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The Urban-Rural Cleavage in Political Involvement: The Case of France*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Sidney Tarrow
Sidney Tarrow*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Abstract

Rural France is often seen as culturally isolated and politically uninvolved. Using a combination of community studies and survey evidence, one can show that the lack of declared interest in politics of rural Frenchmen seems to mean an absence of involvement in the party system rather than a passivity toward public life. Nevertheless rural France produces higher voting turnouts in local and national elections than are found in other sections or population groups.

The weakness of partisan involvement, as opposed to citizen involvement, seems to bespeak not merely apathy, but actual hostility, toward party politics. This political hostility is widespread among French workers but is politically more important among French peasants. Thus voting choices are less party-oriented precisely where urban-based campaign organizations are least effective. Local non-party notables therefore probably play a greater brokerage role in national election campaigns, and election results are less predictable than in the rural sectors of many other societies. The degree of antipartisanship in rural constituencies also seems to encourage candidates to avoid national party labels in election campaigns.

Three kinds of factors are suggested to account for both the high citizen involvement and the low partisan involvement: First, historically, the extension of the suffrage to the rural periphery long before the French party system was capable of the same kind of penetration may have habituated rural Frenchmen to the exercise of the vote in a non-partisan context. Second, the achievement of stable landholding for most peasants removes visible class conflict as a legitimizing factor for party organization, while an extensive interest group structure increases the tendency to keep informed, to participate, and to run for local office. Third, the political ecology of the French village both encourages high citizen involvement and discourages partisan involvement. While many of these factors are universal among peasant societies, the particular historical, sociological, and ecological configuration of the French village seems to produce a rural resident who is more informed and active than our inherited wisdom would suggest, but less partisan than are urban citizens with similar levels of involvement.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 341 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Suzanne Berger, Jean Blondel, Fred Greenstein, Mark Kesselman, Juan Linz and Laurence Wylie for comments on a draft of this paper.

References

1 Souchon, Michel, La Télévision des Adolescents (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1969.Google Scholar)

2 Tarrow, Sidney, Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), ch. 12Google Scholar.

3 See Campbell, Angus, et al, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960)Google Scholar; Chapter 14 offers strong support for this view. For Norway, see Valen, Henry and Katz, Daniel, Political Parties in Norway (London: Tavistock Publications, 1964), p. 27 Google Scholar. For southern Italy, see Tarrow, op. cit.

4 The major historical studies are surveyed in Moore, Barrington Jr., The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967)Google Scholar; in Mendras, Henri, La Fin des Paysans: Innovations et Changement dans l'Agriculture Française (Paris: S.É.D.É.I.S., 1967)Google Scholar; and in Wright, Gordon, Rural Revolution in France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar. These three studies and the following work, Fauvet, Jacques and Mendras, Henri, Les Paysans et la Politique dans la France Contemporaine (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Cahier #94; Paris: Colin, A., 1958), were especially useful in the preparation of this articleGoogle Scholar.

5 The major community studies are Wylie, Laurence, et al, Village in the Vaucluse 2nd Ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)Google Scholar; Wylie, Laurence, et al, Chanzeaux: A Village in Anjou (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morin, Edgar, Commune en France: La Métamorphose de Plodèmet (Paris: Fayard, 1967)Google Scholar; Bernot, Lucien & Blancard, Bernard, Nouville (Paris: Institut d'EthnoIogie, 1953)Google Scholar; and Pitt-Rivers, Julian, “Social Class in a French Village,” Anthropological Quarterly, 33, no. 1 (1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The major source of survey materials on the French peasantry are two issues of Sondages; “L'information chez les Agriculteurs,” 26, no. 1 (1964)Google Scholar; and “Les Agriculteurs Français, Conditions de Vie et Opinions,” 28, nos. 3–4 (1966)Google Scholar, to be cited below as IFOP (Institut Français d'Opinion Publique), (1964) and IFOP (1966).

7 Chaffard, Georges, Les Orages de Mai (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1968), p. 10 Google Scholar.

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10 Most of the village studies come from singular villages in relatively isolated parts of France: Roussillon (Wylie's Peyrane) in the Vaucluse, Plodèmet (Commune en France) on the tip of Brittany, Chanzeaux, virtually in the Vendée, and Magnac (“Social Class in a French Village”) far off in the Pyrénées. There is no “typical” French village, but life is probably much less isolated to the peasant in the Loire Valley, the North or the East of France.

