GRANDSTAND. Franck Escoubès and Aurélien Taché: “For a reincarnation, finally, of democracy in France”

Here is their forum: Faced with democratic fatigue, a media euphemism that hides a more alarming truth of the political “dropout” of a growing part of the population, the presidential candidates are daring to compete to deal with the problem by more institutions. More proportional in the National Assembly, return to the seven-year term, reorganization of the accumulation of mandates, recognition of the white vote, right to vote at 16, electronic votes, advance votes, etc.

Everything happens as if we continued to consider that the citizen of 2022 is a “classic” voter citizen, the mythical figure of the suffragan “who must be brought back to the polls” and who must be convinced to vote for one or the other of the candidates. However, this is to misunderstand the deep springs of abstention, which corresponds, to a large extent, to an implicit demand for a change of system. It is not a question of marginally modifying the existing representative mode. Institutional solutions indeed call for more representation in a world where citizens no longer have confidence in their representatives. Untenable paradox.

“

It is time to get out of the unique and obsessive reflex of representative electoral democracy

“

It is time to get out of the unique and obsessive reflex of representative electoral democracy, and no longer ignore the different forms of citizen secession. A growing number of citizens are dropping out and becoming deserters from politics, in democratic “disaffiliation”. The magazine Marianne headlined a few months ago: “France who doesn’t care”, speaking of this France which no longer has confidence in its executive and its Parliament, and prefers to go fishing on election day. But there is also, as Pierre Rosanvallon formulated it in a premonitory work (counter-democracy, in 2006), the supervising citizen, who is constantly vigilant, who films Alexandre Benalla on the Place de la Contrescarpe, who turns into a whistleblower, who evaluates and rates the quality of public action, who challenges and places at the heart of its concerns the end of the privileges of elected officials and the fight against the corruption of political personnel (two of the main demands of the Great National Debate, let’s not forget).

Finally comes the citizen actor, the one who organizes the Popular Primary, instead of the official party primaries, because you are never better served than by yourself! Or the one who is suing the French state for inaction in climate matters with the Affair of the Century and its 2.4 million petitioners. Or the one who spontaneously takes the floor in self-supported citizen consultations on the world after the first confinement, in an atmosphere of consultative strike by the government and dumbfounding of the rest of the population.

“

The 4th power is not the power of the press. It’s the people’s

“

The 4th power is not the power of the press. It is that of the people. Of the people-king. Alongside the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. A participative power, which awaits its chambers of expression, its methods of action, its rights of interference, its decision-making legitimacy. In short, the figure of the citizen deserter, vigilant or actor of the 21st century coexists with that of the citizen voter of the last century. Wanting to treat this new political persona, and its plural avatars (we bet moreover that other profiles will soon emerge) as a legitimist citizen of representative democracy, is to mislead electoral sociology. And it is to be mistaken in the solutions to be implemented, whether it is a matter of changing institutional rules, strengthening parliamentary work, changing the constitution or changing the constitution.

Political regimes are now characterized less by their constitutional architecture (presidential or parliamentary system, bipartisan or multipartisan, upper and lower chambers, etc.) than by the blocking capacities of civil society. To avoid a decline in politics or an over-reaction of regressive direct democracy (the uncontrolled Citizens’ Initiative Referendum), it is urgently necessary to recreate a bond of intimacy between the citizen and his representatives.

This link goes through a deep knowledge of the experience of the French, first of all. By a co-construction of public policies which leaves the register of the exceptional to become a political habitus, then. By changing voting methods beyond the uninominal vote and the plebiscite referendum, certainly (conditioning the holding of a referendum on a prior debate, questioning the how rather than the what, voting by qualified majority, voting by repetition to confirm a referendum result, etc.).

“

It will then be a question of imagining a permanent and ritualized democracy

“

To ensure that the democratic act comes out of the hemicycle to enter people’s daily lives, finally. Let democracy renounce its solemn abstraction and its games of shadows. Let it become invisible, with a minimal theatricality, that of assemblies, agoras, documentary screenings, lunch debates, political feasts, civic festivals, civic causes and local micro actions. It will then be a question of imagining a permanent and ritualized democracy. Even festive and sacred. But that’s another story…