate focused on philosophical questions, with pragmatic issues being limited to the recognition of the practical impossibility of pure descriptive representation. Parties did not play a central role in the debate. Following the introduction of the parity law, the focus of parity scholars shifted away from the abstract pros and cons of parity and moved towards a practical assessment of parity’s performance. Key amongst these works is a series of reports issued by the Observatoire de la Parité, the official government body appointed to monitor parity (Genisson 2002; Zimmerman 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008b, 2009). As the initial successes of the law in local

Introduction 13

politics gave way to disappointment at the national level, the analysis of parity began to discuss the weaknesses in the law. In addition to the detailed discussion of results and case studies (for example Latté 2002; Sineau 2004; Troupel 2002, 2006), works began to evaluate how, and why, parity had not delivered all that it had promised (for example Achin et al 2007; Bird 2004; Sénac-Slawinski 2007, 2008). Even after this shift, the literature still focused primarily on women. There has been little discussion of the motivations for political parties in deciding whether and how to implement the law. Rather, parties have been demonised as being anti-women, without explicitly theorising whether this is in fact the case, and if so, why. Interviews conducted with parties by the Observatoire de la Parité (Zimmerman 2003a) provided some useful insights, but were presented factually without the benefit of a more critical lens. Pionchon and Derville (2004) and Zimmerman (2003a) both give some consideration to the obstacle posed to parity by incumbency. Karen Bird was one of the first to consider party motivations explicitly when implementing parity: …the major parties – those who are real contenders to form the government – find themselves struggling to balance three basic political incentives: to preserve the party’s existing electoral strongholds, and conquer new ones; to present a maximum number of female candidates and therefore minimise the financial penalty; and to avoid alienating (male) incumbents and hopefuls who could run as dissidents against the party’s official candidate, potentially splitting party support and increasing the probability of victory for opposing parties. (Bird 2004, p. 249) The only volume to date which combines an in-depth study of parties with a study of French parity is Opello (2006). Opello provides detailed and valuable insights into the role of women within the PS and the UMP, using a historical approach to provide a strong background to the introduction and initial implementation of parity. Like other works on parity, however, her book focuses more on the role of women within parties than on the perspectives of parties themselves, and the in-depth study of two parties limits the opportunities for more general comparison. A pattern emerges from the existing literature of parties struggling to juggle a number of competing priorities, some of which favour the implementation of parity, and some of which render it seemingly impossible. Some of these priorities are mapped out and tentatively

14 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

explored. Nevertheless, the emphasis remains heavily on the perspectives of women, and their attributes, struggles and experiences. The discussion of parties’ perspectives remains tentative and undertheorised. In particular, little attempt is made at measuring how a compulsory quota such as parity interacts with other elements of party organisation and ideology. Furthermore, the literature does not account adequately for the differences between different political parties. It is frequently noted that parties of the left tend to be more favourable to parity than parties of the right (as reflected by the number of candidates fielded by different parties in 2002 and 2007), but this is a wholly insufficient explanation of variation between political parties. Nor do arguments concerning incumbents suffice to explain this variation. Moreover, the interplay between different explanatory variables, and the way that different parties prioritise between them, is not considered. This book completes the picture by focusing on the perspectives of parties to explain why gender quotas are both important and difficult for parties to implement, using the full range of major parties in France.

Parties as rational actors In order to explain how parties respond to the demands of gender quotas, this book operates on the premise that parties approach quotas as rational actors whose behaviour is driven by their own needs and preferences. That parties seek to behave rationally does not necessarily mean that they succeed in doing so; their rationality may be bounded by incomplete information, inaccurate perceptions or poor choices between conflicting options. However, it is argued that parties will still seek to maximise their utility to the best of their ability, and that seemingly irrational choices will stem from bounded rationality rather than irrational behaviour – parties cannot control what they do not know, but will act as rationally as possible within the boundaries of what they do know. It is also possible that parties will make what appear to be suboptimal choices in order to satisfy an underlying strategy – a concept described by Tsebelis (1991) as ‘nested games’. For example, the decision of right-wing parties to support the passage of the parity law may appear to be a sub-optimal decision as their failure to implement it resulted in heavy financial losses. However, another way of viewing the situation is that they supported an electorally-popular piece of legislation that placed greater restraint on candidate selection for rival parties (for ideological and/or financial reasons) than it did on

Introduction 15

them, resulting in their electoral victory and consequent financial gains that exceeded any loss from failure to implement parity. When the seemingly suboptimal behaviour is placed within the wider context of party preferences and strategy, it becomes a more obviously rational decision. Locating individual decisions within the underlying gameplan of each party is one of the goals of this book. Moreover, rational choices for each party do not necessarily amount to the same thing, as for one party it will be rational to seek to maximise electoral appeal while for another party it will be rational to remain faithful to the party’s core support. Given that objectives may vary from one party to the next, and may never be either transparent or achieved, it is easy to argue that any claims of rationality are unrealistic and, in any case, impossible to prove. But even when party motivations are not clear to the observer, or do not appear to be logical, it is unsafe to assume that they are irrational. A party that makes a costly decision may still have made the best decision available to them, if they deemed an alternative strategy to be even more costly. For example, a party that chooses to forfeit a large portion of its state funding in order to field more male than female candidates might still be acting rationally if fielding more female candidates would impose an alternative cost to the party that was deemed to be greater. Likewise, a party which chooses to pursue a radical ideology that alienates it from most of the electorate will be acting rationally if ideological purity is more important to the party than electoral success. If rationality is seen as the process of knowing one’s goals, being able to rank them in order of preference and then taking the optimum path for the fulfilment of those goals, then knowing the goals – and, crucially, their preference ranking, which may vary from one party to the next – is a vital step towards knowing what path a rational party should take. This book assumes that parties will make the optimal decisions possible within the constraints of exogenous circumstances. This leads us to assume that each party’s decision on how many female candidates to field was the optimal decision for that particular party, based on the knowledge and resources available to the party at the time. From this we can infer that parties who do not implement parity have good reasons for not doing so, and that the choices they make are indicative of their preferences within the given circumstances. This then allows for the modelling of party preferences, and for an analysis of the extent to which the parity law succeeds in overriding other preferences. Illustrating how quotas interact with other party preferences is critical

16 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

to understanding whether, why and how parties will implement quotas.

From multiple models to one This book pulls together disparate theories present in the existing literature on gender and politics and on political parties to provide a more unified theory of the way that political parties respond to gender quotas. Although there is much to be learned from each of the existing elements, none is sufficient in itself to provide a holistic explanation of whether, how and why parties will implement quotas. This book is the first to bring these elements together into a more comprehensive model that accounts both for the priorities of parties and the particular demands (normative, electoral and organisational) presented by gender quotas. The book begins in the next chapter by providing the necessary contextual information about the French party system and the parity law required to understand how this case study illustrates the broader themes explored in the book. The subsequent chapters then draw on theories from the literature on gender and politics and on political parties. Although the third chapter primarily builds on work by feminist scholars, with subsequent chapters based on mainstream theories of party organisation, there is constant interlinking between the two fields. Indeed, there is much that is complementary and overlapping in these works, and this book makes more explicit how different ideas can come together to explain parties’ response to gender quotas. For example, Chapter 5, which is based on institutional approaches to party behaviour, draws on works demonstrating how some electoral systems are more favourable to women’s representation than others. Chapter 6 brings together ideas from the literature on party ideologies with work demonstrating how left-wing ideologies tend to be more supportive of women’s claims for inclusion. The symbiotic relationship between research on parties and research on gender has long existed; the purpose of this book is to make the connection more explicit and unify these ideas into a more holistic framework. The key ideas drawn from the gender and politics literature relate to candidate selection practices, considering firstly how a party’s internal organisation might affect its ability to implement a gender quota, and secondly how gender influences the availability and qualifications of aspirant candidates as well as their perceived desirability in the eyes of parties.

Introduction 17

The book then draws upon three key theoretical approaches from the literature on parties to demonstrate how useful they are in explaining party responses to gender quotas, namely the ‘electoral competition’ approach, the ‘institutional’ approach, and the ‘ideological’ approach. Each of these approaches provides some degree of insight as to why parties select the candidates that they do. Various tests are deployed, using French parties as a case study, to measure the utility of each theoretical approach in explaining parties’ choice of electoral candidates. It is a central hypothesis of this book that the reasons why parties do not select more female candidates for legislative elections are currently over-simplified and are in fact numerous, complex and diverse. Studying competing theories of party organisation and behaviour is a way of reaching a better understanding of candidate selection. However, given the complexity of party behaviour, the argument is made throughout the book that although each of these theories offers a partial explanation of party candidate selection, none of these theories is complete and adequate in itself. Each theory helps explain party priorities through a particular lens, but not all parties will have the same priorities. Although most parties will share similar preoccupations, they may order them differently. For some parties the pursuit of electoral office may be paramount; others will be more motivated by ideology, whilst others will be motivated by practical imperatives such as finances. If we assume that parties are rational actors who will evaluate candidates in accordance with their priorities, then the difference in priorities from one party to the next is the key to explaining variable outcomes. Using this concept of variable party priorities, I argue that it is possible to synthesise the approaches to party behaviour and create an overarching model that accounts for the variable impact of the parity law depending on the party and the election in question. The individual approaches, as well as the prospects for a more comprehensive model, are considered in more detail below. The ‘competition’ approach, as defined by the likes of Downs, Kirchheimer and Sartori, suggests that parties are motivated above all else by electoral success. This implies that parties would select the candidates most likely to win, irrespective of other factors. Given parties’ preference for incumbents (usually male), this theory is examined in two ways. Firstly, a profile is compiled of the types of candidate that parties are most likely to support, and secondly, a longitudinal study of electoral performance is used to determine whether these types of candidate (for example male, incumbent) do in fact perform better at the polls than their counterparts. A point of interest is to see whether

18 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

parties have an accurate perception of voter behaviour, or whether they are guilty of imputed discrimination. If parties seek electoral success and select the candidates that are the most winnable, then they are acting rationally. However, this rationality may be bounded if parties are ignorant of the electorate’s preferences, or if they are guilty of ‘bolstering’ by persisting in their belief that certain types of candidate are best, regardless of any evidence to the contrary (Ward 2002, p. 81). The ‘institutional’ approach is defined here as arguing that the choices that parties face when selecting candidates are framed by the institutional environment. Some institutionalists, such as Panebianco or von Beyme, place a greater emphasis on the institutions in place when parties were created, while others, such as Duverger, believe that parties adapt to the changing institutional environment. This book supports the latter argument and focuses primarily on contemporary institutions to see whether and how they structure party behaviour and whether parties are able to adapt to them. Particular reference is made to the ‘rational choice’ stream of new institutionalism (Peters 1999) to assess how parties attempt to maximise their utility within the particular institutional environment at any given point. This approach is tested by examining the impact of various institutions, such as the electoral systems used for different elections, on party candidate selections. The detail of the law on parity affects the way in which the law is implemented, hence the way the law is framed is considered as an institutional variable. Decisions on whether or not to implement parity can then be explained within the context of the choice-set made available to each party by the institutional environment. Some parties may have more options to choose from than others. This approach explains how the institutional environment can influence party behaviour. For example, institutional factors can explain why the same parties will select far more female candidates for some elections than for others, and can also explain why some parties behave in ways that cannot be predicted by their ideology (such as the anti-feminist Front National, who respected the parity law). Although its explanatory power is incomplete, it provides a valuable complement to the other two approaches. The ‘ideological’ approach is drawn from the ‘sociological’ approach of Lipset and Rokkan, which argues that parties’ behaviour is dictated by their social origins and ideology. In this context, the approach represents the idea that parties’ willingness to implement the ‘parity’ law can be linked both to whether or not they agree with the aim of

Introduction 19

increasing women’s presence in politics, and whether or not they believe that the ‘parity’ law is the appropriate means to achieve this aim. The ideological approach can also be linked to the electoral competition approach in two regards. Firstly, parties that are based on a strong ideology are more likely to be influenced by their ideology and less likely to compromise their ideals in the pursuit of electoral office, whereas catch-all parties are less likely to be based on a rigorous and inflexible ideology (Kirchheimer 1966; von Beyme 1985). Secondly, a party that espouses egalitarian ideals might be more likely to believe that its electorate would not discriminate between a male and a female candidate than a party that does not support gender equality (either through opposition or indifference). The approach is tested through consideration of parties’ ideological foundations and the stances that they have taken regarding the ‘parity’ law. This approach reinforces the notion that ideology may play a role over and above other motivations, thus explaining why some parties are willing to make greater sacrifices than others in order to implement parity. This is more likely to be the case when parties have ideological support for parity; a party lacking ideological support may be more motivated by other factors. In addition, support for parity depends on agreement with not one but two positions, namely agreement both with the goal of equal representation for both sexes in politics and the use of state intervention as the means to achieve this goal. For all of the theories in question, the parties are studied comparatively, with the primary focus being on French parties but with some comparisons made to other parties belonging to the same party families. As Knapp (2004) argues, French parties do not map perfectly onto von Beyme’s model of familles spirituelles (a framework of nine party ideologies into which most European parties can be placed, facilitating international comparison). Nonetheless, nearly every party family is represented within France, and six different types of party are considered in this book (the communist PCF, the socialist PS, the ecologist Greens (les Verts), the centre-right UDF, the Gaullist/ conservative UMP and, to a lesser extent, the far-right FN). The book also draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods as appropriate, rejecting the dichotomy between these methodologies in favour of King et al’s assertion that ‘most research does not fit clearly into one category or the other. The best often combines features of each’ (1994, p. 5). In this book, a question raised by the electoral competition approach is whether women’s poor electoral performance is a result of voter or party discrimination. To answer this question, a large

20 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

scale quantitative study of election results is used to evaluate whether women incur an electoral penalty or whether they are simply placed in the toughest seats. This study draws on statistical analysis of data from five elections, and the results are reported in Chapter 4. By contrast, an understanding of the intricate workings of candidate selection is much more suited to a qualitative approach of elite interviews. I interviewed party officials responsible for candidate selection (invariably men), as well as senior women within each party, to determine which selection processes are used and how fair the different actors within the process believe that process to be. The different viewpoints expressed from the two sides of the selection process provide insights into the strengths and limitations of each party’s selection process, as well as controlling for bias by ensuring that a range of viewpoints were considered. The insights obtained from these interviews are explored throughout the book and they contribute towards building theories of the selection process that are sensitive to parties’ perspectives. Thus, through a combination of the most appropriate qualitative and quantitative approaches, this volume is able to address its research questions in a holistic and systematic way. When the different methods and theories are brought together, a pattern emerges of each of the three main theoretical models’ strengths and weaknesses which is then deployed to provide an evaluation of the three approaches. A core argument made throughout the book is that each of these approaches provides useful but insufficient insights into the variable implementation of parity. In order to provide a more complete account of the gendered nature of candidate selection and of the differences between parties, I argue that it is necessary to combine these insights into a synthesised or ‘hybrid’ model. The principle on which this model is based is that parties face a number of conflicting choices when selecting electoral candidates, and their overarching motivations influence how they will decide amongst these choices. The institutional environment frames the range of choices available, while a party’s ideology, stability and its electoral ambitions will determine how it prioritises certain courses of action over others. The three theoretical approaches that are explored in the following chapters, along with insights from the literature on gender and politics, provide the building blocks upon which the concluding theoretical model is based. This model accounts both for how parties in France have responded to parity and how parties more broadly might incorporate a gender quota into their candidate selection processes.

