Dealing in Green Votes: France, 1993

Abstract

Conditions In The Market For Votes Have Changed throughout Europe in recent years. Markets which for much of the post-war period were characterized chiefly by voter loyalty to governing parties and plausible challengers to them, have latterly been subject to significant elements of uncertainty and fragmentation. Not only have votes been switched with increasing rapidity, they have also been cast increasingly for parties which lie outside hitherto established frameworks of electoral politics. Perceived governing incompetence has dearly been a major factor in this transformation, but broader social change has also played a part. The consequence is that European electoral markets present increasingly open terrain for party political competition. Not for many years have possibilities for market entrance been as good.