Contenu du sommaire : Populations, élections, territoires

Political Representation of Territory and Town: From Theory to Practice. Territory has always been a basic channel for political, and more particularly, electoral representation : place for the expression of interests but, in the same time, place for discrimination. The development of formal democracy based on the principle One man = One vote has always had difficulties (practical as well as theoretical) to cope with the place of territory within representation's mechanisms. Starting with the Kleisthenes' reform, we shall recall how different theories of representation have consider territory, and then we shall illustrate our research with one more concrete example : the representations of the urban.

A Comparative Approach of Elections. The electoral geography can be widened today to a geography of democracy. Democracy overflows now out of the sphere of the Western States. A comparative approach of the elections becomes possible, notably due to a simplified access to the electoral data. This development initiates specific problems of signification to be given to the electoral results. The distinction between exchange vote, community vote or opinion vote is a possible way to compare democracy "here" and democracy "elsewhere". From "universal" democracy to "specific" democracy, the comparative approach of the elections opens the question of culturalism or ethnocentrism. In all cases, the democratic transition opens a new field of studies to geographers.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the dominant view in the Anglo-American democracies was that electoral geography was unimportant because improvements in mass communications had produced a national electorate (Agnew, 1987; Rose and McAllister, 1990). Although a geography of the vote was recognised (party support varied from place to place), there was, it was claimed, no geography of electoral behaviour. Individuals in the same social groups would vote the same way no matter where they lived. Electoral geography was an outcome of social geography. But the orthodoxy since the 1980s has shifted back to a recognition of geography's electoral role . Voters, recent research suggests, are influenced not just by who they are (their social class, party affiliation and so on) but also by where they are — by what is happening around them.

National Front vote 1984-2002, Changing Geographies and Interpretations: a Political Equation. At the French presidential election of 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen, extreme right candidate, receives 16,86 % of the vote cast, is second- placed, eliminates Lionel Jospin, Socialist Party candidate and out-going Prime Minister, and takes on Jacques Chirac in the second round. In 28 years, since 1974, date when the National Front appears in the present form, its rise has been spectacular but the geographies and sources of Le Pen vote have changed. These often profound modifications in geography and voting behaviour are placed in context, for which interpretations are offered in the article.

Vote and Urban Gradient : the New Territories of 2002 Presidential Election. By a recomposition of the results of the 2002 presidential election according to the distance to the principal French urban areas, this article insists on the importance of the "urban gradient" as an explanatory element of the vote. The analysis of the results of the main candidates shows that the vote is strongly influenced by the distance to the main cities. This factor remains important once the effects of the social component has been neutralized by the Johnston model. If the explanations through the rural/urban opposition are well known, the periurban areas seem a new zone with a strong electoral stake where the inhabitants-voters, pushed by numerous motivations, voted strongly for the extreme right. Assumptions concerning this protesting vote are thus proposed.

Maps and Elections : The Construction of Electoral Districts in the USA. Decennal census-led redistricting in the United States is the occasion for court actions focused nowadays on the political representation of ethnic minorities. Computer tools make possible the building of districts specifically tailored for Blacks or Hispanics, but blatant racial gerrymandering is now rejected by the US Supreme Court. This paper examines the most relevant judicial decisions and describes several local cases.

From Local to National, the Democratic Consolidation in Brazil. In the last years of the 20th century, most countries in Latin America made a return to democracy. The practice of regular and plural elections is the most visible sign of this renewal. Brazil, in many aspects, appears as a model of re-democratization in Latin America, not only for adopting the direct universal vote for all levels of political representation, from the Municipal Assemblies to the Presidency of the Republic, but also for its capacity to remove from office a corrupt president on impeachment, and for the practice, recent though it is, of a real political alternation in the country's command. In this article, we investigate the relation between the electoral system and the territory, in a country so vast and with huge economic and social contrasts. The geographical and cartographical analysis of the electoral results allows a better understanding of how the connection between the local and national elections is established.

Reconstruction of the Politics in Romania, From Consensus to Majority. The emergence from the totalitarian communism is longer and more complex than the simple restructure of the political institutions and the organisation of plural elections. The east-European societies are still missing the practise of democracy and the high level of socio-economical disparities originated by the transition pull down the population trust in the ability of the politics to assure a collective balance of powers. Lacking of a real democratically life, even before the Second World war, these countries are adopting fast reforms that do not allow them a radically re-adaptation. The parties' instability, their doctrinal vagueness and their strong dependency of the business circles are the reasons of an electoral banishment and an extension of the protest vote. In Romania, the changeover of the political power occurred later than in its Central European neighbours, the weakness of the civil society and of the local democracy making more difficult the task to construct a coherent collective project and to answer to the European integration requirements.

Elections, Political Innovations and African Elites Non Renewal : Djiboutian and Mauritanian Examples. Now, elections are present everywhere in Africa, but only few countries really change their leaders by the polls. Almost, the first role of election is the legitimatization of the autocrats. It is more interesting to analyse how election takes place in the local political field and how it contributes to change the social balance.