Introduction 21

Overview of the book The final section of this chapter provides an overview of the remainder of the book, demonstrating how the themes discussed above will be organised and explored. Chapter 2 introduces the French party system and the background to the parity law. This chapter provides the contextual information on which the rest of the book builds. The key traits and history of each of the main parties are introduced, providing insights into the ideology, strength, stability and tactics of each party. Parties are also placed within the comparative framework of ‘party families’ in order to facilitate comparisons between France and other countries (von Beyme 1985). The second part of the chapter explores the origins of the parity law and its development into legislation, with a particular focus on the attitudes of parties towards the law. The motivations for each party in supporting the initial legislation are indicative both of the way in which party traits fed into policy formation, and the ways in which this influenced subsequent implementation of parity. The findings suggest that some parties were genuine in their support for parity, while others were more pragmatic in their outlook. This pragmatism explains why the same party might choose to support the passage of a law that it did not intend to implement, and the argument is made that this seemingly inconsistent behaviour might actually be consistent with the party’s underlying goals. For example, if a party seeks to win votes, it may support the introduction of parity as a popular policy, but may not then implement the law if it is concerned that doing so would harm its electoral prospects. This concept is explored throughout the book as a measure of whether parties’ behaviour is driven by conviction or pragmatism. The question is also raised of whether the loopholes in the legislation were a deliberate strategy by parties to give the impression of supporting women’s representation whilst allowing themselves the freedom to maintain the status quo. Chapter 3 considers candidate selection practices and draws on theories from the literature on gender and politics to explain how gender interacts with candidate selection. The first part of the chapter builds on the argument made by Lovenduski (1993) and Norris (1997) that the degree of centralisation of a party’s candidate selection processes may affect a party’s ability to implement a gender quota. The hypothesis is put forward that centralisation is a necessary but not sufficient condition of successful quota implementation. Parties are more easily able to ensure compliance with parity across the country if the process is centralised, but centralisation only facilitates rather than guarantees

22 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

effective implementation, as the will of a party to implement the quota is also paramount. This hypothesis is tested by exploring the candidate selection practices of each of the main parties and comparing them to the party’s track record for parity implementation. The chapter then moves on to consider another major theory of gendered candidate selection, namely the ‘supply and demand’ model (Norris & Lovenduski 1995). If the shortage of women is a supply-side problem – that is, due to an insufficient number of suitable women candidates – then parties’ hands will be tied. Conversely, if it is a demand-side problem – that is, good women candidates come forward but parties reject them – then greater understanding needs to be found of why parties do not select women candidates. The chapter argues that supply and demand explanations may actually be interlinked, if parties are unconsciously prioritising qualities that are more likely to be present in a male candidate. This would lead parties to believe that the problem was one of supply even if it were triggered in part by demand. This theory is tested through an examination, based on interviews with party election officials, of what it is that parties are looking for in a candidate. These qualities are then evaluated to see whether they are gendered by examining the factors that shape a good candidate (such as education levels, career choices, prior political experience and availability) through a gendered lens. The findings suggest that, although women as a group are still disadvantaged relative to men in a range of areas that contribute to political careers, supply-side explanations alone are not sufficient to explain women’s under-representation in politics. The first of the three mainstream approaches to party behaviour is explored in Chapter 4. The chapter introduces the party competition approach and explains why parties might seek to prioritise electoral success when selecting electoral candidates. The rationality of parties is also considered, both in terms of whether parties are rational to prioritise the candidates that are the most electable, and whether it is possible for parties to make rational decisions concerning candidates’ electoral appeal. The chapter then proceeds to test how useful this approach is for explaining parties’ choice of electoral candidate. One of the core hypotheses of the chapter is that parties perceive certain types of candidate as being more electable than others, and therefore prioritise these types of candidate. This hypothesis is firstly tested through profiling the types of candidates that are preferred by parties, drawing on a variety of information including elite interviews. A quantitative analysis of candidate performance over time is then provided, with an

Introduction 23

emphasis on measuring any differences between the success rates of incumbents versus non-incumbents, and men versus women (given that incumbency is the main reason cited by parties for not replacing male candidates with women). By separating seat effects from candidate effects, a neutral measure of candidate performance can be obtained that can then be compared against party perceptions of how certain types of candidates will be received by the electorate. Comparing party perceptions of the electorate’s preferences to actual electoral outcomes illustrates whether or not parties are rationally targeting their electorate and fielding the candidates with the greatest chance of winning. An analysis is then provided of whether parties are willing and able to base their selection of candidates on a rational estimation of electoral performance, and hence of whether the competition approach is useful in explaining parties’ candidate selection preferences. The second approach to be explored is the institutional approach, and this is the subject of Chapter 5. The chapter considers the influence of the institutional environment on the choices of candidate that parties make. The institutions considered include the electoral system, the party system, the relative importance of the election, the detail of the parity law, and the relative size, strength and wealth of the party. One of the central areas of interest is the role of institutions in shaping and framing the range of choices available to political parties. A related and equally important theme is the ability of parties to adapt to the changing institutional environment. The institutional environment varies for each type of election, and this is a powerful explanatory variable in demonstrating why parity has a varying impact from one level of election to another. Certain types of party are more constrained by institutional factors than others, and the ability of a party to adapt to and even profit from the institutional environment is highly significant in determining whether or not a party will implement parity. If a party does not wish to implement the ‘parity’ law, institutional factors will be critical in determining how successful a party is at avoiding implementation. The approach is insightful in demonstrating how party choices are framed, especially where institutional constraints effectively leave parties with very few options to choose from. However, the approach is less helpful in explaining how and why parties that are faced with a range of options will discriminate between these options, and the institutional approach cannot in itself account for why different parties faced with the same choices will select different outcomes.

24 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

This leads to the ideological approach, explored in Chapter 6. The core question here is how much parties’ ideology can explain their attitude towards candidate selection. This produces a number of related questions to consider. Firstly, it is important to determine whether or not a party will be favourable to the principle of the ‘parity’ law. Factors influencing party attitudes to ‘parity’ include their attitudes to gender equality and also to the desirability of state intervention in enforcing equality. Secondly, the strength of a party’s beliefs is almost as important as the beliefs themselves. A party that is weakly in favour of parity is hypothesised to be less willing to make sacrifices in order to implement the ‘parity’ law than a party that is strongly and vocally committed to enforcing gender equality. How strongly a party feels about parity is likely to be linked to how large a role ideology plays in the party’s organisation, with some parties being heavily programmatic while others are more willing to dilute their ideology in order to maximise their electoral appeal. Where parties have weak ideological support for parity, this may still motivate them to implement parity, but only where it does not interfere with other imperatives such as vote maximisation. Where parties do not have ideological support for parity, ideology may cease to be significant, as parties may implement parity anyway for reasons explored in the preceding two chapters. These theories are tested against French parties, and the findings are used to evaluate the significance of ideology in determining whether or not parties will incorporate gender parity into their candidate selection procedures. Although each of the three main theories explored above provides essential insights into the reasons why parties select certain electoral candidates over others, no one approach on its own is sufficient to account fully for all the variation in the implementation of parity. Institutional variables provide a framework of options for parties to choose from, but do not account sufficiently for how parties choose between these options and why different parties favour different options. The electoral and ideological approaches go some way towards providing an explanation of party priorities, but their explanatory power is incomplete when each is considered in isolation from the other two approaches. Therefore Chapter 7 concludes the book by considering how all the different approaches interact. This chapter evaluates what has been learned so far and then reviews the relative strengths and weaknesses of the approaches explored in the preceding chapters. To provide a more complete answer to the central research questions, a new theoretical approach called the ‘party priorities

Introduction 25

model’ is introduced. This model uses the insights from the other approaches to provide an overall account of how different parties will react to the parity law under different circumstances. The model demonstrates the options available to parties and accounts for how different parties will prioritise certain options over others. The difference between parties is explained in terms of their overall motivations and priorities, and these priorities are then used to predict the path that each party will take when navigating through the competing choices available. The range of choices combined with the order in which they are prioritised will be determinant of the degree to which the ‘parity’ law will be implemented. The theoretical foundations and the functionality of the model are explored before applying the model to French parties to see how accurately the model can account for each party’s behaviour. The model is then evaluated in a number of ways. Firstly, its explanatory power is measured. Secondly, the utility of the model for analysing the application of other types of quota in other scenarios is considered. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of its contribution to studies of parties and gender quotas, and the implications of this research for future policy developments.

2 French Parties and Parity in Context

Introduction The French ‘parity’ law has a specific history and context which underpin the issues explored in the remainder of the book relating to the law’s implementation. Similarly, the actors involved in the law’s passage and implementation – France’s political parties – are diverse in a number of ways that are relevant to the analysis of gender parity. This diversity influenced both the initial passage of the ‘parity’ law and the willingness and ability of each party subsequently to meet the requirements of parity. This chapter begins by providing an overview of the French party system and the six main parties within the system which are studied in this book. The history, current situation and ideological positioning of each party, along with the dynamics of the French party system, all help shape each party’s available options, thus illuminating the analysis provided in subsequent chapters. It is also necessary to understand the circumstances under which parity arose, given both the particular national context of parity and the broader international context of gender quotas. The pressure under which parties found themselves to introduce a law which they did not all support is important in explaining both why the law was passed and why it contained so many loopholes. The seemingly contradictory legislation which resulted, and the subsequent disregard shown for the law by some parties, can be better understood when considering party motivations. Although the actions of parties appear inconsistent, with varying levels of enthusiasm for gender parity, their underlying motivations reveal a more consistent, pragmatic approach. 26

French Parties and Parity in Context 27

The French party system France is often referred to as having a distinctive party system known as ‘bipolar quadrillism’. At its peak, the party system formed two distinct blocks of two parties each – the PCF and PS on the left, and the UDF and Gaullists on the right. The ‘bipolar’ characteristic is a product of the electoral system, with elections being held over two rounds, encouraging a proliferation of parties in the first round and a left-right stand-off in the second round. With no party large enough to dominate on the left or the right, co-operation between the two major parties on either side produced the infamous quadrille. Over time, this description has become increasingly inaccurate as new parties have entered the party system. The two major new players are the Greens (les Verts), who originally defined themselves as being outside the left-right spectrum but eventually joined the block on the left; and the FN, who have stolen votes from both left and right and continue to be a disruptive influence to the bipolar system. Moreover, the unity of each block has waxed and waned over the years. The left won the election of 1997 by uniting its various parties under the umbrella of the ‘gauche plurielle’ (plural left), while the parties of the right appeared divided. However, by 2002 these roles had reversed and a new, unified party of the right emerged in the form of the UMP, while the growing divisions on the left led to the collapse of the gauche plurielle. The UMP combined the Gaullist RPR party with smaller rightwing parties, as well as absorbing a significant portion of the UDF. The disintegration of the UDF was compounded in 2007, when most of the party shifted its loyalties to the UMP and changed its name to the Nouveau Centre. Those who remained loyal to the party’s leader, François Bayrou, regrouped under the name MoDem. The waxing and waning of party fortunes is another feature of the French party system. In the period 1978–2002, no party succeeded in winning a second term of office. Instead, the French electorate changed their mind at each election, leading to alternance – the replacement of each successive government with the opposition, resulting in each party enjoying a period of relative success followed by a period of relative decline followed by a revival in fortune, and so on. A third distinctive feature of the French party system is the changing nature and number of parties present. Although the number of parties capable of winning seats in Parliament is fairly limited, a large number of parties exists at the margins thanks to the two-round electoral system which allows the French electorate to vote with their heart in

28 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

the first round before voting tactically in the second round. These parties may not appear significant, but their ability to eat into the vote of larger parties has occasionally led to their co-option into electoral coalitions. Moreover, most French parties reinvent themselves on a fairly regular basis, occasionally through a change of name but more often through entering and leaving loose coalitions or through changes of direction under a new leadership. Indeed, leadership is the fourth notable aspect of the French party system, resulting from the presidentialised nature of French politics. Parties are used as vehicles for presidential candidates, and this has a dramatic influence on the organisation of parties as well as on the tactics deployed by key political players. Presidential politics was at the heart of the final disintegration of the UDF. Whereas the UDF and UMP had previously been allies who seldom pitted candidates against each other in parliamentary elections, the warm relations between the two parties cooled in the 2002–7 parliament as the UDF leader, François Bayrou, withdrew his support for the UMP government and increasingly positioned himself as a rival political force. Following a strong showing by Bayrou in the 2007 presidential elections, the UMP presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened to pit UMP challengers against UDF incumbents in the forthcoming legislative elections unless they declared their loyalty to Sarkozy rather than Bayrou. This led to the split in the party between Bayrou loyalists (MoDem) and Sarkozy converts (Nouveau Centre). This is a prime illustration of the power of presidentialism to change the party system. In addition, new parties are occasionally formed by ambitious or deluded politicians who have become disillusioned with the party they were in and seek to lead their own party, as was the case, for example, with Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s Mouvement des Citoyens (Citizens’ Movement). Parties are defined by their leaders and even those with no realistic hope of getting their candidate elected will put forward a presidential candidate. The consequence of this emphasis on présidentiables (potential candidates for the presidency) was never more evident than in the presidential elections of 2002, when a record number of candidates led to a splitting of the vote on the left and the shock elimination of Lionel Jospin, who had been widely tipped to win, in the first round, and the progression to the second round of the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. France’s party system is therefore characterised by change and uncertainty, by division, unification, reinvention and alternance. The bipolar quadrillism has been replaced by bipolar multipartism, and even this latter term is questionable. The electoral system and the

French Parties and Parity in Context 29

presidentialisation of French politics continue to be dominant influences in the shaping of the party system. The section below explores the characteristics of the six most influential parties in the French party system to demonstrate the history and nature of each party, as well as the challenges that they currently face. The PCF (Communist Party) The PCF is an ideological party in nature, and gender equality, along with more general ideals about equality, is a feature of this ideology. Their current leader, Marie-George Buffet, is female, and their official documents use a feminist writing-style.1 Their national leadership bodies and committees are all comprised of 50 per cent men and 50 per cent women (www.pfc.fr). However, women still comprise a minority of the party membership and of those holding elected office in local, regional and national politics. The party’s origins lie with the international movement of Communist parties, although unlike many of the Communist parties within Western Europe, the PCF achieved mainstream political importance, especially following the role it played in the Résistance during Nazi occupation. In its heyday, it commanded 28.6 per cent of the vote (1946), making it the largest party in France, and it continued to receive around 20 per cent of the vote until the end of the 1970s (Wright 1989, p. 240). Since then, the PCF has faced a period of steady decline, and has suffered from the strengthening of the Socialist Party (and, more recently, the rise of environmental parties such as the Greens), the fall of communism in eastern Europe, and the loss of its natural constituency of working-class blue-collar workers and ex-revolutionaries as the latter die out and French society becomes increasingly white-collar and middle-class. In the 2002 legislative elections, it received just 4.7 per cent of the vote, and this dwindled even further to 4.3 per cent in 2007 (Bell 2003, p. 30; Ministère de l’intérieur). This humiliation was compounded by Buffet’s weak performance in the 2007 presidential elections, where she obtained a mere 1.9 per cent of votes and was eclipsed by the far-left candidate Olivier Besancenot, who more than doubled her score with 4.1 per cent (Ministère de l’intérieur). One consequence of the PCF’s decline is that it has had to contemplate a change of strategy. In many respects, the party has diluted its ideology in order to attempt to survive in the French electoral market, meaning that it can no longer be considered a purely ideological party

30 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

that places ideology over all other considerations. In addition to making such changes as embracing democracy and abandoning its ties with the Soviet Union, the party has also acknowledged that it can no longer hope to have any significant influence if it operates in isolation from mainstream politics. The party has therefore co-operated with other left-wing parties, and notably the Socialist Party. Although the PS has emerged as the dominant partner within this coalition, the PCF has had little choice but to persevere with left-wing alliances as its only route to power. This strategy has provided the party with a route into government that would otherwise have been impossible given the low parliamentary presence of the party (currently 15 seats in Parliament, although this figure was temporarily higher following the ‘vague rose’ (surge of support for the left) in 1997, when they won 36 seats). Their participation in a coalition government – albeit a coalition of parties that were all on the left – forced them to make some compromises which made some of their members uncomfortable, but did at least afford them two ministries plus a junior minister (Knapp 2004, p. 114). However, they are now left in a position where they are dependent both on their alliance with the PS, and on their existing incumbents, for survival (ibid, p. 115). The PS (Socialist Party) The PS have been pioneers in terms of women’s representation. They have had at least some degree of internal gender quota since 1974, were the leading party behind the parity reform, have been the only party to nominate a female Prime Minister (the short-serving Edith Cresson, who held the office from 1991–2 under François Mitterrand’s presidency), and in 2006 nominated a woman – Ségolène Royal – as their presidential candidate.2 Yet their commitment to women’s representation, and to women’s rights more generally, has been somewhat unreliable. Yvette Roudy complained of the underhand tactics used to minimise gender quotas in the late 1970s (Roudy 1995, pp. 15–22) while Sineau and Jenson (1995) lamented the failure of Mitterrand to deliver on his promises to women. Mitterrand’s initial enthusiasm for women’s rights may have been influenced at least in part by his attempts to woo the female electorate, and they steadily dropped off the agenda as his presidency progressed. It was not until Lionel Jospin took over the party in 1995 that the PS regained its feminist edge. Moreover, the PS do not have a good track record of implementing their own quotas; in 1988 and 1993, they had a lower percentage of female deputies than the RPR, despite the fact that the RPR had no

