Daniel Boy

Fifty Shades of Green? Political differences between elites, members and supporters of Europe Ecologie Les Verts

ABSTRACT In recent years, many political parties have created new forms of affiliation and have justified the blurring of membership boundaries with claims that sympathisers would be more representative of the electorate and less radical. Such claims are based on ‘popular wisdom’ inspired by John May’s ‘special law of curvilinearity’, which states that activists hold more extreme views than voters and elites. When this expectation has been tested, results have been at best inconclusive; but testing has so far never used a single survey to compare different groups. Using an online survey of Europe Ecologie Les Verts party members and their extended networks (affiliated supporters, lapsed members, sympathisers), relationships between ideological differences and degree of investment in party activities and decision-making are analysed. The results, contradicting May’s special law along all ideological dimensions other than intra-party democracy, can be explained if May’s narrowly instrumental assumptions about preference formation are rejected.

The Candidates: Crystallized Images

The French presidential election is more intensely personalized than any other election in the country. This is undoubtedly why turnout is always higher than for any other election. Commented on through opinion polls that provide information throughout the campaign, the race between the candidates is passionately followed by French voters and all the more so when the final result is uncertain. Academic debate surrounding the personalization of politics and, more broadly speaking, the question of how voters feel about candidates has been around for a long time. During the 2007 election campaign, the qualities attributed to the candidates by voters fueled media coverage and contributed to the final scores obtained by the candidates on polling day. The media controversy surrounding Segolene Royal’s perceived competence or lack of same provides a good example of this. Nicolas Sarkozy’s controversial personality also fueled a great deal of debate. During the campaign, a number of qualities and flaws were attributed to the main candidates which little by little contributed to the building of their public image. Analyses carried out on public opinion showed that these images differed palpably from one candidate to another and that they were influenced by campaign events. A given act carried out in public, a statement made or an attitude expressed shaped the candidates’ image either positively or negatively depending on how the public interpreted it.

The Decisive Influence of Image

There is no consensus in electoral sociology on the indicators and measurements of cognitive factors that are very often defined by the political awareness of voters (Hacker, 2004). Inspired by the work of George Marcus in particular, part of this type of research focuses on the role played by emotional factors in the determination of electoral choice. Work on the subject, which is on the borderline between analyses of political competence or awareness and political psychology, examines the explicative factors of voting behavior and the cognitive processes that lead people to vote. George Marcus’ work presents itself as an alternative approach to rational choice analyses and draws on the concept of the “affective intelligence” of voters defined as a mixture of reflex, emotional, and rational processes. According to George Marcus, the personality of the candidates as well as the mood and feelings aroused as the candidate becomes more familiar to the voter during the campaign are essential variables in the study of political awareness and opinions. He believes that citizens only manage to become familiar with what they feel to be likable and moving. The 2007 presidential election campaign in France provided a key moment to take these dimensions into account. The personality and image of the main candidates have rarely played such a central role or made it so necessary to take the voters’ “emotional intelligence” into account in explaining how their political opinions are shaped.

How the Risks of Nanotechnology Are Perceived

In the ongoing debate about new technologies, from bioethics to GMOs and nanotechnologies, risk perception – by individuals – is understood by opposition to objective assessment of risk – by science. The absence of objective risks and the presence of perceived risks are often stressed by one side or the other, the first by those who support the development of such technologies, the second by those who insist upon regulatory control.

The Green Movement

It is frequently claimed that the best electoral terrain for Green parties is to be found in Northern Europe. Germany is presented as the cradle of political ecology for several reasons: the Grunen had their first electoral successes there; this is where anti-nuclear movements succeeded in emerging onto political terrain with the programmed closure of German nuclear centers and finally, ecological civic-mindedness is thought to have a clear impact on the electoral behavior of German voters. In France, on the other hand, a country described as being impregnated with the chronic lack of civic spirit which characterizes the Latin countries, it is widely believed that ecology has not really become part of everyday mentalities. This is presented as the reason why the green party took root there only later and without managing to achieve the same degree of electoral success as it did in Germany. The critical comparison often goes further: the French Verts are said to be ecologists in name only as it is claimed that, in reality, they do not defend environmental values with sufficient fervor due to an overly exclusive attachment to Left and indeed Extreme-Left values. Whether rightly or wrongly, French ecologists are reproached with being more concerned with the traditional issues of the Left-Right struggle (equality of living conditions or refusal of discrimination, for example), than with environmental values. How true are these assertions? Does the history of ecological movements in Europe confirm that France has fallen behind on this issue?