The French electoral and party system in comparative perspective

I will make a number of comments and remarks about the French electoral and party system and why it is an interesting case from a comparative perspective.

First, some simple facts (that you already know): there is a two-round system in France for both presidential and legislative elections. For presidential elections, France is similar to other countries: most of the presidential elections in the world are two rounds. But France is unique with respect to legislative elections. In fact, France is the only established democracy with a two-round system for legislative elections. Most of the literature is focused on legislative elections because, until recently, most established democracies did not have presidential elections. France is still perceived to be unique, but this may be changing as most of the new democracies adopted presidential elections (and a two-round system). I suspect that the next wave of research on the impact of electoral systems will focus on the impact of presidential elections.

I should also mention that, at the local level in France, there is an interesting variety of electoral rules: they have a proportional representation (PR) system for regional elections and a kind of mixed system for sub-national elections.

Now, the party system: If you count parties (like Duverger did and as most of the literature does), you have basically five parties in legislative elections and also five candidates (with more than 5 per cent of votes) in presidential elections. So, there are many parties in France (or many candidates for presidential elections). This is an interesting enigma because France has as many parties and candidates as typically there are in PR systems - and that seems to contradict Cox (1997). What explains the large number of parties in this two-round system?

I would like to say a few words now about France's electoral system from a theoretical perspective. I will confine myself to two authors who I think are most influential: Lijphart (1994) and Cox (1997). Lijphart is concerned with the distinction between PR and non-PR systems, consensual/majoritarian systems. Initially, Lijphart does distinguish first-past-the-post (FPTP) from other majoritarian systems, namely France and Australia. But, because his concern is with the distinction between PR and non-PR, most of the analysis groups France and Australia with FPTP systems....