French Parties and Parity in Context 31

gender quotas and was not a vocal advocate of women’s representation. Even when Jospin promised that 30 per cent of electoral districts would be reserved for women in 1997, this still only translated into 16 per cent of seats, although even this was a substantial improvement on the three seats (5.6 per cent) won by women in 1993. The PS claims to be a party driven by ideas rather than by vote maximisation (Opello 2006, p. 39). Despite this, the party’s electoral pragmatism has seen its ideas shift towards the centre over the past 25 years. After its first two years in power from 1981 to 1983 led to looming economic disaster, the party was forced to reappraise its position on matters such as nationalisation and capitalism. It gradually shifted from a traditional socialist party to a party of the centre left. During the 1997–2002 parliament, the Jospin government: …sold off more state property, in money terms, than all of its rightwing predecessors put together. It saw in the euro, and with it the stability pact perpetuating the Maastricht convergence criteria. And it used riot police to dislodge activists for the unemployed from benefit offices. (Knapp 2004, p. 115) The PS might not have abandoned their socialist roots altogether, but they have shown that they can and will make ideological compromises in order to be a credible party of government. Shifts towards the centre of the political spectrum have not been the PS’s only electoral strategy. The party has also been successful in creating the ‘plural left’ coalition, whereby they used the combined strength of the left-wing vote to get themselves back into power, whilst still being the dominant partner in all coalition negotiations. In 1997, they managed to translate a 50 per cent share of the left-wing vote into 70.4 per cent of government posts (19 positions out of 27; Hanley 2003, p. 82). However, the party has long been riddled by internal division and factionalism, and this division was evident in 2002, when the party imploded following its disastrous results in first the presidential and then the legislative elections. The party also failed to unite successfully around Royal’s 2007 presidential campaign, contributing to her defeat. The bitterly contested leadership election of 2008 gave a very narrow victory to Martine Aubry over Royal, resulting in a party with a female leader but ongoing rivalries. The party is also struggling to maintain pre-eminence amongst the left-wing electorate, who are facing an everexpanding number of parties from which to choose. Indeed, it was the

32 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

plurality of left-wing presidential candidates in the first round of voting in 2002, and the split of the left-wing vote between these candidates, that prevented the Socialist candidate from qualifying to the second round of voting, in which he might otherwise have triumphed. The party is therefore faced with several pressing needs at the moment if it wishes to return to power, not least of which are the need to balance the factions within the party, and the need to unify the leftwing vote. The Greens The Greens are the most successful of France’s environmentalist parties, due in part to their decision to participate in the ‘plural left’ coalition. They are based on a strong ideology which is centred on the environment but also includes liberal and post-materialist values, one of which is gender equality. The Greens have a strong record of commitment to feminist values, and have been the most successful of the major parties in initiating and implementing gender quotas. The Greens have been committed to the principle of parity since 1988, and have largely achieved this within the internal party organisation, although they have had more trouble achieving a parity of electoral candidates, due in part to the lower proportion of female members (Allwood & Wadia 2000, p. 70). In the 1997 and 2002 elections, onethird of their parliamentary delegation was female, which made them the most feminised party in the National Assembly, even if their absolute numbers were very low. The gain of an extra male deputy in 2007 pushed down the proportion of women to 25 per cent, slightly lower than the PS. Although the Greens are founded on a clear and distinct ideology, even they have demonstrated willingness to compromise and temper their idealism with electoral pragmatism (Spoon 2007; Villalba and Vieillard-Coffre 2003). Their initial motto that declared that they were ‘neither left nor right but in front!’ was soon abandoned as they realised that their best prospects for electoral bargaining lay with the left. The Greens enjoyed an increasing vote share throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but the SMP electoral system made it hard for them to translate their votes into seats. Their breakthrough came through negotiations with the PS, which needed the Green vote to help it regain power, and these negotiations resulted in a few seats being ‘reserved’ for a Green candidate, in exchange for which the Greens would support left-wing candidates in the constituencies not reserved for their party. The Greens were rewarded with six seats in the 1997

French Parties and Parity in Context 33

Parliament and the most coveted prize of all, the Ministry for the Environment. However, their weak presence in a coalition dominated by the PS came at a high price; they were not able to enact most of the promises that they had made in their manifesto, and in 2002 they were left wondering whether the benefits of a limited role in the government were sufficient to justify the cost of ideological compromise and disillusionment of the membership, whose high hopes of a Green environment minister did not translate into significant environmentalist policy outcomes. The UDF (non-Gaullist right) The UDF were, nominally at least, a party of the centre, although their alignments and alliances placed them firmly on the right (Knapp 2004, p. 200). In fact, for most of their existence, the UDF were scarcely a party at all, but rather a loose confederation of centrist movements, bringing together ‘liberal, Christian democrat and radical currents’ (Sauger 2003, p. 107). As a result, the party’s ideology was somewhat muddled between the different elements of the party, although gender equality never featured strongly in the party’s rhetoric, and one of their deputies, Christine Boutin, was the only person to vote against the parity legislation (Fabre, Le Monde 27 January 2000). Moreover, the UDF faced major upheaval over the past decade. In 1998, one of the major parties within the confederation, Démocratie Libérale (DL), withdrew from the UDF, taking with them nearly a third of the party’s members and deputies. An even bigger crisis faced the UDF in 2001–2002 when the UMP party was formed (see below for greater discussion of the UMP), and much of the UDF was subsumed into this larger party. The UDF, who have traditionally formed governing alliances with the Gaullists, now found themselves a much weakened minority party. In 1988, they actually won slightly more seats than the Gaullist RPR (133 seats to 130); in 1993, following a huge electoral swing to the right, they won 216 seats and were by a considerable margin the second largest party in the National Assembly. However, by 2002, the loss of much of the party to DL and the UMP left the UDF floundering with only 29 seats. With the UMP possessing a large absolute majority of seats in Parliament, the UDF were no longer needed for coalition formation, and found themselves lost on the sidelines. They initially supported the government, and were rewarded with ministerial office for their vice-president, Gilles de Robien. However, following the government’s defeat over the referendum on the European constitution in 2005, and mindful of the fact that it was less

34 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

than two years until the next presidential and parliamentary elections, the UDF’s leader, François Bayrou, took the decision to withdraw their support for the UMP. When de Robien decided to remain in the government, he was stripped of his party functions within the UDF (Montvalon and Roger, Le Monde 16 June 2005). The consequent rivalry between Bayrou and Sarkozy in 2007, as detailed above, led to the final disintegration of the party into the Nouveau Centre and MoDem. In electoral terms, the UDF in 2002 and its offshoots in 2007 could be considered parties in crisis, with defections to other parties by both members and deputies contributing to the UDF’s demise. The UMP’s enhanced electoral capabilities meant the UMP was able to compete in many seats which had previously been contested only by the UDF, and this proved very costly for the UDF in 2002. Many of the seats it did win were not contested by the UMP, which was why these incumbents were willing to defect rather than risk losing their seats in 2007. The party’s final split happened so close to the 2007 elections that it is still possible to analyse the UDF’s candidate selection processes for 2007. Indeed, despite the recent split of the UDF, much of the analysis of this book focuses on the behaviour of the UDF prior to this split, and hence examines the UDF as a single party. UMP (Right-wing umbrella party) The UMP is distinctive from the other parties discussed here for a number of reasons. Firstly, the party has only been in existence since 2002, and its long-term future remains uncertain (although the party has grown steadily in strength since its inception). Secondly, the UMP has replaced the UDF as the umbrella party of the right; although the remnants of the Gaullist RPR party are the largest and most influential component of the UMP, they now sit alongside a large section of the former UDF, DL and smaller groupings on the right. The party is still establishing its identity with the French public, and Sarkozy is steering the party in different directions to his predecessor, Jacques Chirac. The UMP was formed, in part, as a response to the particular political situation that emerged in 2002, and the institutions in France that created this situation. Prior to this year, France had a president that was elected every seven years, and a legislature that was elected every five years (or earlier at the president’s request). It was therefore possible to have periods during which the president was not from the same party as the party which had a majority in the National Assembly (known as cohabitation). Indeed, the electorate frequently change their

French Parties and Parity in Context 35

mind in France, and have thrice voted for the opposition when a parliamentary election fell part way through a presidential term. Two of these periods of cohabitation directly affected Jacques Chirac; once as Prime Minister under Mitterrand from 1986–8, and once as President, cohabiting with the Socialist PM Lionel Jospin, from 1997–2002. Chirac also turned down the opportunity of being Prime Minister in 1993 due to his reluctance to serve under Mitterrand for an additional period of cohabitation due to his previous negative experience of deadlock. The year 2002 presented a natural opportunity to address this situation, as the presidential and legislative elections happened to fall in the same year, and five long years of cohabitation had made the major parties and the electorate keen to end the deadlock once and for all. Two political measures were taken to reduce the possibility of any further cohabitation; firstly, the presidential term was reduced from seven years to five so that the electoral cycles would continue to be in harmony, thus maximising the opportunity for the electorate to vote the same party into the Elysée and Matignon3 before the public mood shifted. Secondly, the electoral cycle was reversed so that the presidential elections would precede the legislative elections; it was assumed, with good reason, that whichever candidate was victorious in the presidential elections would see their party triumph at the legislative elections two months later. It was within this context that the UMP was formed. Seeking re-election and eager to maximise his chances, Jacques Chirac aimed to build a broader coalition to match the ‘plural left’ coalition of his main rival, Lionel Jospin. Alliances were cultivated over the two year period preceding the elections with key figures in the UDF and Démocratie Libérale (Knapp 2004, p. 230). Once Chirac had secured his win in the presidential elections, his party, the RPR, spearheaded the alliance that took on the name Union for a Presidential Majority, or UMP. The aim of the alliance, and the message they sent out to voters, was simple: provide the president with a parliamentary majority to avoid another period of cohabitation. The campaign was straightforward and very effective. The Union consolidated its form in November 2002 and changed its name to a Union for a Popular Movement, thus retaining the UMP initials but shedding the temporary name that it had acquired for the 2002 elections. The stunning victory of the UMP in 2002, and the party’s re-election in 2007 – breaking 25 years of alternance – conceal underlying problems with the coalition. The idea of a unified party of the right had long been popular amongst elements of the right-wing electorate that

36 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

wished to fend off threats from the left and from the far-right (Knapp 2004, p. 257). Yet one of the reasons why the idea of the Union was so popular was because its component parts were so weak. In particular, the RPR was fragile and had lost its position of dominance over the right. The party had been tainted by corruption scandals and was not performing well in local elections compared to other right-wing parties (ibid, p. 90). Its role as the dominant partner in the UMP is greater than any role it might have hoped for if it had continued as a separate party, and it is uncertain whether the RPR will be able to sustain its privileged position within the UMP. The party’s future depends on the ability of its various factions to continue co-operating with each other – something that has often proven problematic for French parties in the past. The FN (Front National) The FN shot onto the political scene in the early 1980s and quickly established itself as a political force that could not be ignored. Its breakthroughs came courtesy of proportional representation, first in local elections and then in the temporary use of PR in the 1986 legislative elections, where the party won 35 seats (Borella 1990, p. 208). Since then, the SMP electoral system has frustrated the FN’s attempts to gain parliamentary representation, with the party only gaining one seat in 1988 and 1997, and no seats at all in 1993 and 2002. Nonetheless, it consistently receives 9–20 per cent of the national vote, and its presence has unsettled the other parties in the party system, especially when it has managed to qualify for the second round of voting. In some cases, this has led to triangulaires between the left, the right and the FN. The mainstream right has chosen to dissociate itself from the FN, even though they have lost some of their voters to the FN. The FN has also attracted voters away from the PCF, particularly within deprived working-class areas. The far-right ideology of the FN is particularly unfavourable to feminism, and the FN was open in its disapproval of parity and in its belief that a woman’s place is in the home. It even proposed the policy of a ‘maternal salary’ that would pay women to stay at home with their children. Ironically, however, it tends to benefit from fielding female candidates as, rightly or wrongly, women are perceived as less extreme and have helped to soften the hard-line image of the party. Nonetheless, the FN has consistently performed far less well amongst female voters than male voters (Helft-Malz and Lévy 2000, pp. 46–7; Sineau 2008). The party has therefore found the implementation of parity to

French Parties and Parity in Context 37

be both undesirable and difficult to achieve (Ivaldi 2003, p. 144; Zimmerman 2003b). The FN has enjoyed mixed fortunes over recent years. Internal divisions resulted in a major upheaval in 1999 when a faction splintered off to form a rival party, the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), under the leadership of Bruno Mégret. The short-term effect of this schism was costly for the FN, although their electoral fortunes recovered significantly in 2002 with the surprise success of the FN’s charismatic leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the presidential elections. Although Le Pen was resoundingly beaten in the second round of the elections, his mere presence served both to place the FN firmly back on the electoral map, and to assert the FN as the major party of the far-right. The influence of the FN in framing the terms of debate that dominated the presidential elections, such as crime and insecurity, also highlighted the party’s continued significance. Since this high point, the FN have entered a new period of turmoil. Their poor performance in the 2002 legislative elections yielded no seats, and the electorate were still haunted by Le Pen’s 2002 success in the 2007 presidential elections. Le Pen’s vote share in 2007 plummeted to 10.4 per cent, and the party again failed to win seats in the subsequent legislative elections. Le Pen is now at the end of his political career and looks set to be succeeded by his daughter Marine. Paradoxically, the least feminist of all parties may benefit from the more moderate image provided by Marine Le Pen, perhaps as a result of her gender. Given the FN’s limited electoral impact in legislative elections, the FN is studied in less close detail than the other parties in this book. Nonetheless, the FN is still worthy of some consideration, not least as an example of a party which opposed parity on ideological grounds and yet felt compelled to respect the law for more pragmatic reasons. In addition, the centrifugal impact of the FN on the French party system ensures that it qualifies as a party with ‘blackmail potential’ under Sartori’s criteria of relevance (Sartori 1976). As such, the FN cannot be ignored in any discussion of the party system. The key characteristics of the parties are summed up in Table 2.1. The variations between the different parties provide an initial indication as to how party motivations towards parity might differ. For example, some parties are more ideological than others, and some are in a more vulnerable position than others. Indeed, a dominant theme for all parties is one of survival in a party system which is constantly evolving. In order to make a more informed assessment of how these variations may influence attitudes towards parity, it is first necessary to

38 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France Table 2.1

Overview of key party characteristics

Party

Year founded1

Ave. seats in NA2

Ave. % women in NA2

Membership3

PCF PS Greens UDF UMP FN

1920 1971 1984 1978 2002 1972

25.2 180 4.34 100.65 239.26 0.4

11.1% 14.8% 30.8%4 4.2%5 9.7%6 50%

133,767 147,275 8,810 40,000 164,500 60,000

Political persuasion Left/far left Centre-left Green/left Centre/right Moderate right Far right

Sources: Haegel 2005; Le Monde; Knapp 2004 1 This refers to the year that the party was founded in its current incarnation (excluding the recent collapse of the UDF). Some parties, such as the PS, have existed in earlier incarnations under different names, while the UMP is an umbrella party formed of older parties such as the RPR, which was founded in 1976 and has Gaullist roots that go even further back. 2 Average number of seats held in the National Assembly over the last five elections (1988, 1993, 1997, 2002 and 2007), and the average percentage of these seats held by women. 3 Membership figures are for the early 2000s, and are based on the claimed figures, although these tend to be significant exaggerations. The figure for the Greens is an estimation, which makes it seem relatively low compared to the claimed figures (there is no claimed figure available). The figures are taken from Knapp 2003, p. 355. There is no reliable contemporary data on the percentage of women within each party’s membership, although women tend to form a minority of between 30 and 40 per cent of members in most parties. 4 The Greens have only had seats in Parliament since 1997. 5 The figures for 1988–2002 are for the UDF; the 2007 uses the combined totals for Nouveau Centre and MoDem. These figures conceal a sharp decline from a height of 216 seats in 1993 to just 18 seats in 2007, as a result of the disintegration of the UDF. 6 The UMP has only existed since 2002; the figure for elections prior to this date is for the RPR.

explore the origins of parity and the way in which initial party responses to the parity movement may have shaped the legislation itself and the subsequent attempts by each party to implement the legislation. The issues facing parties at the time of parity’s conception, and their consequences for the framing of the law, are considered below. These ideas are then revisited in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, which consider the various challenges and priorities for parties when attempting to implement the law.

