Political competition and representation in municipal councils

Christophe Lévêque

Local Government Studies, 2025, vol. 51, issue 2, 229-260

Abstract: I study whether the numbers of high- and low-social status-individuals in French municipal councils are affected by the level of political competition. I argue that because the most-eligible positions within lists of candidates are obtained by high-social-status persons, political competition increases the number of high-status municipal councilors and is thus detrimental to the election of low-social-status candidates. Using the elections of 2008 and 2014, I provide suggestive evidence that the socioeconomic status of individuals is indeed correlated with their position within lists of candidates. Moreover, I show that the presence of an additional competing list during an election is associated with 0.2 additional high-social-status individuals within the municipal councils. I also observe that those additional municipal councilors are males, which is a result that might have been caused by the gender quota policy implemented in French local elections.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2024.2350627 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:51:y:2025:i:2:p:229-260

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/flgs20

DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2024.2350627

Access Statistics for this article

Local Government Studies is currently edited by Helen Hancock

More articles in Local Government Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().