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Unit 12: Politics of Representation and Participation

One of the most marked changed to have ocurred since the fall of the Soviet regime has been the Notes
formation of a new business elite. To be sure, many of its members come out of the Soviet nomenklatura,
as old guard bureaucrats discovered ways to cash in on their political contacts. Money from the
Communist Party found its way into the establishment of as many a thousand new business ventures,
including several of the first commercial, banks. As early as 1987 and 1988, officials of the Communist
Youth League (Komsomol) began to see the possibilities of cashing in the assets of the organization
and started liquidating the assets of the organization in order to set up lucrative business ventures,
such as video salons, banks, discos, tour agencies, and publishing houses. They took advantage of
their insider contacts, obtaining business licenses, office space, and exclusive contracts with little
difficulty. Some bought (at bargain basement prices) controlling interests in state firms that were
undergoing privatization, and a few years later found themselves millionaires or billionaires.
Other members of the new business elite rose through channels outside the state. Many, in fact,
entered business in the late 1980s, as new opportunities for legal and quasi-legal commercial activity
opened up. A strikingly high proportion of the first generation of the new business elite comprised
young scientists and mathematicians working in research institutes and universities. The new
commercial sector sprang up very quickly: by the end of 1992 there were nearly one million private
businesses registered, with some 16 million people working in them. The new business elite is closely
tied to the state. Powerful financial-industrial conglomerates have formed close and often collusive
relations with ranking state administrators and legislators.
Businesses need licenses, permits, contracts, exemptions and other benefits from government; political
officials in turn need financial contributions to their campaigns, political support, favorable media
coverage, and other benefits that business can provide. The atmosphere of close and collusive relations
between many businesses and government officials has nurtured widespread corruption and the
meteoric rise of a small group of business tycoons popularly, known as “oligarchs” who took advantage
of their links to President Yeltsin’s administration to acquire, control of some of Russia’s most valuable
companies. The pervasive influence of money on politics has deepened the problem of corruption at
all levels of government and daily life.
Political Participation in France

In most democracies, no form of political participation is as extensive as voting. Although France is a
unitary state, elections are held with considerable frequency at every territorial level. Councilors are
elected for each of the more than 36,000 communes in France, for each of the 100 departments (counties),
and for each of the 22 regions. Deputies to the National Assembly are elected at least once every five
years, and the president of the Republic is elected (or reelected) at least once every seven years (every
five years after 2002). In addition, there are elections for French representatives to the European
Parliament every five years since 1979.
France was the first European country to enfranchise a mass electorate, and France was also the first
European country to demonstrate that a mass electorate did not preclude the possibility of authoritarian
government. The electoral law of 1848 enfranchised all male citizens over the age of 21, but within
five years this same mass electorate had ratified Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat and his establishment
of the Second Empire. Rather than restrict the electorate, Napoleon perfected new modern techniques
for manipulating a mass electorate by gerrymandering districts, skillfully using public works as
patronage for official candidates, and exerting pressure through the administrative hierarchy.
From the Second Empire to the end of World War II, the size of the electorate remained more or less
stable, but it suddenly more than doubled when women 21 years of age and older were granted the
vote in 1944. After the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1974, 2.5 million voters were added to the
rolls. By 2002, there were more than 40 million voters in France.

Electoral Participation and Abstention
Surprisingly, in both the Third and the Fourth Republics general disenchantment with parliamentary
institutions never prevented a high turnout at national elections. Since the consolidation of republican
institutions in 1885 (and with the one exception of the somewhat abnormal post-World War I election

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