11 “Le Retentissement des Événements de Mai 1968,” Sondages, 31, nos. 1–2 (1969), p. 13 Google Scholar.

12 Deutsch, Emeric, et al., Les Families Politiques dans la France d'Aujourd'hui (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1966), pp. 104–105 Google Scholar. In this survey, only twenty-seven percent of the peasants interviewed declared themselves to have “much” or “some” interest in politics, compared to thirty-five percent of the general population.

13 In Fauvet and Mendras, op. cit., p. 232.

14 Ehrmann, Henry, Politics in France (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1968), p. 100 Google Scholar.

15 For a general discussion of this problem in cross-national attitude research, and for a suggested attempt to solve it through the development of semi-projective interviewing techniques, see Greenstein, Fred L and Tarrow, Sidney, “Comparative Political Socialization: Explorations with a Semi-Projective Procedure,” Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics (Beverly Hills, California: 1971)Google Scholar.

16 The techniques explored in the citation above turned up a great deal of wariness and suspicion even in French pre-adolescents when they were interviewed on political subjects. For a brief description of some of these interviews, see Greenstein, Fred I. and Tarrow, Sidney, “Children and Politics in Britain, France and the United States: Six Examples,” Youth and Society, 2, no. 1, (September 1970), pp. 118–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The 1958, 1962 and 1969 results are summarized in Sondages, 31 (1969), nos. 1 and 2, p. 12 Google Scholar. The 1966 figures are from Deutsch, et al., Les Familles Politiques, loc. cit., pp. 104–05.

18 The standard source on this problem remains Philip Converse and Dupeux, Georges, “The Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (1962), p. 9 Google Scholar. Partisan identification in France was slightly higher in 1967 than it was in 1958, when Converse and Dupeux's data were collected, but was still lower than in most other countries. See, for example, Pierce, Roy and Barnes, Samuel H., “Public Opinion and Political Preferences in France and Italy,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the APSA, Los Angeles, September 8–12, 1970, p. 3 Google Scholar.

19 Deutsch, et al., op. cit., pp. 106–07.

20 The relevant American findings can be found in Angus Campbell, et al, op. cit., p. 405; for Germany, see Linz, Juan, “The Social Bases of West German Politics” Diss. Columbia University 1959, pp. 787–89Google Scholar; for Finland, see Pesonen, Pertti, An Election in Finland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 85 Google Scholar; and for Norway, see Valen and Katz, op. cit., p. 214.

21 For these points, see Sondages, 29, no. 3 (1967), p. 28 Google Scholar; and Kesselman, Mark, The Ambiguous Consensus (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1967), p. 136 Google Scholar; Piret, Jean, “L'opinion au début de l'année 1965,” in Revue Française de Science Politique, 15, no. 3 (1965), p. 536 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Lane, Robert E., Political Life: Why and How People Get Involved in Politics (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959), p. 300 Google Scholar, and Rokkan, Stein, Citizens, Elections, Parties (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1970), p. 355 Google Scholar.

23 IFOP (1966) pp. 64–65; see the account of this also in Mendras, op. cit., p. 275–79.

24 Lancelot, Alain, L'Abstentionisme Électorale en France (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Cahiers #162; Paris: A. Colin, 1968), pp. 195–97Google Scholar.

25 Lancelot, ibid., p. 190.

26 IFOP (1966) p. 83; and Goguel, François, Le Référendum d'Octobre et les Elections de Novembre, 1962 (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Cahiers #142; Paris: 1965), p. 239 Google Scholar; Sondages, 3, no. 3 (1969), p. 33 Google Scholar.

27 Campbell, et al., op. cit., p. 406; Pesonen, op. cit., p. 276; Valen and Katz, op. cit., p. 158; also see Linz, op. cit., p. 787.

28 Wylie, , Chanzeaux, p. 275 Google Scholar.

29 “Citizen Participation in Political Life: France,” International Social Science Journal, 12, no. 1 (1960), pp. 41–42 Google Scholar, for a description of the index used and pp. 45–47 for the data reported here.