Party motivations in ratifying parity The full history of how parity came into being is detailed and complex, and is well documented elsewhere in the literature (Bereni 2004,

French Parties and Parity in Context 39

2007a, 2007b; Haase-Dubosc 1999; Helft-Malz & Levy 2000; Krook 2005, 2009; Lépinard 2004; Lovecy 2000; Mossuz-Lavau 1998; Scott 2005; Tremblay 2002). What is of interest here is not a complete chronological account of events, but the core background information in order to understand the motivations of parties in introducing and then ratifying the parity legislation. I hypothesise that these motivations will be a useful tool in predicting parties’ motivations in the subsequent implementation of the ‘parity’ law. For example, a party that was primarily driven by ideological support for parity might be more inclined to implement the law than a party that sought only to appease the female electorate. As will be demonstrated, the choice of gender parity, as opposed to a less constrictive gender quota, was primarily the result of France’s constitution and its universalist tradition. The placing of parity on the political agenda came mostly from pressure groups external to the party system, although ideological support for parity from within the governing left-wing coalition led to parity being placed on the legislative agenda. Its actual passage, however, was above all due to the desire of all parties to woo the female electorate. This combination of ideology and electoral pragmatism, within a framework dictated by France’s political institutions, is as present in parity’s foundations as in its application. Institutional obligations The French republican tradition is based on the theoretical model of the universal citizen. For this reason, the French Constitutional Council shot down an attempt by the socialist government to introduce gender quotas in 1982, arguing that a gendered concept of citizenship was incompatible with the constitution. As a result, gender quotas have been an option for parties internally but have not been possible at a national, state-enforced level. Given France’s low level of female representation compared to her neighbours,4 campaigns for a mechanism to introduce larger numbers of women into politics persisted, but had to change tack. ‘Parity’ as an idea actually originated outside political parties, with its initial formulation taking place at the EU level and then being popularised by Gaspard et al (1992). The idea subsequently gathered momentum within the feminist movement and eventually took hold in parties, as will be discussed later in this chapter. What is of note here is that the concept of ‘parity’ was very much a product of France’s political traditions and of the 1982 ruling. Once it became evident that a gender quota of the kind seen in

40 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

Belgium or Argentina would not be possible for France, feminists had to become more creative in designing a form of quota that would be compatible with the constitution. With parity, they argued, the universal citizen model remained intact, because parity was merely reinforcing the existing gender balance amongst French citizens. Although theoretically weak, and highly disputed by proponents of universalism, this argument was sufficient to get gender quotas back on the agenda, albeit repackaged under the name of ‘parity’. This point gains added significance when it is borne in mind that, under different circumstances, it is highly unlikely that parties would have opted for a quota set as high as 50 per cent. Indeed, the PS (the main proponents of parity) had previously fought to keep quotas as low as possible. For example, the party initially had a quota for women as low as 10 per cent, and attempts to raise the quota to 20 per cent in 1977 were thwarted at the last minute so that the quota was only raised to 15 per cent (Roudy 1995, pp. 20–1). A similar practice was seen in 1982 when the original proposal for gender quotas asked for a minimum of 30 per cent women, and this was then revised down to 25 per cent and expressed as a maximum of 75 per cent of either sex (Mossuz-Lavau 1998, p. 31). By 1997, the PS was using a gender quota of 30 per cent, but this was still well short of parity and even then they struggled to implement it.5 Even these limited measures surpassed those of other parties, who had not implemented any electoral quotas at an internal level at this point (Quota Project; Allwood & Wadia 2000, ch. 2). It is therefore highly improbable that any party would have suggested parity if a gender quota with a lower minimum percentage of women had been a feasible alternative. Parity’s form can thus be attributed to institutional circumstances independent of party preferences. Its arrival on the political agenda, by contrast, was motivated by electoral competition, as the next section will demonstrate. Electoral obligations The defining moment for placing parity on the political agenda was the presidential elections of 1995. Jacques Chirac, representing the RPR, had once described quotas as ‘reverse sexism’, and had publicly stated only a year before the election that he was opposed to the idea of a parity law and to gender quotas (Allwood & Wadia 2000, p. 71; Remy & Mandonnet, L’Express 11 February 1999). However, he was threatened not only by his left-wing opponent, Lionel Jospin, but also by the presence of a second strong candidate on the right, Edouard

French Parties and Parity in Context 41

Balladur, the then prime minister. All three candidates in this tight three-horse race sought to maximise their vote. Over the 50 years since the granting of women’s suffrage in 1944, the gender gap in voting had reversed, with women now being more likely than men to vote for parties of the left (Allwood & Wadia 2000, p. 124). All candidates knew that the female vote had been instrumental in granting Mitterrand two terms and ending the domination of the Right since the start of the Fifth Republic; Jospin sought to capitalise on this trend, and his opponents sought to reverse it. Moreover, the debate on parity was gathering momentum, and each candidate was forced to take a stand on the matter. Unwilling to alienate the female electorate, each candidate came out in favour of increasing women’s representation. Jospin, who himself had once been ‘vehemently against the principle’ of parity, declared his wish to ‘boldly advance towards parity’, suggesting that ‘the number of women elected should be one of the criteria determining the level of public finance for political parties’ (Mossuz-Lavau 1998, p. 53; Roudy 1995, p. 18). For his part, Chirac did something of a U-turn; whilst still expressing certain reservations about parity, he declared that ‘we need to set clear objectives concerning women’s representation. For me, this can only mean parity’ (Mossuz-Lavau 1998 pp. 53–4). Like Jospin, he approved linking state finance of parties to their level of parity, and also promised to create an Observatoire de la Parité if elected. By contrast, Balladur made the less ambitious, but more concrete, offer of modifying the constitution to install a 30 per cent gender quota for elections using proportional representation. Only the far-right FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen openly rejected the principle of parity, stating that it was incompatible with universalism. The attempts of the other political leaders to pander to the female electorate led two commentators to observe that their sudden interest in parity was ‘for some by conviction, for others by opportunism’ (Aulagnon & Bezat, Le Monde 10 March 1995). Although Chirac’s commitment to parity was very questionable, he did make good on his promise to install an Observatoire de la Parité; however, in its early days the Observatoire was severely under-resourced and intended to be nothing more than symbolic.6 Meanwhile, Jospin’s commitment to parity was growing under the influence of his second wife, the feminist philosopher Sylviane Agacinski. Capitalising on the bad press received by the RPR for dismissing eight of the 12 female ministers in Juppé’s government within the first six months of office,7 and the growing popularity of parity in the opinion polls,8 the PS made a manifesto pledge to introduce parity in the legislative elections of

42 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

1997. When the PS won the election, Chirac found his hands tied. Having previously done a U-turn to support parity in his presidential campaign, he could not now afford to thwart the government’s attempts to introduce parity. Both leaders therefore chose to ride the wave of popularity that parity enjoyed in the late 1990s, and help parity become law. By this point, it would be fair to suggest that Jospin was ideologically committed to parity, whilst Chirac was still more concerned with electoral expediency. Ideological battles Surprisingly, some of the key ideological battles surrounding parity did not take place between parties but within them. On the left, there was broad ideological support for parity within the Greens, who had already inscribed the principle of parity into their statutes, but less agreement within the PS. Although the principle of bringing more women into politics had unanimous support, members of the party were divided as to whether or not parity was the best way to achieve this goal. Robert Badinter, a PS senator who, like Jospin, was married to a prominent feminist philosopher, did not share Jospin’s enthusiasm for parity (and nor, for that matter, did his wife!).9 In an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate he argued that parity risked essentialising women and dividing society into communities. In so doing he added his voice to a small but vocal anti-parity movement within the left, headed by numerous prominent women (L’Express 11 February 1999; Pisier, Le Monde 11 February 1999). Things were hardly plain-sailing for the right either. The overall sentiment towards parity was, at best, one of unease, and at worst, one of outright hostility. One conservative senator asked ‘do they [women] even really like politics?’ (Bacque, Le Monde 05 March 1999). Meanwhile, the (female) president of the RPR, Michèle Alliot-Marie, objected to parity on the grounds that ‘I find it insulting towards women and I have calculated the difficulties in implementing it’ (Saux, Le Monde 25 November 2001). Nonetheless, Jacques Chirac maintained his public commitment to supporting parity, and coerced his reluctant party into following suit. His control over his party was tested when the right-wing Senate made several attempts to shoot parity down by rewording the text so as to render it ineffective.10 He was helped in this endeavour by Christian Poncelet, the president of the Senate and a member of the RPR, who provided crucial support in helping the passage of parity through the Senate. He was also aided by several high-profile female politicians from the right who gave their whole-

French Parties and Parity in Context 43

hearted support to parity, such as Simone Veil and Roselyne Bachelot. For these women, support for parity came from a passionate ideological attachment to the idea. For the vast majority of their party, however, grudging support for parity was founded in far more pragmatic motivations. They saw in parity an opportunity to distance themselves from the claims of sexism that had followed the ‘Juppette’ scandal in 1995. The backlash that this had caused, combined with the RPR’s poor performance in the 1997 election, raised the fear that the right had alienated the female electorate. To alienate them further by taking a public stand against parity, which undoubtedly would have played into the hands of the left, was a risk that parties of the right were not prepared to take. The long-term implications of parity were considered less harmful than the immediate ramifications of obstructing parity’s passage. There was also an additional factor that would have helped parties of all sides to placate those members opposing parity on the grounds that it intervened with the candidate selection process, rather than on more ideological grounds. This was the fact that the law was fairly malleable for the crucial elections to the National Assembly, and did not apply to elections to the powerful departmental assemblies. The exact details of the law and its impact on candidate selection will be discussed further in Chapter 5. Of note here is that the weaknesses of the law may well have been intentional, and may have been an integral part of the design of a law that was intended more to please the electorate than to revolutionise the composition of France’s political elites. Indeed, this would place parity within a wider tradition of symbolic womenfriendly policies in France, such as equal employment policies, as well as within a wider international trend for gender quotas which may promise more than they deliver (Matland 2006; Mazur 1995). Parity almost fits the mould of symbolic reform whereby ‘decision makers, more interested in image making than problem solving, design policy statements with no teeth … destined to have little real impact’ (Mazur 1995, p. 2). The law does do more than the bare minimum required for symbolic reform, especially in second-order elections, but the loopholes left in the policy to minimise its impact in first-order elections are revealing of the compromises needed to secure the law’s passage. It is also interesting that the word ‘parity’ was deliberately left out of the actual wording of the law. Once the law had been weakened down enough to be tolerable to its opponents, it was passed with quasi-unanimity.11 As the above sections have shown, there is no unified pattern that maps out party motivations in implementing parity. This is principally

44 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

because parity had supporters and opponents across the political spectrum, and different actors within the same party had different attitudes towards parity. The influence of the 1982 Constitutional Council ruling in shaping later versions of parity is clear (Krook 2005). The dynamic between ideological and electoral motivations, however, is rather more muddled. Parity did not fit into a clear left-right ideological spectrum, and garnered support and opposition from parties of both sides. Overall, ideology appeared to have a stronger impact on parties of the left, both in support for and opposition to parity, whilst parties of the right seemed to have been motivated primarily by electoral considerations both in their initial opposition to, and eventual support of, the parity law. Although parity found supporters and detractors on both sides, left-wing arguments tended to focus on ideology (with debates centred on the philosophical aspects of parity, and disagreement focusing on the means rather than the end). By contrast, right-wing arguments were more concentrated on electoral motivations, with detractors resenting the restriction on the free choice of candidates that parity would entail, while its supporters emphasised the need to regain the female electorate. (Again, this is consistent with international trends for gender quota debates (Dahlerup 2006).) This is not to say that ideology did not play a part in influencing the decisions of parties of the right, nor that electoral competition was not a factor in determining the behaviour of parties of the left. Evidently, these factors work in tandem and cannot be artificially separated. However, the priority accorded to different factors seems to have varied, with ideological arguments carrying more weight for parties of the left and pragmatic arguments being of greater importance to parties of the right. Although some actors, especially from parties of the left, were acting out of an ideological commitment to parity, the majority of actors, and particularly those on the right, were acting primarily out of electoral interests. It was believed that the electoral advantage of voting for parity exceeded the costs that parity would entail, especially as efforts were made to ensure that these costs would be as low as possible. Whether or not these priorities carry through to the implementation of parity is a theme that will be revisited in greater detail in subsequent chapters, as competing theories of party motivations are examined. This chapter has illustrated the core background information underpinning the remainder of the book. The parties featured in the book, and the law that they are charged with implementing, can now be situated within their appropriate contexts. Before moving on to studying competing explanations for why some parties are better able to imple-

French Parties and Parity in Context 45

ment parity than others, it is first necessary to examine the question of candidate selection. The process by which parties select candidates, along with the criteria candidates are expected to meet (and whether or not these are gendered), are essential for understanding how parity interacts with the wider process of political recruitment. This is the theme of the next chapter.

3 Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand

The primary impact of the parity legislation on political parties is at the level of candidate selection. In order to meet the requirements of the law, parties need to select more women candidates and fewer men candidates. In order to understand parties’ willingness and ability to meet this requirement, it is important to understand both the process of selection and the type of candidate selected. The process of selection is significant for understanding who within a party is responsible for implementing parity, and the ease with which this process can be coordinated and controlled. Examining which candidates are sought after by parties is revealing as it indicates the extent to which women are able to meet the demands of parties, and hence whether or not there is a sufficient supply of women candidates to fulfil the requirements of parity. In this sense, this chapter will build on theories of supply and demand in the candidate selection process, by illustrating that lack of supply is partly a function of subtly gendered demand (Norris & Lovenduski 1995). The first section of this chapter explores the hypothesis that the degree of centralisation of the selection process affects how easily a party can implement parity. A more centralised process should facilitate the implementation of parity, although it is not a sufficient condition in itself. This requires a study of the formalised process of candidate selection, namely, how candidates are selected rather than which candidates are selected. The second section then examines which traits parties seek in electoral candidates, and whether these are as gender-neutral as they first appear. Although none of the requirements for being a candidate is obviously gendered, the overall profile required by parties is more likely to be found in a man than a woman. This is illustrated by a study of women’s roles in the social, political, economic and domestic 46

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 47

spheres. There is certainly some evidence to support the claim that the supply of women candidates may be lower than that of men. However, supply is still sufficient to meet the requirements of parity, implying that the continuing shortage of women in French politics is primarily a problem of demand.

Party candidate selection procedures Pippa Norris identifies four levels of analysis in the study of political recruitment: the political system, the recruitment process, the supply of candidates and the demands of gatekeepers (Norris 1997, p. 1). The political system is considered, within the conceptual framework of this book, to be part of the institutional environment within which parties operate, and as such is discussed in Chapter 5. The supply and demand of candidates is considered in detail in the second part of this chapter. First, we are concerned with the recruitment process, that is to say, the technical process of selecting candidates. This section considers the hypothesis that parties with a more centralised recruitment process will find it easier to implement parity, as they avoid the collective action problem that a decentralised process would entail. This hypothesis is put to the test by considering the recruitment process within each party. The means by which parties select their candidates are not uniform, but vary considerably from one party to another. Some parties select their candidates via a centralised bureaucracy, while some parties allow their local members full autonomy in selecting candidates. Most parties opt for a mixed system which allows local members a certain degree of input whilst still allowing for some centralised control of the process. The first part of this section will explore the theory behind the hypothesis in more detail, and explain how the varying degrees of centralisation might make parity more or less easy to realise. A more detailed study will then be conducted of the individual recruitment processes of the five main parties studied in this book. An analysis will then be offered of how each process enables or cripples attempts to implement parity. It will be argued that a degree of centralised control over candidate selection is a necessary, but not a sufficient, factor in implementing parity.

