Abstract
What is the research question in this article? Several months after the French referendum, Gilles Ivaldi is trying to answer to the question “How can we characterize the disapproval of the French referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty held on 29 May 2005?”
The main hypothesis just after the ballot was close was for commentators a rejection of the Government because there was a high mobilization unlike European elections which mobilize in 2004 not even half of French voters. This hypothesis might be validated for those commentators by the eviction of the Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin by Dominique de Villepin and the discrete participation of the “unofficial” right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. The economic and social situation during the last term of Jacques Chirac was indeed stagnant, with a high employment rate. If we are following this idea, the 2005 rejection relies on the logic of intermediate votes between French presidential elections (like 2004 regional and European elections). The article stresses out a broader phenomenon which is a mistrust of European and national elites.
This hypothesis backs up the ‘syndrome' of the 2002 presidential election with the eviction of the former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin April 21th.
Another explanation might consider the 2005 as a milestone for French politics towards the European Union integration process. The European Constitutional Treaty in a way was the first ‘retrospective' (p. 49) for French voters to question the validity and the accuracy of the EU construction. Beyond discontent of the governing leaders of 2005, the ECT might be a revenge of Maastricht for advocates of the ‘sovereignty principle' as especially for most left-wing voters, a way to stress their disappointment because they believed too strongly of promises of an economic and social Europe made by François Mitterrand and Jacques Delors during the 1992 campaign.