30 Survey No. ER 170, provided by courtesy of the Roper Center for Opinion Research.

31 For a discussion of some of these problems, see Pierce and Barnes, “Public Opinion and Political Preferences in France and Italy,” op. cit., pp. 2–3.

32 Sondages, 28, no. 2 (1966), p. 14 Google Scholar.

33 See, for this point, Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard R. and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), p. 55 Google Scholar; Berelson, Bernard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F. and McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 128 ffGoogle Scholar; Campbell, et al.. The American Voter, op. cit., pp. 78 ff; Pesonen, An Election in Finland, op cit., pp. 82–83; Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1970), p. 428 Google Scholar.

34 For evidence about Communist identifiers, see Sondages, 29 (1967) no. 3, p. 47 Google Scholar. In any case, the risk involved in this procedure seems preferable to the risks involved in using declared party identification literally.

35 See Campbell, et al., The American Voter, op. cit., p. 83, for an examination of this problem.

36 Chaffard, Les Orages, op. cit., p. 145.

37 Jean Piret, loc. cit.

38 Sondages, 29 (1967), no. 3, p. 28 Google Scholar.

39 See Guy Michelat, “Attitudes et comportements politiques à l'automne 1962,” in Goguel, op. cit., pp. 254–264.

40 Ibid., p. 256 for the items composing this scale.

41 I am grateful to Guy Michelat for graciously providing me with the unpublished material presented in Tables 6 and 7.

42 This problem will be treated in detail in Tarrow, Sidney, The Grassroots in Italy and France: A Comparative Study of Elections, Parties and Elites (to be published, 1972)Google Scholar.

43 For some evidence on this point, see Kesselman, op. cit., French Politics, ed. Harrison, Martin (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1969), p. 182 Google Scholar; also see Gilli, J., “Les maires dans le département les Alpes-Mari-times,” in Revue Française de Science Politique 18, no. 3 (June, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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47 Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 78 Google Scholar.

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49 Luethy, Herbert, France Against Herself, 2nd ed.,(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1957), p. 34 Google Scholar.

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51 I am indebted for this insight to Aristide Zolberg. For an example see Dupeux, Georges, Aspects de l'Histoire Sociale et Politique du Loir-et-Cher, 1848–1914 (Paris and the Hague: Mouton & Co., 1962), Part IIIGoogle Scholar.

52 See, for example, Bardonnet, Daniel, Evolution de la Structure du Parti Radical (Paris: Edition Mont-chrestien, 1960), chap. 2Google Scholar.

53 IFOP (1964); on Italy, see Statistiche sul Mezzogiorno d'Italia, 1861–1961, (Rome: 1964), p. 797 Google Scholar.

54 See, for this information, Sondages 17 (1955) no. 3, p. 26, pp. 31–32, and p. 54 Google Scholar.

55 Sondages, 25 (1963) no. 3, p. 54 Google Scholar; IFOP (1964), p. 58, & p. 66.

56 IFOP (1964), p. 65 and Sondages 25 (1963), no. 3, p. 80 Google Scholar.

57 Sondages 17 (1955), no. 1, p. 39 Google Scholar.

58 Rokkan, op. cit., p. 89.

59 See Gordon Wright, op. cit., p. 19 and p. 213, n.17; also see Fauvet and Mendras, op. cit., pp. 232–37.

60 Wright, op. cit., p. 21 and p. 104, and Fauvet and Mendras, op. cit., pp. 231–52.

61 Linz, op. cit., p. 790.

62 IFOP (1964), p. 27 and IFOP (1966), p. 64.

63 IFOP (1966), p. 65; Mendras, op. cit., p. 270 and Wright, op. cit., pp. 149–150.

64 IFOP (1966), p. 44.

65 IFOP (1964), p. 64; Sondages 25 (1963), no. 2, p. 68 Google Scholar; IFOP (1964), p. 60 and p. 68.

66 Wright, op. cit., pp. 148–72; Mendras, op. cit., pp. 153–160; Wylie, et al., op. cit., p. 234 and Morin, op. cit., p. 66.

67 Rokkan, op. cit., p. 376.

68 Ehrmann, , Politics in France, pp. 21–27 Google Scholar.

69 Lancelot, op. cit., p. 200.

70 IFOP (1966), pp. 64–5; also see Ehrmann, op. cit., pp. 81–93.

71 Written communication to the author.

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