2023-09-24 05:00:09
While 170 senators saw their seats put back into play on Sunday September 24, Olivier Rozenberg, political scientist and researcher at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, observed that the Senate has seen its role strengthened in recent years. The reasons are multiple: the law on the non-cumulation of mandates of 2014, the loss of an absolute majority in the National Assembly in 2022 or even the work of senators controlling the executive since the Benalla affair in 2018 .
Many local elected officials say that deputies are abandoning constituency work to devote themselves to making the law in Paris. They believe that senators are their last representatives. With the non-cumulation of mandates since 2014, a shift would have occurred. How do you analyze it?
Several elements can explain this perception. First of all, local elected officials elect senators, who naturally treat them well, with respect and consideration. The deputies, appointed by the people by direct vote, are not in this situation.
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Then, we can see it as a consequence of the renewal of the National Assembly. The one elected in 2017 had three quarters of new deputies. And, in 2022, half have been renewed again. Their profile is different from that of their predecessors. Among them there are fewer former local elected officials, more novices, on the one hand, and former cabinet members or parliamentary collaborators, on the other.
In the Senate, on the other hand, everyone comes from local authorities. Senators are successful local elected officials. In fact, they know the institutions on the ground very well, and those who support them because they have worked with them for ten, twenty, thirty years…
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And they have the same political label…
This is the third explanation. Local political life is in line with the composition of the Senate: 62% of the seats are occupied by the Republicans or the Socialist Party, the former government parties. In the National Assembly, their share is only 15%. The parties which dominate at the Palais-Bourbon have extremely limited local roots, whether they are the Macronists, the La France Insoumise or the National Rally deputies.
Since 2022, can the frontal, even aggressive, nature of debates in the Assembly also have an impact?
It is above all a question of image, because many of these new deputies are precisely seeking to play the game of the constituency. But local elected officials, who support traditional government parties, may be reluctant to collaborate with parliamentarians who represent the extremes. Quite simply because they do not share their ideas, and they may fear being associated with them. On the other hand, a center-right or center-left senator may seem more reassuring.
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