The significance of centralisation The degree of centralisation of a party’s recruitment process can be important in understanding how easily a party will implement parity

48 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

in legislative elections (Kittilson 2006; Matland & Studlar 1996; Norris 1993). The reason for this is simple; given that the electoral system uses single member districts, parity requires an equal proportion of men and women at the aggregate level. This requires national co-ordination in order to ensure that the male and female candidates put forward by different constituencies balance each other out. This is a common issue for countries using single member districts, and similar problems have been witnessed in countries such as the UK. Parties can regulate this problem in a number of ways. They can select all candidates via the national party bureaucracy, thus ensuring that the list of candidates is gender balanced; they can over-rule local choices of candidate in order to boost the number of women selected; they can reserve certain constituencies for women in advance so that local members will only be able to select from a pool of female candidates;1 or they can preapprove lists of suitable candidates for members to vote upon, and thus make sure that there are sufficient women within the candidate pool.2 Each of these methods, in ascending order of internal democracy, is deployed by one or more parties in France. By allowing the national party bureaucracy to have some role in the candidate selection process, parties minimise the risk of a collective action problem, whereby each constituency selects a man in the hope that another constituency somewhere else will select a woman to balance them out. A highly decentralised process may therefore be disadvantageous to the successful implementation of parity. A certain degree of centralisation is necessary to ensure that constituencies do not all rely on somewhere else to select the female candidates for the party. A certain degree of authority is also required to enforce parity if too many constituencies insist on selecting a man. Without this authority, the collective action problem would again arise, with each constituency that selected a man believing that they should be allowed to keep their candidate, and that the ‘sacrifice’ of switching a man for a woman should be made elsewhere. Although a degree of centralised control over the recruitment process is arguably a necessary condition for the achievement of parity (given the unlikelihood, under the present political climate, of constituencies spontaneously selecting an equal number of men and women), it is not in itself a sufficient condition. Although centralised control assists parties in implementing parity, it does not oblige them to do so. Nor does it always ease tensions in those constituencies that are expected to select female candidates. As discussed later in this chapter, many parties will wish to select more men than women, which inevitably leads to conflict if some constituencies are

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 49

allowed to field their candidate of choice while others are not. Even when the power to oversee the selection process is formally attributed to the national party bureaucracy, this power does not always confer the necessary goodwill or diplomacy required to persuade a disgruntled constituency to pass over its preferred candidate in favour of a woman. This is particularly the case in parties that do not benefit from strong ideological support for parity, as ideological commitment may be a mitigating factor in soothing the sting of fielding a candidate imposed from above.

Selection procedures in French parties The selection procedure for each of the five main parties in France will now be examined in greater detail. In each case, the key element of interest is the interplay of power between the local members and the national party bureaucracy in determining who has the first and last say on the selection of candidates. PCF The selection process within the PCF commences with a call for candidates across the party membership (although sympathisers who are not members might also be considered). As a general rule, aspirant candidates are put forward by local party sections3 or by the departmental4 executive committee. Individual candidatures are also possible but are unlikely to be successful, as the party has a cultural preference for candidates who are put forward by others. Nominated aspirants are assembled on a list that is circulated to the party membership within that constituency, and they are then invited to participate in a debate. Following this debate, a secret ballot takes place. All paid-up members resident within the constituency are entitled to vote. Once each constituency has selected their candidate, the departmental committee reviews the candidatures in an attempt to ensure parity. The aim is that each department should respect parity, thus automatically regulating the problem at the national level. If for any reason this is not possible, regional committees try to intervene to ensure that parity is respected. This can result in an ongoing dialogue between the various strata of party organisation to try and ensure parity, but their elections official claims that in the end ‘we get there, more or less’.5 Indeed, the PCF selected a total of 43.95 per cent women for the legislative elections of 2002 and 46.5 per cent in 2007, so they did come close to parity. However, the fact that most of these

50 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

women were in unwinnable seats6 suggests that the negotiations at departmental and regional level probably consisted of encouraging the constituencies with the least chance of winning to alter their choice of candidate, as these constituencies had the least to lose. Consequently, the chosen method of regulating parity was reasonably effective in terms of percentage of female candidatures, but was still of rather limited benefit to women. The party also acknowledged the primacy of its local members; intervention from higher party authorities consists of ‘dialogues’ rather than coercion, and the final choice of candidate remains in the hands of individual constituencies. This was the reason cited for the failure of the party to achieve perfect parity. Greens The Greens have several issues to take into consideration when selecting their candidates due to the relatively small size of the party. They are dependent on their alliance with the PS to obtain any seats at all. This alliance ensures that, in certain constituencies agreed prior to the election, either the PS or the Greens will not field a candidate so that their votes may be transferred to the other party. Given the difference in size between the parties, there are more constituencies reserved for the PS than for the Greens. However, this alliance is vital for the Greens as, without it, they would not win any seats. Their selection process therefore begins with negotiations with the PS to see how many constituencies will be reserved for the Greens, and how many other constituencies they will be allowed to field candidates in (if neither party has a realistic chance of winning the election, both parties will field candidates so as to maximise the number of votes received and hence increase the portion of state finance determined by national vote share). A second headache for the Greens is the attempt to ensure an even balance within the small number of candidates that they succeed in getting elected. They do not only have parity to contend with, but also a harmonious balance of the different factions present within the party. Unlike a party such as the UMP, the Greens only tend to win a small handful of seats, making it all the more vital that the select few who get elected are as representative as possible of the distribution of factions within the party. Bearing these restrictions in mind, the Greens invented a system whereby each constituency designates four candidates (comprising two men and two women), nominated by the electoral committee within that constituency. If the party does not have enough suitable candi-

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 51

dates to complete the list, potential candidates from other constituencies within the department will be invited to join the list. This enables each constituency to put forward a gender-balanced list of candidates and also provides an outlet for men or women who do not make the shortlist, as an opportunity for them may arise in a neighbouring constituency. This list of four candidates is then submitted to a vote by the members within that constituency. Once each constituency has selected a candidate, their choice is put forward to the national selection committee for validation. This committee tends to validate the local choice except in one of two circumstances; firstly, they regulate the most winnable seats to ensure an even distribution of party factions, as discussed above; and secondly, they regulate seats at a regional level to ensure that parity is respected. To remedy the problem cited by some constituencies of a lack of suitable female candidates, a national group of female candidates, nicknamed ‘Amazones’, was established. These women are prepared to relocate themselves to wherever they are needed in order to ensure that enough constituencies have female candidates for parity to be respected. (One Amazone went all the way to Martinique to represent her party!). With the exception of this group of women, however, it is very rare for the national party to impose a candidate that has not originated from the constituency in question. If a constituency is not satisfied with the request of the national party to change their candidate, they have a right of appeal, although the final say rests with the national selection committee. This has occasionally led to disputes, with threats of resignation from disillusioned activists. It is of note that, although the Greens work very hard to ensure that a parity of candidatures is respected, their primary concern within their few winnable seats is ensuring an even distribution of factions rather than an even gender balance. This explains why there was one woman out of three candidates elected in 2002, and one woman out of four in 2007. It is also important to note that the Greens place a high premium on their incumbents, as re-selecting an incumbent strengthens their bargaining position with the PS when trying to ensure that the constituency remains reserved for the Greens. PS The recruitment process within the PS commences with a call for members to put themselves forwards as candidates. Very occasionally (in fewer than 1 per cent of cases), a national figure may also be invited

52 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

to stand within the constituency. All aspirant candidates within a constituency, including the incumbent and/or national personality where applicable, are then voted upon by the party members within that constituency. The choice made by the local members is then put forward to the national committee for validation. As with the Greens, the local choice is usually validated, but may not be if the national committee disagrees with the choice of a candidate for a particular reason. The PS also resembles the Greens in that, due to their alliance, there are certain seats in which the PS does not field a candidate.7 This can be difficult for prominent would-be candidates within these constituencies, but they recognise that this alliance is important for the greater good of the party, as it allows the PS to expand its electorate in its target seats and hence maximise its chances of winning. The PS has an internationally-inspired solution for regulating the question of parity. As most constituencies, when left to their own devices, do not select women, the PS has begun to reserve constituencies for women, via the use of all-women shortlists. The number of reserved constituencies grows from one election to the next and is the party’s main tool in achieving parity. It should be noted that these constituencies rarely figure among the more winnable seats available, as these tend to be held by incumbents. However, the PS debated the idea of reserving their ‘swing seats’, namely those won in 1997 and lost in 2002, for women in the 2007 elections. These seats benefit from having no sitting incumbent (although the ousted incumbent will often wish to try and regain their seat at the next election), and were the party’s prime target seats for 2007. The party’s women’s section called for all swing seats that were lost at the previous election to be reserved for women at the subsequent election. Neither the Women’s Secretary nor the Elections Secretary was optimistic when interviewed about the chances of such a measure becoming compulsory, and with good reason. Instead, it was made a target, with the opportunity of fielding a male candidate where this was deemed to be the best choice. This flexibility allowed a greater degree of negotiation between the national party and the local constituency, by permitting the constituency to plea its case for a male candidate. UDF The UDF used a recruitment process that accorded far more control to the national executive committee than was the case in parties of the left. There was a national selection committee, drawn from members of the national party organisation, which oversaw the selection of

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 53

candidates to all elections. For legislative elections, potential candidates could be put forward for consideration to the national selection committee in one of several ways. Firstly, the president of the departmental party organisation could propose candidates. Secondly, the committee could send a team out into local constituencies to seek out talent and identify potential electoral candidates. Thirdly, some aspirant candidates could put themselves forward on their own initiative. Finally, people holding prominent local electoral office could also be considered for national office. Once all aspirant candidates had been chosen, the national selection committee then made its selection of candidates and took them to the national executive committee for approval. From time to time the executive committee would not agree with the choices made by the selection committee and would override their selections. So the selection committee did the majority of the groundwork, but it was the national executive committee who had the final say. What is notable in all this is the virtual absence of involvement from the local party membership. In very rare cases, where a constituency had two very strong candidates and the executive committee was undecided, the local membership of that constituency might be consulted for their opinion, but even in these isolated cases the opinions of the members were not binding, and merely served to help the executive committee make their choice. This lack of internal democracy was partly due to the loose-based and fragile nature of the UDF, which had only existed as a single party since 1998, was partially subsumed by the creation of the UMP in 2002 and then divided back into separate parties in 2007. The official reason offered, however, was that ‘the appreciation of the political value of a candidate should be made outside of any pressure from party activists’.8 The choice of candidate should be carefully considered and based on the qualities of the individual, with the candidate selected being the one most likely to perform well in the constituency rather than the one best able to mobilise support amongst activists in the event of a members’ vote. One factor that certainly did influence the choice of candidate was incumbency. Although it was not official party policy to reselect incumbents automatically, the party only deselected incumbents in one of two cases: firstly, if the incumbent had demonstrated signs of political weakness during their term that suggested that they might lose their seat, such as the loss of a local mandate during their parliamentary term; and secondly, if the candidate had grown too old but did not volunteer to retire. In the latter case, the party was more concerned with ensuring the

54 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

long-term health of the party within the constituency, and if this was best ensured by introducing a younger candidate to maintain the party’s presence, then the party could force the incumbent to stand down. In the former case, the party had to tread very carefully. For example, a lesson was learned in the senatorial selections when a candidate who had lost a local office was deselected in favour of a local mayor. The ousted incumbent stood as an independent candidate against the official party candidate and won the election. This experience served to reinforce the party’s reluctance to deselect incumbents. By contrast, parity played a relatively small part in the process of candidate selection. The party took the step of introducing gender parity for the internal party hierarchy, taking effect from 2006, which meant that an increased proportion of the selection and executive committees were female. There was rather less interest in respecting parity at the level of candidacies, however. Where there were two strong candidates, one male, one female, then the existence of the parity law might have persuaded the UDF to prioritise the female candidate. Nonetheless, where candidates were not evenly matched, the candidate deemed to be the strongest was chosen, regardless of sex. Respecting parity did not appear to be a matter of great concern for the party. Where it was possible to select more women (usually in unwinnable seats that no-one else wanted) then they would happily do so, but they openly acknowledged that they would not force the issue. Their elections officer was also confident that the question of parity was one that would resolve itself over time, as more women rose through the ranks thanks to the introduction of parity at a more local level.9 The party’s primary concern was choosing the electoral candidates that it perceived to be most likely to win, and this concern appeared to over-ride all other factors – internal democracy, appeasing members, appeasing incumbents, and parity. This might explain why, in 2007, not a single woman was elected from either of the parties emanating from the UDF (even though the proportion of women candidates rose as a result of the party’s sudden split and hence the urgent need to recruit extra candidates by the two new component parties). UMP The recruitment process of the UMP has changed from the procedure used by the RPR, under the guidance of the then UMP president Nicolas Sarkozy. The RPR had used a national selection committee that operated on an old boys’ network and did not have a strong appreciation of the needs of local constituencies.10 Subsequent reform has led

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 55

to party members being able to select candidates within their constituencies. These candidates are then scrutinised and validated by a national selection committee. This in turn reports to the Political Bureau, which is the main corpus of the party. Although the Political Bureau officially approves the process, it is too large and unwieldy and meets too infrequently to have any significant input into the process, meaning that ultimate decisions almost always lie with the national selection committee. It is of note that this selection committee comprises only three women members out of a total membership of 24, and both the chair of this committee and the national secretary for elections are men (www.u-m-p.org). Table 3.1 provides an overview of the key characteristics of candidate selection procedures within each party to facilitate comparison. Table 3.1

Overview of party selection procedures

Party

Who selects aspirants for list?

Members select candidate from list?

National selection committee (NSC) overrides choice of candidate?

Who has final say?

