Published Papers by Simon Persico
French Politics, 2017
The 2017 presidential election represents a turning point in French electoral politics. It was ma... more The 2017 presidential election represents a turning point in French electoral politics. It was marked by the poor performance of the main governing parties' candidates and the victory of political newcomer Emmanuel Macron. More surprisingly, four candidates with clearly distinct policy lines were neck and neck in the first round. This article sheds light on this outcome and assesses its consequences for the French party system. We sketch alternative scenarios regarding the format and content of the emerging party system. Using geometrical analyses on data from the French Election Study 2017 (Gougou and Sauger 2017), we show that the current political space is structured by two main conflict dimensions: the first and dominating dimension sets an anti-immigration/authoritarian pole against a pro-immigration/libertarian pole; the second pits an ecologist/interventionist pole against a productivist/neoliberal pole.
L a campagne pour l'élection présidentielle de 2007 en France a vu l'environnement faire intrusio... more L a campagne pour l'élection présidentielle de 2007 en France a vu l'environnement faire intrusion dans les propositions de la plupart des candidats. Nicolas Sarkozy et Ségolène Royal sont, en particulier, tous deux intervenus à plusieurs reprises sur le sujet pendant la campagne, dans leurs discours et dans des tribunes publiées dans la presse 1 . Ils ont tous deux signé, deux mois avant le premier tour, le Pacte écologique de Nicolas Hulot -pour eux à la fois une garantie que l'ancien animateur de télévision ne se présenterait pas et une manière de renforcer leur profil pro-environnemental aux yeux des électeurs.
Faiblesse politique et dynamisme social Les élections régionales de 2015 devaient constituer une ... more Faiblesse politique et dynamisme social Les élections régionales de 2015 devaient constituer une opportunité unique pour les écologistes. Avec l'organisation de la conférence de Paris sur le climat du 30 novembre au 12 décembre 2015 (COP21), tous les voyants étaient au vert pour faire de la protection de l'environnement un thème majeur de la campagne électorale. Le précédent des européennes de 2009, lorsque la diffusion deux jours avant le scrutin du film Home de Yann Arthus-Bertrand à la télévision avait favorisé Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV), laissait envisager un redressement des écologistes après une succession de scrutins difficiles. La mobilisation des associations environnementalistes pendant la COP21 allait également dans ce sens.
Empirical assessments of issue competition lack both conceptual precision in the use of the conce... more Empirical assessments of issue competition lack both conceptual precision in the use of the concept of “policy issue”, and sufficient studies integrating both salience and positional perspectives. This article specifies an operational definition of a “policy issue” suited for the analysis of issue competition in the electoral arena and beyond, and proposes a typology of electoral issues that takes into account the two sides of issue competition – the decision to address an issue, and the adoption of a diverging or similar position on it. This typology allows distinguishing proprietal, consensual, blurred and conflictual issues. The framework is illustrated with an analysis of EU-related issues in the electoral manifestos of British, French and German parties. This source did not enable us to identify any blurred issue, but our exploratory study delivers several conclusions regarding the other issue types. Proprietal issues appear to be marginal, indicating that parties tend to devote attention to the same issues and that issue ownership is highly contested. We further observe a primacy of consensus in EU-related discourses, especially among governing parties.
French Politics, 2013
Contestation over European integration, pauses and crises, as well as growing evidence of its pol... more Contestation over European integration, pauses and crises, as well as growing evidence of its political and social implications, has drawn scholars' attention to the question of the politicization of the European Union (EU) at the domestic level. This article argues in favour of complementing the existing literature on the spatial competition over EU-related issues with a study of the salience and diversity of these issues. We illustrate the potentialities of such an approach, drawing on the examples of French, British and German parliamentary parties between 1986 and 2009. Our study of electoral manifestos generates two main conclusions. First, as patterns of attention to Europe fluctuate considerably over time and tend to follow systemic dynamics, the resonance and political consequences of party discourses over integration will depend on the presence of political parties able and willing to push the EU onto the electoral agenda. Second, the EU gives rise to distinct issue emphases in each country and in each party, resulting from the 'domestication' of European debates by parties. This observation suggests that we should be cautious with regard to the location of domestic parties along a single, transnational dimension that opposes Europhiles and Eurosceptics, as the EU does not enter domestic agendas in the same form everywhere.
