Olivier Costa, Tinette Schnatterer, Sylvain Brouard, Eric Kerrouche
Centre Emile Durkheim – Sciences Po Bordeaux
The relationship between French members of the National Assembly and citizens is paradoxical. On the one hand, the French political culture (E. Siéyès), constitution and history are favouring a very abstract conception of representation: MPs are supposed to incarnate collectively the French Nation, and they are not supposed to mention their territorial linkage or to advocate for local interests. French MPs are called to be very autonomous agents of an abstract French people.
However, on the other hand, they are very much present in their constituency and express a great level of satisfaction being there. Because of the “cumul des mandats” (90 of French MPs are also exerting one or several local or regional elected positions), of French electoral rules and of National Assembly global weakness, MPs are powerful actors in their constituency. Most of them thus pay more attention to constituency work than to work in the chamber.
Surprisingly, this topic remains much under-researched. In order to understand how French MPs conciliate the national and local dimensions of their mandate, we will use the data of two wide surveys based on face-to-face interviews with more than half of the MPs: the Cayrol, Parodi and Ysmal project of 1969 and the LEGIPAR project of 2010.