PCF

Local party organisations

Yes

No; may ask for change but cannot force it

Membership

Greens

Local party organisations

Yes

Yes, to ensure parity National party or balance of factions

PS

Individuals invited to come forward

Yes

Yes, if not satisfied with choice of candidate

National party

UDF

Mixture of local, national and individual

No; NSC decides

National executive committee may override selection committee

National executive committee

UMP

Party members

Yes

National selection committee oversees process, then validated by Political Bureau

NSC/Political Bureau

FN

National party

No; NSC decides

NSC is the highest authority, and includes the party president, general secretary and vicepresidents

NSC

56 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

Does centralisation of candidate selection assist parity? The above table does not provide clear support for the hypothesis that parties with centralised control over candidate selection are better able to implement parity. Of the parties under study, the only party to allow members the final say over the selection of candidates (the PCF) selected one of the highest levels of female candidates in the 2002 and 2007 elections (43.95 per cent and 46.5 per cent women respectively). By contrast, two of the parties with the highest degree of centralised control, the UDF and the RPR (who were responsible for the majority of the candidate selections for the UMP in 200211), were the same parties who fielded the lowest proportion of female candidates (in 2002, both parties fielded fewer than 20 per cent women, and in 2007 these proportions had only risen to 26.5 per cent for the UMP and 27.9 per cent for the Nouveau Centre). However, the hypothesis was that centralised control over the selection process would be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for parity. Clearly, the latter is true – centralised control will not benefit women if parties do not use this control to impose parity upon local constituencies. What is less clear is whether centralised control is, in fact, a necessary condition. The Greens and the FN are good examples of how, when used effectively, centralised control of selection can be used to enforce the implementation of parity. Centralised control can therefore be considered as an enabling tool in parity’s implementation. Yet for it to be a necessary condition assumes that, left to their own devices, local party organisations will not be capable of selecting women in sufficient numbers. There is considerable evidence, however, to support such a hypothesis. All three parties of the left spoke of the need to intervene in order to ensure that more women were selected by local constituencies. In the case of the PCF, this intervention took the form of a ‘dialogue’, whereas the Greens actively intervened to force certain constituencies to change their choice of candidate from a man to a woman until the requirement of parity was met. If parity occurred organically, such measures would not be necessary. Moreover, the use of all-women shortlists by the PS was precisely because of the ‘difficulty of ensuring that women are selected by local activists’.12 Implementation of parity, whether it be at a local or centralised level, requires a degree of political will – parity must be perceived as a higher priority than other factors influencing the selection process. The reasons whether or not parity achieves this priority status are considered throughout this book. What is particularly important here is that, even where the will to

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 57

implement parity exists, its implementation is likely to entail certain sacrifices, such as passing over a prominent (male) mayor as a potential candidate in favour of a less prominent female candidate. Where such sacrifices are required, they are more easily made at the aggregate level, as the demand for sacrifices at the individual level is likely to produce a collective action problem. Each constituency risks ‘free-riding’ by selecting a man in the hope that another constituency will select a woman. By having a nationalised scrutiny of the process, the party can oversee which candidates are selected where, and determine which constituencies are best placed to field a woman. In the case of the PS, this decision is made in advance of selections to eliminate the problem of free-riding. For the Greens, the decision is made a posteriori. The PCF have acknowledged that the high degree of internal party democracy, with party members having the final say on candidate selection, has proved a barrier to the successful implementation of parity, as their members select more men than women and they cannot override this choice.13 Thus the theory suggests and the practice confirms that a degree of centralised control over the recruitment process is currently a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the successful implementation of parity. One of the reasons why centralisation is significant is because of the cross-party tendency to select more male candidates than female candidates. As the next section demonstrates, this suggests that parties have either a supply problem or a demand problem concerning female candidates; in other words, either there are not enough good female candidates available, or parties are passing over good female candidates in favour of men.

The ‘supply and demand’ model in France This second section of the chapter will deploy a variant of the ‘supply and demand’ model proposed by Norris and Lovenduski (1995) to see whether it can provide an explanation for why parties do not select more women. The model suggests that there are two explanations for why parties do not select more female candidates. The first, ‘demandside’ explanation suggests that parties do not select more women due to discrimination. This discrimination can be direct, whereby their choices are actively motivated by the selectors’ attitudes towards women, or imputed, whereby selectors themselves have no objections to a female candidate but believe that another group, such as the electorate, would be likely to discriminate against a woman. The second,

58 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

‘supply-side’ explanation suggests that parties’ hands are tied because there simply are not enough qualified women available from which to choose. This implies that parties are not choosing men out of discrimination but out of necessity due to a lack of an alternative. This model is useful conceptually for distinguishing between the areas that parties control and those that they do not. If parties have good quality female candidates available, then their choice of male rather than female candidates is exactly that – a choice. If the women are not available, then the element of choice is removed and the shortage of women becomes a contextual factor that affects party choices rather than resulting from them. It will be suggested here that the two explanations – supply-side and demand-side – may in fact interact in a way not included in the original model. Political parties will select their candidates on the basis of certain criteria: a candidate’s political experience, their involvement in the party, their personal qualities. In some instances, these criteria may be invisibly gendered, because they are qualities that are more prevalent in men than in women, and may be the result of an unconscious valorisation of masculine or male-dominated qualities rather than a deliberate decision to favour men. In these circumstances, parties may genuinely believe that the problem is supply-side, because there are more men than women that meet their criteria for a good candidate. However, if these criteria are subtly gendered then the problem may also be partially demand-side, because parties are seeking a candidate portfolio that discriminates in favour of men. This hypothesis shall be tested here in a number of ways. Firstly, the various stages of the process of going from being a citizen to being a deputy are considered to see where and why the proportion of women decreases (women comprise 51.4 per cent of the population and 18.5 per cent of deputies (l’INSEE 2004; National Assembly)). According to the Norris and Lovenduski model, this process forms a ‘ladder of recruitment’, going from the electorate to party membership, then to the pool of applicants, then to being a candidate, and finally to becoming a deputy (1995, p. 16). Unfortunately, there is no French data available for the pool of applicants. Even if an estimation were to be made of how many people competed for each party in each constituency to be selected as the party candidate, it would not be known how many more people sought, unsuccessfully, to be placed on the list of aspirant candidates. So this chapter will look at the proportion of women voters, party members, candidates and deputies, by party.

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 59

A second test of the model will be to look at the criteria cited by party election officers as being sought after in an ideal candidate, to see whether these criteria are gender-neutral or more likely to favour one sex or the other. No party cited any factors that constituted direct discrimination (although this does not mean that it does not occur), and all parties also denied that the electorate would be more likely to vote for a man than a woman, suggesting that imputed discrimination was not a causal factor either.14 However, if the criteria for selection were subtly gendered, then this may have resulted in indirect discrimination. Finally, a study will be offered of women’s involvement in wider French society, to identify whether there is likely to be an adequate supply of women possessing qualities that might render them suitable for electoral office. Of course, it is not one individual quality or another that makes a person a good candidate, but rather their sum. Nevertheless, the wider the potential candidate pool, the higher the likelihood that strong candidates might emerge from the pool. Given that the National Assembly has 555 seats on mainland France, each party would require, at most, 278 strong female candidates, out of c.18,500,000 women eligible.15 This section considers why it might be so hard to find enough suitable women from such a large potential candidate pool. From citizen to deputy The process of going from being a citizen, eligible to stand for election, to actually being elected is not straightforward. There are numerous routes into the National Assembly; most, though not all, involve a degree of party activism, and it is virtually impossible to enter Parliament without affiliation to a political party (in 2002, for example, there were no independent candidates elected and all but nine deputies belonged to one of the five main parties examined in this book). Both the PCF and the UDF said that they would consider selecting candidates who were party sympathisers rather than party members. As this is rather difficult to measure, the non-party membership route to parliament will be considered under the third test of the model, namely the section looking at potential supply of candidates. This section shall focus on the traditional route through party membership. As stated above, the number of women ‘eligible’ for Parliament is some 18.5 million. The number of women who are members of the main political parties is, of course, considerably lower. Party membership in France is generally low at around 1.1 per cent (Knapp 2004, p. 354), with women less likely to be members of parties than men,

60 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

and ‘the number of women decreas[ing] as one climbs the party hierarchy’ (Allwood & Wadia 2000, p. 53). Women’s lower presence in parties is a long-term trend (Duverger 1995), with the male domination of parties possibly acting as a deterrent to women members and hence becoming a self-perpetuating vicious circle. Once women have joined a party, they can then rise through the ranks in a number of ways. One route is to seek a position of authority within the party. Another is to be well-connected within the party. Many women in the past have relied on the support of a powerful man to help promote them into the limelight (Appleton & Mazur 1993, p. 110), with the associated dependence that this entails. Sometimes this man may be a relative.16 Overall, however, ‘these relationships escape the writ of formal party rules, and … tend to discriminate against women’ (1993, p. 111). On a related note, sometimes women with appropriate educational qualifications (normally a degree from the prestigious postgraduate Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA)) may get promoted into the government without having previously sought electoral office, as was the case for Elizabeth Guigou (PS), for example. Women may also break into a career as a deputy by first being a suppléante (substitute deputy).17 However, the most common route into a parliamentary career is to build up a local political support base, for example through the acquisition of a local mandate. It has often been observed in French politics that the higher the position within politics, the scarcer the women (Helft-Malz & Lévy 2000; Pionchon & Derville 2004, p. 28). It has already been noted that women form the majority of the population yet a small minority of deputies. Table 3.2 provides a fuller account of how, as the political stakes get higher, the proportion of women gets lower. For all parties, the percentage of women members lies somewhere between 30 per cent and 40 per cent, thus forming a significant minority. This figure does not indicate causality (there are many reasons why parties might have fewer female than male members, such as women’s reduced availability, an off-putting male image of parties, or women’s preference for other forms of civil engagement), but the figure does demonstrate that, from the outset, parties have more men available than women. One could therefore make the argument that, if parties select candidates for electoral office from within their membership pool, a non-discriminatory approach would produce gender percentages of elected officials that approximate their gender percentages for party members.18 Table 3.2 demonstrates clearly that this is not the case. Party executives are the one area where the percentages of women

Table 3.2

Percentage of women in parties and politics Percentage of women by party and function1 Members

PCF Greens PS UDF6 UMP7 FN

37–40% 33% 34.45% 30% 36.7% 29%

Party Local executives office2

50% 35% 33%4 28% 22.2% 23.3%

41.6% 45.1% 37.1% 32.6% 31.9% 31.0%

Mayors2

9.5% 0% 5.9% 7.2% 6.4% 50%2

Conseils Généraux3

14.8% 8.3% 12.3% 11.8% 7.6% n/a3

Legislative elections 2002

Legislative elections 2007

Candidates

Deputies

Candidates Deputies

43.95% 48.91% 36.13% 19.68% 19.93% 48.4%

18.2% 33.3% 16.2% 6.9% 10.7% n/a8

46.5% 50.4% 45.52%5 27.9%6 26.5% 48.8%

16.7% 25% 26% 0%6 14.2% n/a8

Sources: Zimmerman (2003a, 2003b, 2008a), Genisson (2002); National Assembly; Ministère de l’intérieur 1 Member data comes from party interviews (source: Zimmerman 2003b) but, as data on membership is notoriously unreliable, this should be treated with caution. Data for party executives is also from 2003. The data for legislative candidates and deputies are from 2002 and 2007. All other data are from the 2001 elections, as the subsequent local elections (in 2008) took place after the legislative elections. 2 The data for ‘local office’ refers to municipal elections. The data for ‘mayors’ refers to mayors of municipalities having 3500 or more inhabitants. See Chapter 5 for a fuller discussion of the impact of parity in local elections. The figure for the women mayors in the FN is distorted by the low number of mayors elected; the proportion of women FN mayors in villages of fewer than 3500 inhabitants is a more modest 14.3%. 3 These are the departmental governing bodies, and one of the most powerful bodies in local politics. Data was not available for the FN in this category, presumably due to their insufficient presence. 4 The figure for the higher profile position of National Secretary is 40 per cent. 5 This is the combined figure for the PS and their electoral allies such as the PRG. The figure for the PS alone was higher. 6 The 2007 figures are for Nouveau Centre. 7 All data pre-2002 is for the RPR; data from 2002 onwards is for the UMP. 8 No deputies of either sex were elected for the FN in 2002 or 2007.

61

10.1057/9780230275294 - Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France, Rainbow Murray

62 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

are broadly in proportion to those of women members, except for the PCF, who observe parity for their internal organisation, and the UMP, who fall slightly short (36.7 per cent female members, 22.2 per cent women in the party executive).19 Once it comes to elected positions, the differences become starker. Women are fairly well represented in local (municipal) office, largely thanks to the effective implementation of parity in larger districts (although the lack of parity in smaller districts pulls the figures down from near the 50 per cent mark).20 However, women are not reaching the more powerful executive positions within local government in the same proportions. In particular, women are a very small minority in the most politically valuable office of mayor. As mayors are the most visible, prominent and powerful of local officials, the office of mayor is a useful resource when seeking to be selected as a legislative candidate. It is not surprising that, within the current composition of the National Assembly, more than half of deputies (339) are current or former mayors (National Assembly). Only 34 of these 339 (10 per cent) are women, and even this represents an increase from 8.1 per cent in 2001. Another useful office to hold when seeking selection is that of a conseiller général (departmental councillor). Elections to conseils généraux, like legislative elections, are held using a two-ballot single-member plurality system. The emphasis is therefore very much on the individual, and the individual of choice is more often than not a man. By failing to get elected to the conseils généraux, women are missing out on another foot on the ladder to a legislative career. Looking at deputies demonstrates that in the 2002 parliament, only 9.4 per cent of the 191 deputies who were also conseillers généraux were women. In 2009, 129 deputies also held departmental office, 17 per cent of whom were women, which is closer than the 2002 figure to the overall proportion of women in parliament. However, as with local politics, women are scarcer at the executive level, and this carries through to Parliament: of the 19 deputies who are currently presidents of a conseil général, only one is a woman.21 It is also of note that elections to the conseils généraux are one of the few elections where parity has not applied, and hence where the numbers of women have not risen significantly. This calls into question the validity of the claim made by the UDF elections official that women would naturally start to rise through the ranks and that no special measures were required to help boost their numbers, that it was simply a matter of time. If the numbers of women deputies are dependent on the (very slow) rises in the numbers of female

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 63

mayors and conseillères générales, it could be a very long time indeed before parity is achieved. An extra way to get into Parliament is through being a suppléant; in the 2002 Parliament, 4.2 per cent of deputies were suppléants, and a further 9.5 per cent of deputies had served as suppléants in the past; the figures for 2007 are 2.4 per cent and 7.6 per cent respectively. Hence this can be a useful route into the National Assembly. In 2007, women comprised nearly 38 per cent of suppléants, with several cases of parties trying to balance the ticket by offsetting a male candidate with a female suppléante. However, this potential opportunity for women has actually been exploited in a negative way by some parties. For example, Françoise de Panafieu (UMP) dryly noted that her party would offer women this ‘second-rate’ position as a way of giving women an obligation without giving them any real power.22 This impression was compounded by the fact that the deputies most likely to be selected for governmental office were also likely to have male suppléants. In the first government formed after the 2002 election, only four of the 20 male ministers were replaced with female suppléantes, and each of the four female ministers was replaced with a man. Similarly, in the first government formed after the 2007 election, all five women nominated to the government were replaced with a man while only three of the 12 men nominated were replaced with women (resulting in a decrease in women’s presence in parliament). This suggests that when the position of suppléant carries with it a genuine possibility of power, it is as elusive as any other route into Parliament. Finally, there is the selection of candidates for legislative elections themselves. The difference between the parties is starkest in terms of the proportion of women that they have selected for elections to the National Assembly. While parties of the left, and the PCF and Greens in particular, have a substantially higher proportion of women candidates than members, the reverse is true for the parties of the right. For all parties, the proportion of female candidates is far higher than the proportion of women actually elected, for reasons that are discussed in detail in Chapter 4. What is particularly interesting to note is that, with the sole exception of the UDF, the proportion of female deputies is higher for all parties than the proportion of women mayors or conseillères générales. What can be concluded from all of this? The first conclusion that can be drawn is that the first hurdle to achieving parity takes place long before candidates are selected, in that women consistently comprise a lower proportion of party members than men. However, this

64 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

difference in itself is not enough to account for the lower levels of women in high political office. This suggests that women encounter further barriers in the journey from party membership to national office. Key amongst these barriers is the fact that women are not penetrating the higher ranks of local office. Despite their significant influx into local politics in 2001, women are currently more predominant in the lower ranked positions that are less useful when seeking selection for national office. This cannot wholly be attributed to the fact that women have only arrived in local politics very recently, as even prior to the application of parity in 2001, women still comprised 21.7 per cent of local councillors (Zimmerman 2003b, p. 4). This therefore suggests that women face a barrier between the entry to local politics and the access to more prestigious, powerful local positions. This then has a detrimental effect on women seeking national office. Indeed, the fact that there are more female deputies (18.5 per cent) than mayors (9.5 per cent) or conseillères générales (13.1 per cent)23 suggests that women may be less likely than men to use this traditional route into politics, and more likely to use other routes described above, such as prominence within a party hierarchy, support from a powerful male politician, or success from outside a political party, for example in an NGO. Overall, women’s reduced involvement in political parties is compounded by their restricted access to the local positions that form a springboard for national office, meaning that the battle for a national seat is often lost well before the selection process even commences. This suggests that supply and demand factors interact to the detriment of women’s representation. Selection criteria As discussed above, there is more than one route to Parliament. This section considers what political parties look for in an ideal candidate, and whether these criteria are gender-neutral, or whether one sex might be more likely to meet the required profile than the other. If the former, then this would suggest that parties are faced with a problem of supply (or that they are not being fully honest when discussing their selection criteria, which is also a possibility when conducting elite interviews). If the latter, then parties may be discriminating against women even if they are not aware that they are doing so, resulting in a demand-side explanation. Although different parties cited different criteria in answer to the question ‘what do you look for in an ideal candidate?’, there were some common themes.24 Being well-known was the most commonly