Revue française de science politique, 2014
Doctoral Thesis by Simon Persico
Ce travail étudie la réaction des grands partis de gouvernement, ceux qui alternent à la tête... more Ce travail étudie la réaction des grands partis de gouvernement, ceux qui alternent à la tête des exécutifs nationaux, face au développement d’un nouveau clivage entre Écologie et Productivisme dans les démocraties occidentales, depuis les années 1960. Pour ce faire, il développe un modèle théorique qui croise la théorie des clivages et les théories de la compétition sur enjeux. Selon ce modèle, la stratégie idéale des grands partis de gouvernement devrait être de neutraliser le nouveau clivage, en refusant d’accorder leur attention aux enjeux qui le constituent, en les cadrant de manière générale et liée aux clivages historiques sur lesquels ils se sont fondés, et en prenant des positions qui n’impliquent pas le conflit avec leurs adversaires. L’opérationnalisation empirique de cette recherche combine la comparaison – large dans le premier chapitre empirique, puis resserrée sur la France et le Royaume-Uni par la suite – et les méthodes mixtes – quantitatives et qualitatives. Le premier résultat de cette thèse est que les grands partis de gouvernement s’avèrent, pour l’essentiel, incapables de mener à bien cette stratégie idéale. L’attention qu’ils accordent au thème environnemental dans leurs programmes s’est considérablement accrue et ils ont dû mettre en avant de multiples nouveaux enjeux environnementaux. La seule manière à travers laquelle ces partis parviennent à atténuer le potentiel disruptif de l’écologie consiste à adopter des positions qui n’impliquent pas le conflit : les enjeux qui suscitent le désaccord entre eux sont nettement minoritaires. Toutefois, plusieurs facteurs expliquent les variations des réactions partisanes : l’agenda de l’environnement dans les médias et les mouvements sociaux, la gravité du problème écologique, le positionnement sur l’axe gauche-droite et les divisions internes. D’autres éléments ont un effet limité : ni les conditions économiques, ni la position institutionnelle du parti, ni, surtout, la menace posée par les concurrents écologistes ne semblent affecter le traitement des enjeux environnementaux par les grands partis de gouvernement. Que les facteurs sociaux et environnementaux aient plus d’influence que les explications relatives à la dynamique interne de la compétition politique rend d’autant plus pertinente une approche centrée sur les clivages.
Mots-clés : clivages, compétition sur enjeux, partis politiques, environnement, France, Royaume-Uni
This thesis studies how big governing parties, i.e, parties that access prime-ministerial positions, have reacted to a new cleavage dividing Ecology and Productivism in advanced industrial democracies since the 1960s. To do so, it builds a new theoretical model that associates cleavage theory and issue competition theories. According to this model, big governing parties’ ideal strategy should lead them to neutralize the new cleavage, by granting little attention to the diverse environmental issues that form the new cleavage, by framing those issues in relation to the historical cleavages on which they are funded, and by taking positions that imply no direct conflict with their opponents. The research design rests on comparison – on a large scale in the first empirical chapter, and then focused on France and the UK – and mixed methods – both quantitative and qualitative. The study concludes that big governing parties mostly fail to follow their ideal strategy. Their attention to the environmental theme has grown considerably over the last four decades, and they have had to deal with numerous new environmental issues that have no connection to the old cleavages. The only way these parties have been able to prevent the expansion of conflict is by taking consensual positions on those issues. There are very few environmental issues on which big governing parties disagree. Yet, many factors explain variations in parties’ reactions: the environmental agenda in the media and in social movements, the severity of environmental degradation, the left-right position of parties and internal divisions. Other variables have limited effect: the macroeconomic situation, incumbency, and, more surprisingly, the threat posed by green party challengers do not seem to affect big governing parties’ politicization of the environment. The fact that social and environmental factors matter more than explanations based on party competition’s internal dynamics upholds a cleavage-based approach.
