Arnaud Benedetti is associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne University. He is editor-in-chief of the political and parliamentary review. He has published
Le coup de com 'permanent
(ed. Du Cerf, 2018) and
La Fin de la com'
(ed. Du Cerf, 2017).
FIGAROVOX.- The Republicans announced yesterday, at the exit of a strategic committee, that the militants will have to choose between open primary and closed primary, in a vote on September 25. Isn't it adventurous to let activists make this choice?
Arnaud BENEDETTI. -
The Republicans think to solve their problem of supply and incarnation via the device of the primaries.
The reality is that as much in 2016 it was a question of deciding between strong brands (Juppé, Sarkozy, Fillon) having an unquestionable authorization to claim to be “presidential”, as this time the competing brands appear. less convincing, less empowered, suffering from a lack of legitimacy as to their “presidentiality”.
Question of course, of generation also undoubtedly.
As for relying on the militants to decide on the format of the primaries, this reflects several things: the difficulty of the general staff to reach an agreement - which
at least
betrays
poor governance and great uncertainty. It is hardly surprising that a training has a political line cut by activists, but that organizational engineering issues are submitted to the members, this is what says the very great fragility of the party leadership for which it is the responsibility in the first place. to set the rules of the game. There is here a feeling of uncertainty as if we were trying to gain time, to delegate to the activist base, for lack of decision-making capacity, the destiny of a brand whose capacity to projecting the presidential election into the short term proved to be almost inextricable. It is also the means of perhaps reactivating party "patriotism" - by betting on the trauma of the 2016 open primary and anticipating the choice by the vote of the activists ofa closed primary, which would nevertheless limit the legitimacy base of the winner, mechanically strengthening Xavier Bertrand's position to stay out.
The Republicans' problem has been the same since 2017: they are nothing more than a local franchise whose municipal, departmental and regional successes testify to the territorial solidity, but they are no longer able to represent or represent themselves nationally.
Arnaud Benedetti
In an interview with Le Figaro, Jean Leonetti, who was commissioned to think about the system of separation between the candidates of his camp for the presidential one, declared: "I plead for a semi-open primary to the militants and to the sympathizers". What does this mean in concrete terms?
The whole question is to know how one defines and characterizes a sympathizer, undoubtedly by the adhesion to a charter of values and the minimum payment of an entry fee. How can we prevent the operating mode from turning
de facto
into an open primary? Anyway, Jean Leonetti expresses the concern to broaden the base of legitimacy of the one who would emerge victorious from this competition in order to try to bring Xavier Bertrand to adopt this mode of designation. Pain lost at this stage since the president of Hauts-de-France does not want it and has affirmed his determination to dig his furrow outside the parties, in the very Gaullian figure of the meeting of man and people, to like what Emmanuel Macron did in 2017.
Read also Jean Leonetti: "If Xavier Bertrand refuses the primary, he will appear as a dissenting candidacy"
The risk of Leonetti's proposal is to complicate the perception of the game, to arouse the feeling of generating a "gas factory" device ... The Republicans' problem has been the same since 2017: they are no more than a local franchise. whose municipal, departmental and regional successes testify to the territorial solidity, because relying on a resistant and well-established network of elected officials, but they are no longer able to represent or represent themselves nationally, grieved as they are by Emmanuel Macron on one side, Le Pen on the other. They must invalidate this essentially sounding perception, therefore fragile by nature, but tenacious nonetheless. And divisions between Republicans in the walls or in a
hinterland
, like Valérie Pécresse, and those outside the walls, like Xavier Bertrand are the product of this representation of a national scene dominated by the President of the Republic and the leader of the National Rally.
The “media-sounding” construction is fraught with practical effects.
The primaries are in their own way a symptom of the desacralization of power and the downgrading of politics, at least in the national imagination.
Arnaud Benedetti
A candidate elected by the militants alone - in the event of a closed primary - does he not risk representing too much minority ideas in French opinion?
Once again, this is the problem. The risk of a primary, closed, open, semi-open, in all cases is to ossify a political line and hinder its ability to unite thereafter. Even François Fillon in 2016 was elected, despite a large participation, on a fairly divisive line, even if he subsequently owed his defeat much more to circumstances than to his program. Benoît Hamon on the socialist side was the product of a happy vote but without the capacity to expand.
The problem of the primaries in France comes from the very relative weight, on a historical level, of the partisan organizations which were never really mass formations. In any case, the primaries are an object which appears in national political life when there arises in public opinion this feeling of a hiatus between the monarchical demands of the presidential function under the 5th and a form of insufficiency of the political personnel. to embody the immensity of the load. The primaries are in their own way a symptom of the desacralization of power and the downgrading of politics, at least in the national imagination.
Will there be two candidates from the right, according to you - Xavier Bertrand and the winner of the primary?
The survival instinct will depend on the polls. Which is risky, and not healthy. Xavier Bertrand thought he could numb the competition by declaring himself early enough to marginalize his competitors. As we speak, he has not succeeded; Valérie Pécresse behind him and Michel Barnier not being, far from it, unhooked. If the hypothesis you are evoking were to occur, unless Marine Le Pen strongly unscrews or the President of the Republic collapses, it is not only the Republicans' chances that would be mortgaged for 2022 but also the sustainability of their brand. Hence the interest they have in agreeing for 2022 but also for after ...