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 65

sought characteristic, with parties of the left and the FN also seeking someone who was active within the party. Other qualities sought included having a first mandate, ideally won through an election fought under a majoritarian electoral system (such as an incumbent, or a conseiller général) (UDF); being well adapted to the local constituency (PS, PCF and FN); being able to deal with national issues (Greens); being able to draw together people from different political persuasions (PCF); being motivated (UDF) and hard-working (PS); being eloquent (Greens); being supported by a high-profile personality within the party (UDF); loyalty to the party and its policies (FN); and possessing leadership skills (Greens). Obviously, not all these qualities would carry equal weight, although one might assume that parties would ideally be seeking a candidate possessing a combination of these qualities. Let us consider whether each of these qualities might be deemed gender-neutral or not. The requirement of being ‘well-known’ is somewhat vague and can be satisfied in a number of ways. Holding a prominent local office such as mayor is a good way of being well-known within the constituency, with certain caveats – for example, being the mayor of a large town is clearly more advantageous in this respect than being the mayor of a tiny village. This placed women at a disadvantage in selections for the 2002 and 2007 legislative elections, for while women were 11.2 per cent of mayors in the smallest towns, they were only 6.7 per cent of mayors in towns with a population above 3500 inhabitants. In the largest towns (pop. 30,000+), there was a total of 20 female mayors and 232 male mayors (Zimmerman 2003b, p. 38). Even now, women only comprise 13.8 per cent of mayors (www.observatoire-parite.gouv.fr). So it is unlikely that, if it is a mayor that parties are seeking, women will be the first people to spring to mind. There are other ways of achieving prominence, however. Prominence within a party hierarchy may not be of much benefit when facing the electorate, but might well carry weight during the candidate selection process. Aspirant candidates might also be able to establish themselves through other, less overtly political acts within the community, such as campaigning for a local hospital or being a well-known business leader. This requirement is therefore only gendered if it is associated with a particular type of electoral mandate, as was the case with the UDF. Being active within the party is something that favours women less than men, as women comprise less than 50 per cent of party members and party executive members. On the basis of this criterion, one might

66 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

expect to see women in proportions closer to 30 per cent or 40 per cent rather than 50 per cent. However, the requirement of being welladapted to the local constituency is not necessarily gender specific and should not serve as a reason to discriminate against women. The requirements of being able to deal with national issues, being motivated and hard-working and being eloquent are all attributes that are based on personal qualities more than political experience. However, if discrimination were taking place, it is possible that a party selector might perceive men in general as being more likely to possess these qualities than women. Unfortunately, it is not possible to tell whether or not this is the case. What is clear, however, is that these requirements are not automatically gendered; any possible discrimination in this regard would be on the basis of prejudice rather than fact. Being supported by a high-profile personality within the party is a quality that is potentially gendered. Although receiving the backing of a ‘personality’ within the party has enabled certain women to break through barriers and accede to Parliament, it has also enabled many men to impose themselves in constituencies where a woman might otherwise have been chosen. A party that encourages this strategy is also encouraging a system of patronage that often results in an ‘old boys’ network’ that works to the disadvantage of women. Party loyalty is another quality which is based more on the individual than on gender. As men form a higher proportion of party members, it might be easier to question the loyalty of women who have been attached to a party for less time or who have had less time to devote to party campaigns. On the other hand, a study of women MPs in the British parliament revealed that they were more likely than men to toe the party line and less likely to rebel (Childs 2004; Cowley & Childs 2003). Finally, the quality of ‘leadership skills’ is one that parties are likely to judge on previous demonstrations of leadership. Although this quality is not automatically gendered, it might favour men over women. For example, as will be demonstrated in the next section, women are significantly less likely than men to hold the most senior positions in either business or politics, and will therefore have had fewer opportunities to demonstrate their leadership ability. Overall, none of the qualities listed by parties as being desirable in a candidate is directly gendered. However, several of them may be less favourable to women than to men. Women are less likely than men to hold prominent local electoral office that would help them be ‘well known’, and are particularly scarce in the valuable positions of

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 67

conseiller général and mayor of a large town. They are also less likely than men to have been active within their party, as there are fewer women than men who are members of political parties. Women have reduced access to leadership positions, both in politics and within wider society, thus rendering the requirement for ‘leadership skills’ unfavourable to women. The potential to be steam-rollered in by a big name within the party is also more likely to work against women than for them. The remaining requirements are more individualised and due to personal attributes, and are not gendered in themselves, although their subjective nature leaves scope for discrimination, especially where party selectors are using stereotypes to help make speedy judgements about people they do not know well (Norris & Lovenduski 1995, p. 14 & p. 107). As none of the requirements listed was overtly gendered, it is unlikely that parties are selecting men over women due to a deliberate, calculated preference for men (although if parties were to do this, they would be unlikely to admit to this during an interview; but let us give them the benefit of the doubt). However, as several of the requirements were subtly gendered, that is to say, more likely to favour a man than a woman, it is possible that what appear to be supplyside problems (not enough women meeting the requirements of a good candidate) may actually be linked to demand-side problems (parties are seeking qualities that are more prevalent in men). Given that the qualities that are gendered tend to be qualities requiring experience that women are less likely to possess, it is worth reflecting on why it is that women are less experienced. A partial explanation has already been provided above, in that women are less likely to accede to the political positions that act as a springboard to parliamentary office. This still leaves the wider questions of why women are less likely to get involved in the first place, and whether women lack the resources that would help them work their way to the top of the political ladder. The third test of this model seeks to answer these questions. Social and economic factors One factor that was frequently mentioned in interviews with parties was that women tended to be less available than men and have less time to dedicate to politics. This is symbolic of a wider pattern of social inequality that may serve as a barrier to women seeking a career in politics. This section will explore whether the biggest explanations of women’s absence from parliament are actually located beyond

68 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

political parties and are due to women’s place in wider society. If this were the case, then the key reason for the shortage of women would be due to supply-side problems. The variables to be considered are education, employment, domestic obligations and forms of political participation other than party membership. Education According to Allwood and Wadia (2000), ‘studies revealed that political interest and voting increased with the level of education attained by women’ (p. 141). It was therefore believed that education would be a crucial factor in enabling women to participate more actively in politics. In this regard, women’s current educational status initially seems very promising. From an early age, French girls are outperforming boys in the classroom, with teenage boys being significantly more likely than girls to have to repeat a year at school, while girls are more likely than boys to be a year ahead of their studies (l’INSEE 2004, p. 57). However, there is a marked difference in the career orientations that boys and girls choose, with girls tending to go for arts subjects and training in areas like office and secretarial skills, while boys are far more likely to favour subjects such as electronics. Girls also comprise 82.9 per cent of students sitting the literature-oriented baccalauréat, but only 11.6 per cent of those taking the engineering option, despite the fact that girls form the majority (55.4 per cent) of baccalauréat students due to their superior performance at school (ibid, p. 61). Women are also more likely to go to university than men, comprising an ever-higher proportion of students (56.9 per cent in 2007–8, according to l’INSEE 2008). However, the picture is not all rosy for women. The differences in career orientation that develop at school carry on into adulthood and help to confine women within certain sectors, as the next section demonstrates. For example, women comprise 73.4 per cent of arts students, but only 45.5 per cent of science students, despite their overall numerical superiority (l’INSEE 2008). Women are also less likely to access the most elite universities, with the ENA being a prime example of this. The ENA is a breeding ground for political elites, and many of France’s politicians and top civil servants have passed through its doors. Yet women comprised only 27 per cent of new entrants in 2003, and even this figure is an improvement on some previous years25 (www.ena.fr). Overall, the indications are that women are at least as able and motivated as men, but may be choosing (or being directed into) gendered career paths from an early age.

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 69

Employment One of the most prominent indicators of women’s participation in society is their activity level, and it has been argued that women need to participate in the labour market in order to develop the social and economic capacity to participate actively in politics (Allwood & Wadia 2000, pp. 141–3). France appears to do well in this regard, having one of the highest rates in Europe for women’s economic participation, with women comprising 47.2 per cent of the workforce (l’INSEE 2008).26 However, this figure again requires qualification. Although many women work, 30.2 per cent of them work part-time (compared to 5.7 per cent of men), and women occupy 82 per cent of all part-time jobs (ibid). There are also certain sectors of the economy that are very gendered, following on from the gender gap in education noted in the previous section. Women are very over-represented in certain, less prestigious, sectors (administrative, service-based and so on) and under-represented in others (such as finance, science and technology). This goes some way towards explaining the prevalent pay gap in France, with an average hourly pay gap between men and women of about 19 per cent (ibid, pp. 94–5). Significantly, the pay gap increases as the job’s status rises, meaning that women in the more highly qualified, better remunerated jobs that might lead towards political office are earning substantially less money than their male colleagues (l’INSEE 2008).27 Women are also confronted by a glass ceiling, with barely 5 per cent of France’s largest companies being run by women (Belot & Rocco, Le Monde 08 March 2001; l’INSEE 2008). Women’s lower rate of pay, combined with their higher rate of unemployment (female unemployment is consistently 2–3 percentage points higher than male unemployment) are both symptomatic of the idea that it is still men who are the primary bread-winners in a family, even though women-headed single-parent families now comprise 15.4 per cent of households in France (l’INSEE 2004, p. 29). It is this mentality that pervades women’s careers, in both the economic and political spheres, and remains an important explanation of how women have not advanced further. Domestic obligations In keeping with the image of men as the primary bread-winners, women are seen as the primary carers in French society (as in most other countries), and this is reflected in the division of domestic labour. Where women stay at home, they spend an average of 6 hours and 45 minutes per day on domestic chores and childcare, compared

70 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

to 1 hour and 52 minutes by their male partner (l’INSEE 2004, p. 119). Even where women work full time, they still spend nearly four hours a day on chores compared to only 2 hours 14 minutes a day for men. Consequently, women on average work shorter hours at their jobs than men, resulting in less dedication to their careers and lower prospects for advancement, and even then women enjoy nearly an hour less of free time per day than men. In both of these respects, women are placed at a disadvantage compared to men as they are less available to pursue their economic and political careers. This was reflected in the comments made by political parties, who lamented the fact that women struggled to attend party meetings and events, and therefore did not gain the required profile to make them suitable for consideration as parliamentary candidates. Female deputies also felt that the ‘double day’ of professional and domestic life took its toll on women, physically and psychologically. The head of the Greens’ women’s committee commented that ‘women with children feel guilty if they do not spend enough time with them. There is a social pressure that is both exterior and internalised. The timing of meetings is also incompatible with a family life; this needs to change’.28 Her socialist counterpart concurred, remarking that building a political career is time-consuming and ‘because of the division of domestic duties, women are often less available than men’, thus damaging their political careers.29 The burden of childcare responsibilities means that women tend to start their political careers later in life after having a family, leaving them less time to climb the political ladder (Dewavrin 1994, p. 131; Sineau 2001, pp. 215–16). Alternative forms of political participation Given that women are less involved in political parties than men, despite their higher levels of education, it is possible that they are preferring to express their political interests in other forums. This may provide them with an opportunity to gain the political skills, networks and social capital to advance in politics from outside the conventional party route. Norris et al (2004) identify four dimensions of political participation: voting, campaign-oriented, cause-oriented and civicoriented activism. Unfortunately there is not sufficient data available to consider each of these dimensions here, but a brief examination of voting and civic-oriented activism will be offered. As with many other countries in Europe, France has witnessed a gender gap in voting, with women traditionally voting to the right of men (Helft-Malz & Lévy 2000, pp. 37–8; Inglehart & Norris 1999). Like

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 71

many of her neighbours, France has seen this trend gradually reverse over recent years, and women now vote slightly to the left of men. Perhaps of most interest in terms of their participation, women have become increasingly likely to use their vote, with the increased rate of abstention that was witnessed amongst women in the years after their receiving the vote gradually disappearing to the point that both sexes now vote in equal proportions. By contrast, women are less likely than men to participate in civicoriented activism. The overall rate of participation is 45 per cent for men compared to 40 per cent for women, although there are also notable gender differences in the types of participation (l’INSEE 2004, pp. 122–3; l’INSEE 2008). For example, men are significantly more likely than women to be involved in a sporting association or an environmental lobby, while women are more likely than men to be involved in a religious group, residents’ association or humanitarian group. However, these latter groups are at least as likely, if not more so, to confer political skills and networks to their members than a sports club. Nonetheless, in the most politically useful positions of chair, treasurer or leader, men are more prevalent (30 per cent compared to 20 per cent) while women are more likely to be a beneficiary or simple participant (60 per cent compared to 50 per cent men) (l’INSEE 2004). The proportion of women presiding over an association has risen to 31 per cent, but women are still more likely to be the secretary (57 per cent) (l’INSEE 2008). These results suggest that women do show the same level of interest as men when it comes to voting, but are less likely to get involved in civic-oriented activism, perhaps due to the greater constraints on their free time detailed in the previous section. This may also explain why women are less prominent in the more time-consuming positions of responsibility. However, their lower levels of involvement, particularly in the positions more likely to be of benefit to a political career, suggest that women are once again less present than men in an area of value to legislative recruitment. This reinforces the supply-side explanation of political recruitment. Evaluating the supply-demand model This section has looked at three different tests of the supply-demand model. The first test, which examined the process of becoming a candidate, demonstrated that women’s political careers face a string of hurdles along the path to national election, which go some way to explaining why women are less likely than men to reach the end of this path.

72 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

Many of these hurdles affect women more than men, such as the fact that women are not gaining access to the most politically useful offices in local politics, and the fact that many women are being offered a position as a suppléante rather than a candidate (and, more often than not, as a suppléante to someone who is unlikely to be nominated to the government). Women face an additional barrier in that, where they are selected, they are disproportionately fielded in unwinnable seats. This test therefore suggests an interaction of supply and demand explanations. Women are in shorter supply than men in the traditional political recruiting grounds of mayors and conseillers généraux. However, their presence in the party hierarchy and in local politics suggests that their absence from these springboard positions may be a demand-side problem. This theory is reaffirmed by the fact that women are disproportionately placed in unwinnable seats, suggesting that even when parties do recruit women, they are unwilling to hand over any real power. These demand-side explanations at lower levels of politics then cut off the supply of women at the more elite levels, meaning that although there is indeed a shortage of the type of candidate that parties are seeking, it actually appears to be a consequence of party attitudes towards women lower down the ranks. The second test looked at the qualities sought by party selectors to see whether they were neutral or gendered. It demonstrated that none of these qualities was overtly gendered, but that several of the qualities sought after were more prevalent in men than in women, meaning that the selection process eliminated more women than men from the candidate pool. This again demonstrates an interaction of supply and demand, as the demand is not for men per se, but for characteristics more often found in men, thus resulting in a lower supply of potential female candidates. It is unlikely that parties are aware of this interaction, and probably see the problem purely as one of supply. Finally, the third test looked at women’s wider involvement in society to see whether this could explain their lower levels of participation within political parties. Women are actually better educated on the whole than men, and should therefore benefit politically in this regard, but their attainments are tempered by their tendency to be within ‘feminised’ fields that are valued less by society, and by the fact that they are less likely to be accepted into the most prestigious universities such as the ENA. Women are also being held back in the professional sphere, with a high activity rate being confounded by a concentration within part-time jobs and lower paid sectors of the economy that both contribute to a significant gap in earnings between

