International audience ; The aim of this article is to survey the huge literature that has emerged in the last four decades following Nordhaus's (1975) publication on political business cycles (PBCs). I first propose some developments in history of thought to examine the context in which this groundbreaking contribution saw the light of the day. I also present a simplified version of Nordhaus's model to highlight his key results. I detail some early critiques of this model and the fields of investigations to which they gave birth. I then focus on the institutional context and examine its influence on political business cycles, the actual research agenda. Finally, I derive some paths for future research.
International audience ; The aim of this article is to survey the huge literature that has emerged in the last four decades following Nordhaus's (1975) publication on political business cycles (PBCs). I first propose some developments in history of thought to examine the context in which this groundbreaking contribution saw the light of the day. I also present a simplified version of Nordhaus's model to highlight his key results. I detail some early critiques of this model and the fields of investigations to which they gave birth. I then focus on the institutional context and examine its influence on political business cycles, the actual research agenda. Finally, I derive some paths for future research.
International audience ; In 2009, following a legislative redistricting lead by the right-wing, 18.1% of the French cities have moved from one constituency to another. The aim of this note is to provide some methodological issues about this redistricting and some insights about its influence on the electoral results. The main result goes in the sense of a partisan manipulation: due to the redistricting, the left-wing lost 14 constituencies. Whereas it actually gained 333 constituencies in 2012, it would have gained 347 constituencies if the redistricting had remained unchanged between 2007 and 2012. However, the difference between these two proportions is not statistically significant. Consequently, even if it appears as if the left-wing lost out from the 2009 redistricting, we conclude that it did not have a significant effect on the extent of the left-wing's victory.
International audience ; In 2009, following a legislative redistricting lead by the right-wing, 18.1% of the French cities have moved from one constituency to another. The aim of this note is to provide some methodological issues about this redistricting and some insights about its influence on the electoral results. The main result goes in the sense of a partisan manipulation: due to the redistricting, the left-wing lost 14 constituencies. Whereas it actually gained 333 constituencies in 2012, it would have gained 347 constituencies if the redistricting had remained unchanged between 2007 and 2012. However, the difference between these two proportions is not statistically significant. Consequently, even if it appears as if the left-wing lost out from the 2009 redistricting, we conclude that it did not have a significant effect on the extent of the left-wing's victory.
International audience In 2009, following a legislative redistricting lead by the right-wing, 18.1% of the French cities have moved from one constituency to another. The aim of this note is to provide some methodological issues about this redistricting and some insights about its influence on the electoral results. The main result goes in the sense of a partisan manipulation: due to the redistricting, the left-wing lost 14 constituencies. Whereas it actually gained 333 constituencies in 2012, it would have gained 347 constituencies if the redistricting had remained unchanged between 2007 and 2012. However, the difference between these two proportions is not statistically significant. Consequently, even if it appears as if the left-wing lost out from the 2009 redistricting, we conclude that it did not have a significant effect on the extent of the left-wing's victory.
National audience ; The aim of this article is to present a very detailed survey on politico-economic models of voting built in the French case. Since 1976 and the first study ever published on this topic, more than seventy papers have been written. The 30th anniversary is the occasion to explore this growing literature. After an introduction that highlights the main features of the scientific production and recalls the theoretical grounds of vote-functions, the first section studies the type of elections and the aggregation level in French voting models. Issues linked to the construction of the dependent variable like left-right cleavage, extreme right status, and relevant round are tackled in the second section. The third one shows the explanatory variables used. They are gathered in three groups: economic variables, institutional variables, and political variables. The conclusion regarding each of them is indicated. The section ends on the role of the campaign and on the French voter's degree of memory. A paragraph is also devoted to seats-functions that translate vote into seats. This kind of functions is very useful in majority systems like the French one because to be majority in vote does not necessary mean to be majority in seats. Section four deals with econometric problems. After having examined the way that authors treat usual diagnoses (autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity.), two remarks are drawn concerning the use of the intercept term in pooled-data models and the estimation of systems formed by a vote-equation and a seat-equation. Section five presents the forecasts produced by the models. Their accuracy is assessed by comparing the forecasted value to the actual value for some elections and by examining the forecasts stemming from vote intentions polls. This evaluation shows several brilliant successes on the recent period. The conclusion sketches some trails for future researches. Among them, we can cite the building of a finer model for the legislative elections (by constituencies for example) and the development of a model for cantonal elections. Moreover, seats-functions have to be improved and more attention has to be paid to econometrics. Taking spatial interactions into account may also constitute an appealing way to increase our knowledge of voting behaviour. ; cet article a pour but de présenter un panorama quasi-exhaustif de la littérature - publiée ou non - sur les modèles politico-économiques explicatifs du vote en France. La définition des variables utilisées, les techniques d'estimation employées, les résultats de ces estimations et les performances prédictives des modèles sont examinés. Des faiblesses dans chacun de ces domaines sont aussi soulignées. Enfin, quelques pistes pour des recherches futures sont dégagées.
National audience ; The aim of this article is to present a very detailed survey on politico-economic models of voting built in the French case. Since 1976 and the first study ever published on this topic, more than seventy papers have been written. The 30th anniversary is the occasion to explore this growing literature. After an introduction that highlights the main features of the scientific production and recalls the theoretical grounds of vote-functions, the first section studies the type of elections and the aggregation level in French voting models. Issues linked to the construction of the dependent variable like left-right cleavage, extreme right status, and relevant round are tackled in the second section. The third one shows the explanatory variables used. They are gathered in three groups: economic variables, institutional variables, and political variables. The conclusion regarding each of them is indicated. The section ends on the role of the campaign and on the French voter's degree of memory. A paragraph is also devoted to seats-functions that translate vote into seats. This kind of functions is very useful in majority systems like the French one because to be majority in vote does not necessary mean to be majority in seats. Section four deals with econometric problems. After having examined the way that authors treat usual diagnoses (autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity.), two remarks are drawn concerning the use of the intercept term in pooled-data models and the estimation of systems formed by a vote-equation and a seat-equation. Section five presents the forecasts produced by the models. Their accuracy is assessed by comparing the forecasted value to the actual value for some elections and by examining the forecasts stemming from vote intentions polls. This evaluation shows several brilliant successes on the recent period. The conclusion sketches some trails for future researches. Among them, we can cite the building of a finer model for the legislative elections (by constituencies for example) ...
International audience ; This paper aims at testing the existence of yardstick competition by estimating a fully specified vote-function on a panel data set of 104 French local governments from 1989 to 2001. When comparing the performance of their incumbent to the one of their "neighbours", voters might consider their close geographical neighbours but also the nearby cities that are similar according to some socio-economic characteristics such as population size. The estimation results show that voters sanction their incumbent if their own local housing tax is high. Moreover, we find that voters reward their incumbent when neighbouring cities that are similar in terms of demographic characteristics have high local taxes.
International audience ; This paper aims at testing the existence of yardstick competition by estimating a fully specified vote-function on a panel data set of 104 French local governments from 1989 to 2001. When comparing the performance of their incumbent to the one of their "neighbours", voters might consider their close geographical neighbours but also the nearby cities that are similar according to some socio-economic characteristics such as population size. The estimation results show that voters sanction their incumbent if their own local housing tax is high. Moreover, we find that voters reward their incumbent when neighbouring cities that are similar in terms of demographic characteristics have high local taxes.
