Elected officials and money. An analysis of the material conditions in which terms of office are served – ELUAR

Practically speaking, the project is structured around two central research axes. The first focuses on the codification of elected representatives’ indemnities, with the working hypothesis that the legislation is extremely unequal. This axis is organized into three sections. The first section examines modes of remuneration for political work in twenty European countries to identify different logics in the differences observed. The second section analyzes from a socio-historical perspective the production of the normative framework for national and local compensation in France in the 19th and 20th century to underline the difficulties related to the regulation of practices that are thought of as being disinterested; and also studies the development of private and public bodies, both nationally and internationally, monitoring elected representatives’ pay. The third section uses a legal approach to present all the possibilities for remuneration currently available to French elected representatives. The second central axis focuses on describing the real diversity of processes of professionalization and highlighting the variations in the modalities and uses of compensation during the exercise of public office.

At this stage of the research (data production and collection) our team can't provide consolidated key results.

These analyses seek to identify the social conditions which contribute to elected representatives becoming economically dependent on political office and strategies for securing career paths. Moreover, the research looks into subjective relationships with money and with the ways representatives position themselves on the question of the fair remuneration of their activity.
A part of these research opportunities will be discussed during the following seminars:
« Transparence et déontologie parlementaires : Bilan et perspectives «, 25/26 octobre 2018 - Paris
« La rémunération des élus sous surveillance«, 31 janvier/1er février 2019 - Lyon

Publications:
Rambaud (R.), «Confiance dans la vie politique : la révolution attendra...«, commentaire des lois n°2017-1338 et 2017-1339 du 15 septembre 2017 pour la confiance dans la vie politique, AJDA, 2017, p. 2236.
Monier (F.), « ¿El dinero de los políticos ? La remuneracion de los diputados, la profesionalización de la política y los debates sobre corrupción en Francia (1789-1848) », communication au workshop « Una visión comparada en historia cultural de la corrupción política : Europa y América latina, siglos XVIII al XX, université de Huelva, 10-11 mai 2018. corrupcion.hypotheses.org/56
Rambaud (R.), «L'argent et les partis«, in « Les partis politiques », Pouvoirs, 2017, numéro 163, novembre 2017.
Lehingue (P.), « Existe-t-il de nouvelles logiques du recrutement politique ? Représentation parlementaire et clôture croissante du champ politique », in Lorenzo Barrault-Stella, Brigitte Gaïti, Patrick Lehingue, La politique désenchantée, PUR, 20181.
Brameret (S.), « Faut-il une réforme des entreprises publiques locales ? Bis repetita placent », JCPA, 2017, n° 50, Libres propos 8273.

In France, spending on the financial remuneration of politicians comes in at more than a billion euros in per year. These costs associated with political work are regularly subject to sharp criticism, which accuses elected representatives of costing too much and putting their own financial interests first. The ELUAR project looks to break with common, all-embracing representations and examine in detail the role played by financial remunerations in the process of the professionalization of elected representatives. From a scientific point of view, it seeks to fill in a gap in the French literature about political work. Although many publications have appeared about this subject since the 1990s, the analysis of the material conditions of the exercise of mandates remains a blind sport for research in France. Through an interdisciplinary approach which mobilises sociology, political science, history and law, this collective research project aims to put the financial dimension back at the centre of the analysis of careers and engagements of national and local political personnel. The central hypothesis of the project is to highlight heterogeneity and inequality in the remuneration of elected representatives and in the forms of political professionalization. Practically speaking, the project is structured around two parts. The first part centres around the study of the production of reforms and judicial frameworks in order to bring up to date the political construction of economic hierarchisation between mandates. Which actors are invested in the production of reforms? What registers have been used to justify these reforms since the 1950s? How does the principle of accumulating mandates affect these games? What are the possibilities for remuneration and material gratification open to the politicians? Do the same logics of hierarchisation apply abroad? The second part analyses the uses and appropriations of the rules which frame the remuneration of elected representatives. By focusing on remuneration, and more largely on the material conditions in which mandates are exercised, this study will lead to a better understanding of the variety of contemporary forms of political professionalization, and the subjective relations that the elected representations have with money and the political uses of money. By what processes do elected representatives manage to abandon their initial profession in favour of a political mandate? What strategies of economic reassurance do they deploy? How are allowances and bonuses attributed? Does money win the loyalty of political teams? Is it constructed as a political arm to disqualify an opponent? These are just some of the questions that will be dealt with in the second part. Ultimately, the project ELUAR seeks to make a double break, firstly with ordinary discourses which homogenise elected representatives and are suspicious about remunerations they receive; and secondly with the scholarly point of view visible in research on political work, which posits that compensation makes more or less mechanically the professional.