Clientelist Practices and Political Machines in Marseille

Extract

[...] It is observed that these practices are present in all political movements and transcend partisan logic. The author shows that it is ultimately the response to social demands that allows anchorage on a given territory, sometimes setting up institutional instruments in service of clientelism. The political apparatuses are interesting to study in Marseille through the prism of clientelism because several personalities or families are strongly anchored in certain territories for generations. This is manifested in particular by a phenomenon of family inheritance in politics, which the author specifies is not unique to the city or southern countries. [...]

[...] An articulation is set up inside these political machines with the 'leader' or the central town hall to have access to these resources through punctual requests. The permanences are set up to respond to social demands. Jean-Noël Guérini thus spends several hours a week meeting with residents, while in most permanences, dozens of hours a week are dedicated to listening to these expectations. Since the 1980s and the explosion of unemployment in certain areas of the city, employment cells have even been created in these permanences to allow citizens to regain an activity through the private networks of elected officials (enterprises, collectivities). [...]

[...] As a Corsican socialist, listening to his neighborhood (historically implanted in the Panier), he acquires a reputation as an elected official turned towards the social by conducting surveys on the living conditions of the inhabitants of the neighborhoods or by going to meet the local populations. The archives show that Jean-Noël Guérini writes many letters to the mayor from the beginning of his mandates to be able to respond to social expectations, attribute housing or jobs to his 'protégés'. His clientelist practices are still in force today and he is accompanied by assistants during his outings to note the demands of the voters. [...]

[...] Clientelist practices are not unique to the left. In Marseille, the "Gaudin machine" shows the generalization of these practices across all political sides with, for Jean-Claude Gaudin, a legacy rooted in Gaston Defferre's heritage. He takes over the same bourgeois neighborhoods in the 1990s with tremendous success, consistently pushing back the socialists and significantly increasing the number of municipal councilors linked to his political machine. Through a nesting strategy that allows him to establish himself in the territory at all levels, he conquers cantonal, municipal, and then legislative constituencies, which enables him to gather voters and optimize political interventions in these areas. [...]

[...] Several questions arise regarding these practices in Marseilles politics. For example, one can wonder if they, by representing a depoliticization and decentralization of social action in these constituencies, do not ultimately correspond to the expectations of the populations vis-à-vis the local authorities. A local authority does not have as its object to be closer to the citizens? On the other hand, one can wonder, in the event that this clientelist policy would be detrimental, what could be the solution of the central state to limit it. [...]