Another presidential election. Elect the Head of State by indirect suffrage in Europe
Another presidential election. Electing the Head of State by indirect suffrage in Europe, Montrouge, Éditions du Bourg, 2020, 202 p.
Under the direction of Fabien Conord (Clermont Auvergne University)
At the dawn of the French presidential campaign, it is worth recalling that the President of the Republic was not always elected by direct universal suffrage under the Fifth Republic. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when the Fourth Republic was not yet born, General de Gaulle drew, in a speech in Bayeux on June 16, 1946, the features of what our current Constitution would be twelve years later. He then takes care to specify that “the executive power cannot proceed [from Parliament]”, adding that “it is […] from the Head of State […] elected by a college which includes Parliament but is much broader […] what should the executive power do”. In 1958, “the President of the Republic was elected […] by an electoral college comprising the members of Parliament, the general councils and the assemblies of the Overseas Territories, as well as the elected representatives of the municipal councils” (article 6 , paragraph 1(C). Parliamentarians represent less than 1% of the electoral college. The break with the previous regimes was consummated in the name of the effective separation of powers imposed by the constitutional law of June 3, 1958. Michel Debré justified before the Council of State, on August 27, 1958, the reasons for this choice, the verticality of presidential power. The weight of the Overseas Territories, in particular Algeria, and the risk of seeing the very influential Communists arbitrate the presidential election lead to caution.
Starting from the origins of the Third Republic, this history is retraced by the book edited by Fabien Conord: Another presidential ballot. Elect the Head of State by indirect suffrage in Europe. Published in 2020, it is the result of a symposium organized in Vichy on November 28 and 29, 2019. Bringing together historians and publicist lawyers, through twelve contributions, this study analyzes the rules, dynamics and consequences of the election by suffrage indirect from the Head of State in France and also abroad. The long experience of the Third Republic justifies five texts being devoted to it, without forgetting the Fourth and the beginning of the Fifth Republics. This is followed by politico-partisan reflections and a comparative section. Fabien Conord recalls on this subject that apart from the hypothesis of a parliamentary monarchy, the Head of State, in Europe and beyond, is most often elected by indirect suffrage. This voting method takes nothing away from presidential authority, or even authoritarianism (Cuba, China, North Korea, Vietnam). The direct election does not correspond either to presidentialism “à la française”. If, in thirteen Member States of the European Union, the president is elected by direct suffrage, his attributions remain those of the head of state of a classic parliamentary system where the reality of power is mainly concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister. Fabien Conord further remarks that the number of women indirectly elected to the supreme office has increased significantly since the 1980s, but their limited powers make them “mutatis mutandis, modern forms of Marianne”.
Under the Third Republic, the president was elected by the two chambers of Parliament united in the “National Assembly”, soon nicknamed “Congress” because of the number of parliamentarians present. The large hemicycle – built within the Palace of Versailles in 1875 to house the Chamber of Deputies before the transfer of public powers to Paris in 1879 – became the seat of the Congress where the fourteen presidents of the Third Republic would be elected. The ritual of a timed transhumance then sets in between the capital and the residence of the kings of France. The telephone arrived in 1899 and in 1906 the telegraph network of Congress made it possible to send 450,000 words per hour. A multitude of anecdotes reveal behind the scenes of this great democratic meeting. The Congress session is regularly interspersed with “Vive le Roi!” launched by right-wing parliamentarians. The place is probably no stranger to it. In 1913, however, came from the ranks of the left of the "Vive la Commune!" “There is therefore a lot of shouting at Versailles, but these exclamations do not really disturb the proper ordering of the ballot” (Arnaud-Dominique Houte).
The press follows the event as closely as possible. The presidential election is then an opportunity to understand in the columns of La Croix the complex relationship between the Republic and the Church. In 1887, preoccupied by the candidacy of the anticlerical Jules Ferry, the Catholic newspaper did not see that of Sadi Carnot coming. Indulging in the game of predictions like his colleagues, he denounces the vanity of Congress compared to "a flock of dead leaves that do not know where they are going or what they are doing". Denouncing a secularized political class, he wondered during the Congress of June 28, 1894: “Only how many have heard mass? ". La Croix denounces more broadly “universal suffrage, parliamentarism, and above all the influence of Masonic lodges and secularist laws which cut[ent] France from God” (Jacqueline Lalouette). For the socialists, hostile to the principle of the presidential election, the prospect of a victory for Jules Ferry would lead, according to Le Cri du Peuple, to a new Commune.
