Mode de scrutin, offre électorale et participation électorale

Pierre-Henri Bono () and Sylvain Brouard ()
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Pierre-Henri Bono: CEVIPOF - Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Sylvain Brouard: CEVIPOF - Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Starting with the 2014 municipal elections, the French multi-member majority voting system with panachage (vote-splitting) was replaced by a parity list proportional representation system with a majority bonus in municipalities with 1,000 inhabitants or more. This reform of the electoral system can be considered a quasi-natural experiment, given the population threshold chosen. Despite using a comparable methodology—and contrary to the expectations of classical theory regarding the effects of proportional representation—a decline in voter turnout (both nominal and effective) was observed. This article shows that the direct and indirect effects of the introduction of proportional representation were conditioned by the original electoral system, the competitiveness of the elections, and the specific characteristics of candidacies under proportional representation, as well as by the level of available resources. Far from being trivial, taking these dimensions into account—or, on the contrary, ignoring them—has concrete and potentially opposite effects on the consequences of reforms of electoral rules and electoral systems.

Keywords: participation; voting methods; municipal elections; proportional representation; multi-member majority voting system with panachage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05-13
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Published in Revue Française de Science Politique, 2026, Vol. 76 (1), pp.7-43. ⟨10.3917/rfsp.761.0007⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05657631

DOI: 10.3917/rfsp.761.0007

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