Key words : cleavages, issue competition, political parties, environment, France, United Kingdom
Papers by Simon Persico
22nd International Conference of Europeanists, Jul 9, 2015
Revue française de science politique, 2015
The politicisation of environmental issues and the development of green parties since the early 1... more The politicisation of environmental issues and the development of green parties since the early 1970s have challenged the position of the major governing parties: how have they reacted to this challenge? Have they tried to dodge the new environmental questions, or have they rather fought the greens on their own turf, by emphasising these issues in their campaigns? To answer those questions, this article studies the salience of the environment in the electoral manifestos of 58 parties in 20 OECD countries since the early 1960s. It shows that the salience of the environment has strongly increased over the period in question; it also sheds light on the role of left-right positioning and of the threat posed by green parties in explaining the reactions of the major governing parties.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jul 18, 2019
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Feb 1, 2021
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Presses de Sciences Po eBooks, Oct 31, 2019
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Published Papers by Simon Persico
Doctoral Thesis by Simon Persico
Mots-clés : clivages, compétition sur enjeux, partis politiques, environnement, France, Royaume-Uni
This thesis studies how big governing parties, i.e, parties that access prime-ministerial positions, have reacted to a new cleavage dividing Ecology and Productivism in advanced industrial democracies since the 1960s. To do so, it builds a new theoretical model that associates cleavage theory and issue competition theories. According to this model, big governing parties’ ideal strategy should lead them to neutralize the new cleavage, by granting little attention to the diverse environmental issues that form the new cleavage, by framing those issues in relation to the historical cleavages on which they are funded, and by taking positions that imply no direct conflict with their opponents. The research design rests on comparison – on a large scale in the first empirical chapter, and then focused on France and the UK – and mixed methods – both quantitative and qualitative. The study concludes that big governing parties mostly fail to follow their ideal strategy. Their attention to the environmental theme has grown considerably over the last four decades, and they have had to deal with numerous new environmental issues that have no connection to the old cleavages. The only way these parties have been able to prevent the expansion of conflict is by taking consensual positions on those issues. There are very few environmental issues on which big governing parties disagree. Yet, many factors explain variations in parties’ reactions: the environmental agenda in the media and in social movements, the severity of environmental degradation, the left-right position of parties and internal divisions. Other variables have limited effect: the macroeconomic situation, incumbency, and, more surprisingly, the threat posed by green party challengers do not seem to affect big governing parties’ politicization of the environment. The fact that social and environmental factors matter more than explanations based on party competition’s internal dynamics upholds a cleavage-based approach.
Key words : cleavages, issue competition, political parties, environment, France, United Kingdom
Papers by Simon Persico
Mots-clés : clivages, compétition sur enjeux, partis politiques, environnement, France, Royaume-Uni
This thesis studies how big governing parties, i.e, parties that access prime-ministerial positions, have reacted to a new cleavage dividing Ecology and Productivism in advanced industrial democracies since the 1960s. To do so, it builds a new theoretical model that associates cleavage theory and issue competition theories. According to this model, big governing parties’ ideal strategy should lead them to neutralize the new cleavage, by granting little attention to the diverse environmental issues that form the new cleavage, by framing those issues in relation to the historical cleavages on which they are funded, and by taking positions that imply no direct conflict with their opponents. The research design rests on comparison – on a large scale in the first empirical chapter, and then focused on France and the UK – and mixed methods – both quantitative and qualitative. The study concludes that big governing parties mostly fail to follow their ideal strategy. Their attention to the environmental theme has grown considerably over the last four decades, and they have had to deal with numerous new environmental issues that have no connection to the old cleavages. The only way these parties have been able to prevent the expansion of conflict is by taking consensual positions on those issues. There are very few environmental issues on which big governing parties disagree. Yet, many factors explain variations in parties’ reactions: the environmental agenda in the media and in social movements, the severity of environmental degradation, the left-right position of parties and internal divisions. Other variables have limited effect: the macroeconomic situation, incumbency, and, more surprisingly, the threat posed by green party challengers do not seem to affect big governing parties’ politicization of the environment. The fact that social and environmental factors matter more than explanations based on party competition’s internal dynamics upholds a cleavage-based approach.
Key words : cleavages, issue competition, political parties, environment, France, United Kingdom