In December 1895, led by Jaurès, Guesde and Vaillant, the socialist group in the Chamber of Deputies called for the abolition of the presidency of the Republic. We have to wait until 1913 to see, with Édouard Vaillant, a first socialist candidacy which “constitutes in fact a new avatar of the deterioration of relations between socialists and radicals” (Gilles Candar). No socialist candidate will be able to win. Inaugurated in 1924, the communist candidacies, intended to better affirm the rejection of the Republic, follow the same path. With the Popular Front, the PCF firmly established itself in the French political landscape. “The Communist Party truly met the French nation during this period 1934-1938” (Jean Vigreux), without however influencing the last presidential election of the Third Republic in 1939. Embodying, after the war, the Resistance party , it reached its peak under the Fourth Republic until the beginning of the Fifth Republic. Representing 25% of the electorate in 1958, he constituted a threat dismissed by the constituent power, which was resolved by the formula of presidential election by indirect suffrage.
Politically, after the first presidential elections held according to a relatively consensual mode at the beginning of the Third Republic, that of 1887 ushered in a new, more competitive era. Involving Daniel Wilson, the president's son-in-law, the decorations affair pushes Jules Grévy to resign. Figure of the moderate Republicans, Jules Ferry is seen for a time as a favorite to succeed him. However, the right is divided about him after a part of the royalists ventures into an obscure maneuver to force him, without success, to marry religiously in the discreet living room of a Parisian apartment. From the Guesdist left to Paul Déroulède's League of Patriots, via the Boulangists, Ferry's opponents are in fact numerous. Pushed by the radicals, Sadi Carnot presents himself for lack of anything better in front of him. Dominated, Ferry withdraws at the end of the first round. Carnot logically wins in the second round of voting. Beyond the partisan quarrels, his victory is above all the failure of Ferry: “the Third Republic does not want a statesman at the Élysée” (Bertrand Joly).
The year 1920 was marked by two presidential elections. The only candidate after the withdrawal of Georges Clemenceau, on January 17, with 84.6% of the vote, Paul Deschanel becomes the most elected president of the Third Republic. Clemenceau could have won, but, slightly ahead in a preliminary vote at the Congress meeting (408 votes for Deschanel; 389 for Clemenceau), he withdrew, declaring that he did not want to "[try] to govern against a majority". In fragile health and a victim of overwork, Deschanel fell from a train on the night of May 23 and resigned on September 17. Supported by the National Bloc of which he was the craftsman, the outgoing President of the Council, Alexandre Millerand, was elected on September 20 with 695 votes against the socialist Gustave Delory. Strengthened by the exercise of power as President of the Council, he tried in vain to restore presidential authority. The defeat of the National Bloc in the legislative elections of May 1924 deprived it of parliamentary support. Having actively defended his camp during the campaign, he broke with the tradition of a certain neutrality resulting from the Grévy Constitution (elected President of the Republic in 1879 after the resignation of Mac-Mahon, Jules Grévy had declared that he did not want to hinder the action of Parliament). Victorious, the Cartel des Gauches pushed him to resign on June 11. “[T]he double presidential election of 1920 brought together two conceptions of the role of the President” (Fabienne Bock). The obliteration inherited from the crisis of May 16, 1877 could ultimately only prevail. However, the Cartel des Gauches did not succeed in imposing its candidate, Paul Painlevé, who had just been elected President of the Chamber of Deputies. Gaston Doumergue, radical president of the Senate and therefore from the non-cartelist left, was elected on June 13, 1924 with the support of part of the right. The causes of Doumergue's victory are similar to those of Millerand's resignation. “Painlevé, like Millerand before him, would have been considered as a President too committed to political struggles, on the side of the Cartel this time” (Jean-Étienne Dubois).