Candidate Selection, Supply and Demand 73

men and women. In terms of alternative forms of political participation, women are now as likely to vote as men, but still less likely to participate in civic-oriented activism. Their lower attainments in the work force and their lower involvement in both political parties and civic organisations appear to stem from the crucial factor of the division of domestic labour, which falls primarily on the shoulders of women. As long as women are doing more than their fair share of housework and childcare, they will be prevented from putting in the necessary time and commitment to build a political career, whether this be in a political party or an association. In this regard, therefore, women’s lower levels of participation can be attributed to a supply-side problem that is independent of political parties. Overall, it is clear that parties are not entirely responsible for the shortage of women in politics, but they do appear to compound an existing problem. Supply-side explanations account for why women are less likely than men to join a political party and to take on positions of responsibility, but they do not account for why women’s political careers appear to be stifled at the local level, nor for why women are placed in second-rate positions (unwinnable seats and/or suppléantes) at the national level. It is also true that, even if women are present in lower numbers than men within political parties, they are still present in sufficient numbers to provide a candidate pool that should, at the very least, permit their election to parliament in proportion to their activism in political parties. This is confirmed by women from both the PS and UMP, who claimed that women were available as long as there were genuine opportunities for them, and that there were more women seeking to be deputies than there were seats available.30 However, the valorisation of male attributes and the prioritisation of men for the key positions in local and national office both suggest that demand-side explanations compound the supply-side explanations to result in the lower number of women who succeed in being elected to the National Assembly. Conclusion Understanding how candidate selection works is central to any study of a gender quota. The first section of this chapter discussed the recruitment process within each party, and demonstrated the importance of having some degree of central control over this process. Centralisation assists in the implementation of parity by viewing parity from an aggregate perspective, and allowing parties to control for collective action problems. However, a centralised recruitment process does not,

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in itself, guarantee that parity will be implemented, as it is only effective when accompanied by the political will to enforce parity from the top downwards. Rather, centralisation is an enabling tool that will help parties who wish to take advantage of it, such as the Greens. The second section discussed the ‘supply and demand’ model of political recruitment to see whether the shortage of female deputies was due to discrimination by parties, a shortage of women, or a combination of the two. The findings suggest that the career structure within parties does not work in favour of women, with women frequently falling at hurdles in the earlier stages of a political career that prevent them from reaching the ultimate goal of a seat in parliament. Moreover, although parties do not appear to deliberately discriminate against women, they prioritise qualities that are more prevalent in men when selecting electoral candidates. Both of these findings demonstrate an interaction of supply and demand explanations; there is an inadequate supply of women meeting the criteria for electoral candidates, partly because their political careers are being stymied lower down the ranks, and partly because the selection process is subtly gendered. There is also a wider supply-side explanation of women’s low presence due to their inferior economic status, lower levels of civic engagement and their reduced availability for political activities. These all stem from an unequal division of domestic labour, leaving women less time for other activities. Overall, supply-side explanations do account for a significant degree of women’s lower levels in politics, but these are compounded by the behaviour of political parties, resulting in a female presence in politics that starts low and gets smaller as the stakes rise. This chapter has examined parties’ recruitment processes and the candidate pool that is available to parties. It is now possible to advance to theories of party organisation and how these interact with the factors we have examined here to determine the choice of candidates that each party will make at legislative elections. Such is the purpose of the next three chapters.

4 The Electoral Competition Approach

Introduction This chapter is the first of three that each explores one of the main theoretical approaches drawn from the literature on political parties. In each chapter, the key features of the relevant approach are summarised and then applied to the French case study to see how well each can explain parties’ choice of election candidates. The first of these approaches and the topic of this chapter is the electoral competition approach. Ware neatly summarises this approach as follows: ‘parties are conceived as self-interested actors responding to the logic of the situation in which they find themselves – a logic that is dictated by the need to compete for votes’ (Ware 1996, p. 9). In this chapter, the party competition approach is used to consider whether electoral competition between parties is the prime motivation in explaining party behaviour. Electoral competition theory argues that parties are organised around the central goal of winning as many votes as possible, and will modify their behaviour in whatever way necessary in order to achieve this goal. For example, the Downsian model refers to the malleability of party ideology in order to maximise electoral appeal (Downs 1957). The approach requires further specification for the purpose of this chapter, where it is applied specifically to the area of candidate selection. If the approach is correct in claiming that parties’ prime concern is winning as many votes as possible, then it follows that parties’ top priority in selecting candidates would be to select the candidates most likely to win. This chapter explores the reasoning behind this approach, before examining its practical application. The desire to win votes is a central goal for most political parties. That parties wish to win votes may therefore be taken as a given. The 75

76 Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France

distinctiveness of this approach lies in its suggestion that this desire to win votes will be parties’ first priority and will override all others. This implies that parties will be prepared to put aside other objectives, such as ideological coherence or appeasement of their membership, in favour of winning votes. If parties are to be perceived as rational actors for whom maximising their electoral appeal is the ultimate goal, then other priorities may be ordered and structured in terms of how they help to fulfil this ultimate goal. Thus, if adopting a certain policy assists the party in winning votes then they will adopt this policy, but for the purpose of enhancing their electoral performance rather than out of other motivations. When applied to the question of candidate selection, parties will prioritise the candidates that are most likely to win, irrespective of other factors. Whether or not parties choose to respect parity would, in these terms, be determined by whether or not respecting parity would be likely to affect their electoral performance. This chapter will begin with a discussion of the competition approach, mapping out its origins and its relevance to the questions addressed in this book. The approach will then be evaluated from a number of angles. Firstly, a more detailed consideration will be offered of why French parties might place a high emphasis on winning votes. Secondly, an evaluation will be provided of why parties might consider certain types of candidate to be more electable than others. This evaluation will then be put to the test by seeing which types of candidate parties actually prioritise, and whether these candidates are, in fact, the most electable. If parties are consistently selecting the most electable candidates, then the electoral competition approach could be considered a useful explanation of parties’ choices of candidates. If parties are not prioritising candidates according to how electable they are, then either parties are not acting solely out of electoral motives, or they do not have an accurate perception of the type of candidate that will appeal to their electorates.

Overview of the electoral competition approach Advocates of the electoral competition approach argue that parties exist in order to win elections, and party policy is responsive to what voters want rather than what the party believes is best. Parties are not seen as programmatic or ideological, but rather as power-seeking and vote-maximising.1 They will be prepared to modify their behaviour in whatever way necessary in order to achieve their goal of winning as many votes as possible. This section will explore the origins and argu-

The Electoral Competition Approach 77

ments of this approach, and demonstrate how it can be applied to the study of candidate selection. Some of the earliest work on parties as electoral machines was by Schumpeter (1942), whose ‘innovation was to render irrelevant all motivations of political elites with the exception of their shared appetite for power’ (Bartolini 2002, p. 86). This led to the landmark text on electoral competition theory by Downs in his work entitled ‘An Economic Theory of Democracy’ (1957). Downs assumed that parties were rational, self-interested actors and argued that parties would rationally choose the most efficient path towards the achievement of their goal which, he claimed, was electoral office: Our model is based on the assumption that every government seeks to maximise political support. We further assume that the government exists in a democratic society where periodic elections are held, that its primary goal is re-election, and that election is the goal of those parties now out of power. (Downs 1957, p. 11) The term ‘primary goal’ indicates that election will be prioritised over all other factors. Downs provides a model based on Hotelling’s economic analysis which claims that parties can be located, in terms of ideology, on a linear left-right scale, and the desire to broaden their electoral appeal to the widest possible audience will result in parties’ converging on the centre. Ideology is important to parties only to the extent that its successful adaptation will win them votes. Downs explains that: We assume that [parties] act solely in order to attain the income, prestige and power which comes from being in office. Thus politicians in our model never seek office as a means of carrying out particular policies; their only goal is to reap the rewards of holding office per se.2 They treat parties purely as a means to the attainment of their private ends, which they reach only by being elected. (ibid, p. 28) This echoes Duverger’s description of parties as ‘purely electoral organisations, of which the prime function consisted in ensuring the success of their candidates: the election was the end and the party the means’ (Duverger 1964, p. 366). While Duverger then goes on to contrast these electorally-motivated parties with parties whose primary purpose was the dissemination of ideologically coherent policies,

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Downs sees ideology more as a means for parties to distinguish themselves from their competitors and hence capture a specific electoral market. Parties thus become vote-maximisers: ‘each party seeks to receive more votes than any other’, and hence, ‘the party…manipulates its policies and actions in whatever way it believes will gain it the most votes’ (Downs 1957, p. 31). Sartori develops this theory and makes some important modifications, including providing a better account of spatial competition in a multi-party system as opposed to the Downsian model that worked best in a two-party system (Sartori 1976). The theory was also expanded by Kirchheimer to incorporate the notion of ‘catch-all parties’, namely parties that seek to appeal to the widest possible audience (Kirchheimer 1966). Catch-all parties are typified by a flexible and inclusive programme that adapts to the electoral market and seeks as broad an appeal as possible. These parties will aim to follow the public mood rather than leading it, and typically have low levels of party membership and broad socio-economic bases, in contrast to Duverger’s membership-based ‘mass parties’. The concept of catch-all parties has become widely adopted in the literature (although frequently criticised, the concept endures), and in France, the centre-right UMP party and centre-left PS party can both be argued to be ‘catch-all’ parties (Haegel 2005; Knapp 2002). This is perhaps slightly more the case with the UMP; the PS is torn between its ideological foundations and the practical imperatives of office-seeking, and is more likely to co-operate with than to co-opt rival parties. Nonetheless, its willingness to make a number of compromises over the years (in areas such as privatisation) in order to maximise its electoral appeal indicate its shift towards catch-allism. When applied to the introduction of parity as a policy, the electoral competition theory suggests that parties would only introduce such a law if they believed that doing so would win them votes, rather than out of a deeper ideological belief in the need for gender parity. This would certainly explain why parties’ enthusiasm for introducing the law exceeded their enthusiasm for implementing it; if they believed that voters would approve of parity in principle, but would be indifferent to or unaware of its application in practice, then the law might be entirely manufactured to broaden the electoral appeal of the parties behind it, with no deeper purpose. Moreover, the electoral motivations of each party to implement parity might be influenced by the level of competition surrounding the policy. Parties of the left might be able to afford to miss the benchmark of parity provided they still fielded more

The Electoral Competition Approach 79

women than parties of the right. Meanwhile, parties of the right might have felt that they could not gain from parity as an issue even if they were to respect it faithfully, as it was an issue that was ‘owned’ by the left. According to Budge et al (1987), certain issue areas will always play to the advantage of one party over another, regardless of the discourse surrounding the issue. For example, the British Conservative party is seen as the stronger party on the issue of law and order, and it is therefore pointless and even disadvantageous for the Labour party to broach the topic, as ‘even mentioning the topic runs the danger of bringing it into prominence and thus benefiting their rivals. Rather than arguing about it, the best strategy is not to mention it at all – or if some reference must be made in view of public concern, to deal with it cursorily’ (Budge et al 1987, p. 25). The consequence is that ‘parties talk past each other, glossing over areas which might favour their rivals while emphasising those on which they feel they have an advantage’ (ibid, p. 24). Considering that left-wing parties are generally seen as stronger on issues of equality, and that the momentum for parity came from the left (both the law itself and earlier attempts at legal and party quotas were initiated by left-wing parties), right-wing parties may have felt that their best option was to skate over the issue, and focus on policies that would be electorally rewarding for them. The literature thus paints a picture of parties competing in a linear spatial model for a maximum vote share, with ideological programmes playing second fiddle to vote maximisation.3 The approach does not make any specific reference to electoral candidates; it is assumed that voters identify with parties on the basis of policies rather than people. However, if the policies are of secondary importance and the key issue is getting elected, it follows that parties will seek to select the candidates that are most likely to win. One of the arguments that Downs puts forward is that rational voters will only have limited information about parties, and the cost of obtaining information often exceeds the benefit. It then follows that most voters will know very little about the candidates that they are voting for, and may focus only on the characteristics that are most salient to them. Where no other information is available, voters may only notice the candidate’s party label and their most obvious physical characteristics such as their sex and, in some cases, race. Hence candidate sex becomes important by virtue of its visibility; in the absence of superior knowledge about a candidate, voters will make a decision on the basis of the information available. They may also make assumptions about the candidate based on the little information that they do know. For example, Norris and

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Lovenduski argue that pre-judgements may be used as an ‘information shortcut’, with certain characteristics being used ‘as a proxy measure of abilities and character’ (1995, p. 107). Yet the visibility of candidate sex does not necessarily make it significant. If voters do not discriminate in any way between men and women candidates then sex will be of no consequence. This raises the important question of whether or not voters evaluate candidates any differently on the basis of their sex. If one sex were regarded more favourably by voters than the other, then parties would be rational to prioritise candidates of that particular sex, in accordance with the notion that parties will follow the electorate’s preferences in order to raise their vote share. Such behaviour assumes that parties will know whether or not candidate sex will affect voter choice, and if so, in what way and to what extent.4 A second, and related, point is that a change of candidate would represent an increased information cost to voters. A candidate that had represented a constituency in the past would be better known to voters and they would therefore be able to judge such a candidate on more than just the obvious traits described above. Duverger argues that the more a candidate is known within a constituency, the more the election will be about the personality of that candidate, whereas when the candidate is not known personally to voters, they will vote on the basis of party label (1964, p. 357). Where this personal vote for the candidate is likely to be positive, it may represent an electoral boost over and above the vote for the party. Replacing a known candidate with a newcomer might cost the party this electoral boost and, depending on the marginality of the constituency, this might cost the party the seat. Regardless of how talented and qualified a new candidate might be, these talents and qualities will be of no consequence if voters do not become aware of them in time for an election. As political renewal is a necessary side-effect of parity, parties would need to replace many wellknown male candidates with relatively unknown female candidates. If local notoriety, normally achieved through current or previous occupation of the seat in question, is influential to party success, then electorally-minded parties would be rational to favour established candidates over newcomers.5 In order to assess the utility of the electoral competition approach, it is necessary to see whether there is any difference in the electoral performance of men compared to women, and of established candidates compared to newcomers. This will be addressed in detail later in the chapter. First, it is necessary to explain why French parties might be so

The Electoral Competition Approach 81

concerned with winning votes. As the next section demonstrates, the peculiarities of the French political system exacerbate the emphasis on votes, both for obtaining electoral office and for wider political purposes.

Electoral competition in France In order for the electoral competition approach to be applicable, French parties would need to organise their behaviour around the central priority of winning elections. This section considers why winning votes is of such importance to French parties, and how this might impact on candidate selection. Why every vote matters For most political parties, winning votes is a means to an end, with winning seats being the ultimate goal. In France, maximising the number of votes received fulfils not one but several core objectives of a political party. Firstly, there is the obvious target of winning seats, and hence gaining representation within a legislature (and, for larger parties, there is the additional goal of winning enough seats to control the legislature). For some parties, particularly those on the left, maximising their vote share serves a secondary purpose – to improve their position when negotiating for an electoral deal with a coalition partner. Thirdly, every vote received in a legislative election translates into a portion of a party’s state funding. Parties therefore have multiple reasons for wishing to receive as many votes as possible. Each of these reasons is explored in more detail below. Winning seats The wish to win seats is the most self-evident reason for wishing to win as many votes as possible. France has long had a reputation for electoral volatility, and from 1978 to 2002 each newly-elected government was voted out again at the next election. As a consequence, France has a large number of swing seats where each vote is at a premium (on average, 36.2 per cent of seats in the National Assembly swung between the left and the right at each election between 1993 and 2002, with a massive 41.8 per cent of seats changing hands in the ‘vague rose’ of 1997).6,7 This level is very high compared to the UK, where even in 1997, when the general election brought about a change of government, the percentage of seats to change hands was 29.7 per cent, and this figure has been much lower for other recent elections.8 As

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Table 4.1 demonstrates, a large proportion of seats at any given election is held with quite a narrow majority. Bartolini argues that the availability of seats – that is to say, the openness of a seat to more than one party, typical of a marginal seat – increases the level of electoral competition (2002, p. 93). Furthermore, in the literature on candidate effects, findings suggest that individual candidates may have a small effect on the percentage of the vote received by their party (Cain et al 1984; Coates 1995; Norris et al 1992; Norris & Lovenduski 1995). In safe seats, this ‘personal vote’ effect will be insignificant, but the more marginal the seat, the greater the emphasis on choosing the candidate that will win, rather than lose, those all-important extra few votes. Thus the high electoral volatility in France increases the number of constituencies where every Table 4.1

Vulnerability of seats in French elections Percentage of seats affected per election

Swing required1

1993

1997

2002

2007

2012