Contenu du sommaire : Démocratie, territoires, élections

This paper proposes a multi-scaled analysis ofthe self-determination referendums. It showsthe great diversity of actors from the local tothe international level, and the articulationof different representations and strategies oneach scale. It concludes that the democraticideal projected in this kind of vote has to benuanced. Indeed, two factors seem to limit thecapacity of the self-determination referendumto allow the sovereign and direct affirmationof a people on a territory, a formal and apractical one. Concerning the formal factor, theself-determination referendum organizationneeds to solve three prior problems : whois the « people » who is going to vote ? on which territory ? and finally, who is going todefine « people » and territory and with which legitimacy ? Concerning the practical factor, the « right of peoples to self-determination » are embodied before and after the referendumin local diffusion of national and territorial ideology, and in a play of reciprocal validationsfrom UN and individually from each State in the frame of bilateral recognition. Thus, the birth of a new State by referendum is depending on the results of the vote as well as on the ability of local politicians, on the evolution of the international acceptation of self-determination principle and on the international political context.

In France, all communes of comparable population have an equal number of elected municipal officials. Such is not the case in Canada and the United States. Drawing from a sample of one hundred North American cities, the analysis reveals a large disparity in political representation. The number of municipal counsellors is most often lower than in France and the variation from one city to another can be important. With respectively 51 and 50 elected officials, New York (population 8.1 million) and Chicago (2.9 million) have the highest number of municipal counsellors in the United States. In North America, only Montréal has more with 64 for a population of 1.6 million. Paris has 163 for 2.1 million inhabitants. Dallas and Houston have only 14 elected officials, but the most extreme case is Los Angeles which with 15 for 4 millions residents, hence a ratio of 1 : 273 000. In 95 % of the cases, North American cities are divided into districts for electoral purposes, but a third of them have elected officials at the scale of the entire municipality.

As an island, Corsica is a finite territory where various political representations and power structures coexist, from the local to the European level. For this reason, Corsica is an important laboratory for electoral analysis. Indeed, an analysis of the voting areas in Corsica illustrates how these places still have insular logics and also to what extent they are able to integrate with continental logic, whether national or European. The aim of this paper is to analyse the mapping of corsican votes and to show their level of coherency or discontinuity for each poll from 2003 to 2005 (i.e. in chronological order : the referendum of July 6 2003 on the modification of the institutional organization of Corsica, the regional election of March 21 and 28 2004, the european election of June 13 2004 and the referendum on the European constitution on May 29 2005). The differences between regional and european elections leads one to think that the voting logics differ. Conclusions can be drawn from the various representations at the municipality (commune) scale. In addition to the multiple maps showing these results, spatial variations in the corsican vote can be ascertained whatever the different stakes of the polls. The electoral results showing the persistence of clannish behaviours will be highlighted in particular. The corsican clan system of clients and notables -however significant in the elections -gives birth to idiosyncrasies in every type of vote. The village remains the fundamental centre of personal identity, and local discontinuities are visible even for elections of european interest. On the other hand, this analysis reveals some exceptions to these traditional clannish patterns; that is to say identity-defined votes (regionalist/nationalist) and also votes which show a greater individualization of the public opinion (abstention, interest driven votes). These electoral behaviours are closer to average national voting strategies and are more evenly distributed on the island.

Political representation at the local scale belongs to the brazilian consolidation of representative democracy based on its territory. This process is giving a new role to the entire structure of the administration of municipalities, which is a consequence of the decentralization of the State budget. In this paper we ask two questions: first, what is the importance of the national territory organization to the unbalances identified in the political representation system? Here we analyze the brazilian representation system. Second, based on the consequences of the model of proportional representation adopted in the legislative of brazilian municipalities after the 1988 new Constitution, is the local scale relevant for the analyses of the representation and the democracy? The discussion of this problem gives the preeminence to the disproportion that is much larger in local spaces of political representation and is obscured by the enormous attention that the nation scale always receives. This frame shows the absence of geographical perspective when it is necessary to consider the functioning of political institutions as if these could work without the material basis of the society and the shape of its territory organization.

The electoral law is very important in Lebanon, however it is not the choice of the electoral system (majority or proportional) that is the most significant issue but the nature and the geographical and administrative dimensions of the electoral district. The character of the community of voters is one of the most influential factors in defining the electoral district. In principal, an « ideal» electoral law should be equitable (between communities), egalitarian (number of votes) and stable (for multiple legislative elections). However these criteria remain difficult to satisfy due to different community specifics and the internal political context. This article aims to clarify the principles behind the definition of electoral boundaries and its importance in the political and institutional system, and the importance of this in the evolution of democratic values in Lebanon. Do these electoral districts respect the territorial realities and the geographic distribution of the Lebanese communities? What relations exist between the political electoral boundaries and the administrative boundaries? Two successive legislative elections were organised in 2000 and in 2005 based on the electoral law of 2000. The objective of this article is to present how this electoral law violated the internal administrative borders in Lebanon -the law does not reflect the representation of the population, in fact it exacerbates community tensions and presents an obstacle to territorial cohesion and national unity. Using a geo-political approach, we will propose some criteria to modify to the geographical and political boundaries of the electoral districts.

As all the other countries in the South, the Ivory Coast was invited to engage, in the early 90s, in a process meant to restructure its mode of governance to bring it closer to what countries in the North regard as a universal model : western-style democracy. At the same time, the Ivory Coast had to build a form of national identity within borders inherited from colonization. The task proved so arduous that it led to the country's implosion. The analysis of the misunderstandings and incomprehensions, both actual and feigned, which surrounded the setting up of the democratic process in the Ivory Coast raises the issue of the relevance of the transplant and suggests a re-reading of precolonial history – including that derived from the oral tradition – in an attempt to understand the causes of the rejection by exploring other modes of human government while keeping our ethnocentrism at bay.

In 1989, when the communist political regime collapsed, Romania was considered the country that had faced the most ferocious dictatorship of the entire East – European block of communist countries. The freedom won in 1989 has induced radical changes, the post – revolution period representing a race against time in the attempt to pass over many handicaps. At the beginning, the democratic one was the most difficult of all. The enthusiasm of the electing population that took part in the free democratic elections in May 1990 gradually faded away until the next elections. This raises the following question: Isn't democracy faulted? The Romanian transition has many specificities and it is obvious that the economic transition affects and influences the democratic one. The political class plays a major part in shaping the policies that an economy, a society must follow. The lack of political will in accomplishing the political, fiscal and economic decentralization has caused numerous delays, contradictions and endless political debates. The spatial implications of the democratic transition can be noticed at different scales even if they are not totally functional. We refer here to a political will and to the understanding of democracy, decentralization representing the key to solve out many problems, of participative democracy included. The new Romanian society relies on the new juridical and economic relations created after 1990. Liberalism has had a major impact. It is only the mentality of people and of the political class that has to undergo more changes.