While the Fourth Republic perpetuated the tradition of presidential elections by Parliament, that of 1953 disrupted what had become a routine. The experience forged by practice led most of the time to deciding the name of the winner before the formal vote. On January 16, 1947, Vincent Auriol was elected on the first ballot. Between December 17 and 23, 1953, René Coty will be, at the end of the thirteenth ballot, the most poorly elected president in the history of the Republic. The Law on Affiliations of May 7, 1951 had transformed the National Assembly into a “hexagonal” chamber because it was divided into six parties of comparable weight. In 1953, the Congress was therefore divided between the PCF (116 seats), the SFIO (161), the RGR (171), the MRP (115), the CNIP (221), and the Gaullists (126). Added to this are the Overseas Independents (27) and the non-registered (9). The landscape is all the more fragmented as these formations are sometimes the result of heterogeneous political teams, like the RGR composed of pre-war Radicals, the UDSR which emerged from the resistance, and a few parties from the right. Marcel-Edmond Naegelen (SFIO) and the various CNIP candidates come out on top in each ballot. Although he was not a candidate, René Coty (CNIP) won 71 votes in the eleventh round before being elected in the thirteenth (477 votes). “[C]o-founder of the CNIP […], respected parliamentarian, […] marshalist who had distanced himself from Vichy in 1943, practicing Catholic, moderate republican and convinced Europeanist, [René Coty] offered guarantees that the interests of the [CNIP ] would always be taken into account at the head of the State” (Gilles Richard).
At the start of the Fifth Republic, the 1958 presidential election was like a constitutional UFO. Admittedly, the President of the Republic is elected by indirect universal suffrage, but by an electoral college inspired by that of the Senate where Parliament is insignificant. De Gaulle promises governmental stability and the resolution of the Algerian crisis. During the referendum of September 28, 1958, the "Yes" to the Constitution reached 79.25% of the votes. Faced with two candidates lacking in stature (the communist Georges Marrane and Albert Châtelet of the UFD, a marginal left-wing formation very hostile to the Fifth Republic), he is in fact the favourite. "The only unknown in the December 21 election remains the extent of the victory" (Bernard Lachaise). De Gaulle is elected with 78.51% of the votes.
Our history shows that presidential elections by indirect universal suffrage are not necessarily a sign of weakness. The opposition between a president subject to the parties under the Third and Fourth Republics, on the one hand, and the inauguration of presidentialism from the beginning of the Fifth Republic, on the other hand, is proof of this. It is therefore hardly surprising to see this dialectic abroad. In Germany, the direct election and the powers deemed too broad for the president contributed to Hitler's coming to power under the Weimar Republic. In reaction, the Bundespräsident is, since 1949, elected by the Bundesversammlug, an ad hoc federal assembly (article 54, al. 1 LF). It depends on the parties, which “allows them to control both the nomination of candidates and the election itself” (Mathieu Dubois). Closer to the French tradition of the Third and Fourth Republics, the Italian President is elected by the two chambers of Parliament meeting in Congress and delegates from the regions "so as to ensure the representation of minorities" (article 83, al. 2 C) . However, the conditions are more restrictive. A two-thirds majority is required in the first three rounds, then an absolute majority. Like Germany, “the head of state-people relationship being considered dangerous with regard to the fascist experience, the constituents reject any election by direct universal suffrage” (Franck Laffaille). The spirit of consensus linked to the voting system makes the president the embodiment of national unity. In the United States, the president is elected by the college of electors. The imperative mandate then confines to direct election. Above all, the first-past-the-post system can generate distortions. In 2016, a minority in votes, Donald Trump was elected because he was in the majority in the electors. This is not a first (Hayes in 1876, Harrison in 1888, Bush in 2000), but the difference in votes (2.8 million) is unprecedented. It's hard not to see a flaw in American democracy. It remains that this procedure symbolizes federalism, “the first founding element of the American system” (Arnaud Coutant). At the moment, the debate across the Atlantic is more about the certification of votes than the voting method. As Olivier Dard points out in his conclusion, the presidential election (direct or indirect) is "as much the high point as the pivot of French politics". Foreign examples seem to confirm this. In times of excessive media coverage, reading this other presidential election gives food for thought on our present and our future.
