Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Comment des partis politiques dans l'Union Européenne se coordonnent-ils au sein de la même 'famille' politique ? Cette question est traitée sur quatre différentes dimensions : les élections directes au Parlement européen ; le développement des fédérations européennes de partis ; les activités diplomatiques des groupes parlementaires au Parlement européen ; la coordination interparlementaire verticale. Le résultat principal de cette thèse est que les partis politiques dans l'UE n'ont qu'un interêt limité à une coordination transnationale avec d'autres partis issus de la même famille politique et utilisent cette coordination plutôt afin d'obtenir des ressources au niveau national. La coordination transnationale de partis reste confiné au sein du Parlement européen et son environnement institutionnel bruxellois avec une influence limitée sur les organisations nationales de partis. / How political parties in the European Union coordinate beyond national borders with other parties of the same party 'family' ? I examine this question from four different dimensions : the direct elections to the European Parliament; the development of transnational party federations; diplomatic activities of the European Parliament’s political groups vis-à-vis third countries; and vertical intra-parliamentary coordination. The main finding is that political parties in the EU have only limited interest in genuine transnational coordination, and generally use such coordination instrumentally, in order to gain certain resources in domestic politics. Parties' transnational coordination in the EU remains confined to the European Parliament institutional setting and thus has limited impact on the national party organisations at large.

Le contrôle des parlements nationaux envers les affaires européennes a récemment reçu beaucoup d’attention autant des institutions de l’Union européenne (UE) que des auteurs participant à la littérature sur le déficit démocratique. Pour autant, si plusieurs travaux ont démontré comment ce contrôle pouvait contribuer à améliorer la médiatisation des enjeux européens ou encore la transposition des directives, son rôle sur les attitudes des citoyens tient souvent du postulat et n’a jusqu’à présent fait l’objet d’aucune recherche. En mobilisant les données issues du projet Observatory of National Parliaments after Lisbon (OPAL) récoltées entre 2010 et 2012, cette étude adopte une méthodologie quantitative avec pour ambition de mesurer l’influence que le contrôle parlementaire des affaires européennes pourrait avoir dans la formation des attitudes envers l’UE. Étant donné que les attitudes envers le niveau national et européen sont étroitement reliées, nous avons en premier lieu démontré que le contrôle parlementaire participait à renforcer la confiance envers le parlement national. En ce qui concerne le niveau européen, nos résultats indiquent que le contrôle parlementaire semble avoir un effet antagoniste sur la confiance envers l’UE avec d’une part la capacité institutionnelle des parlements ayant un effet positif, et d’autre part l’activité parlementaire ayant un effet négatif. Cette recherche, bien qu’exploratoire et donc perfectible, pose ainsi les bases d’une meilleure compréhension du rôle que pourraient jouer les parlements nationaux dans la formation des attitudes envers l’UE. / The oversight of national parliaments over European affairs has recently received a great deal of attention, both from institutions of the European Union (EU) and from authors contributing to the literature on the democratic deficit. However, while several studies have shown how this control could contribute positively to the media coverage of European issues or to the transposition of directives, its role on citizens' attitudes is often postulated and has so far not been demonstrated. By mobilizing data from the Observatory of National Parliaments after Lisbon (OPAL) project collected between 2010 and 2012, this study adopts a quantitative methodology with the ambition of measuring the influence that parliamentary oversight over European affairs could have in shaping attitudes towards the EU. Since attitudes towards the national and European level are closely linked, I first demonstrated that parliamentary oversight helps to build confidence in the national parliament. Regarding the European level, the results indicate that parliamentary control seems to have an antagonistic effect on trust in the EU; on the one hand, the institutional capacity of parliaments have a positive effect, and on the other hand, the parliamentary activity has a negative effect. This research, although exploratory and therefore preliminary, thus lays the foundations for a better understanding of the role that national parliaments could potentially play in shaping attitudes towards the EU.

Dans une société urbaine en ébullition, la capitale normande forme un observatoire privilégié des jeux de pouvoirs et avec l’autorité centrale. Cette thèse interroge fondamentalement le rapport entre l’État et la province, alors que le royaume de France est en proie à la dernière grande révolte d’Ancien Régime. Ainsi, la Fronde bouleverse les équilibres et agit comme un révélateur de la tension quotidienne. Économie, religion, politique et culture citadine se conjuguent pour dévoiler une société du conflit. Rouen catalyse les rivalités qui se rencontrent et éclatent au grand jour au cœur du théâtre urbain. Deuxième ville du royaume de France, la cité normande intègre le monde qui y exporte ses tensions. Rouen est aussi et sûrement une ville en crise au milieu du XVIIe siècle, traversée par une conflictualité qui s’enchevêtre dans le carrefour urbain. / In an exciting society that has become mostly urban, taking a look at Rouen makes it possible to witness power relationships involving the central authority. This thesis looks at the relationship between the State and the regional areas at a time when the Kingdom of France is going through its last major revolt of the Ancien Régime. The Fronde shakes balances and reveals the daily tensions. Economy, religion, politics and urban culture come together and revel and conflictual society. Rouen exacerbates the rivalries at stake. Rouen at the time is the second biggest city of the Kingdom of France, it is a world city and exports its tensions. In the middle of the 17th Century Rouen is also without a doubt a city going through a crisis that is entangled in this urban hub.

Within the literature devoted to the study of political parties, scholars have recently directed more attention towards intraparty dynamics. The ‘party as a unitary actor’ assumption seems to have withered away in the last decades. The party is increasingly viewed as a heterogeneous entity, in which dissenting attitudes are frequent. Yet the causes of intraparty dissensions remain quite obscure. This dissertation aims at providing a better understanding of the causes of dissent within parties, especially within parliamentary party groups. <p><p>Intraparty conflicts, dissent or ‘voice’ phenomena have been studied through different literatures that have developed independently from each other: studies dealing with party factionalism, social-psychological and economic theories of organizations (e.g. Hirschman’s trilogy of exit, voice and loyalty), and legislative studies dealing with parliamentary party voting unity. The dissertation attempts to (re)conciliate these separate literatures, and shows how legislative studies, factionalism literature and theories of organizations can help to rethink the concept of dissent, and to grasp why parliamentarians are more or less likely to dissent from their party line. <p><p>The dissertation defines dissent in the parliamentary party as a two-dimensional concept, and operationalizes it as the MP’s frequency of disagreement with her/his party and the MP’s attitude of (non)loyalty in case of such disagreement. At the theoretical level, the dissertation draws on several theoretical approaches –institutional, rational and sociological– and formulates a broad set of hypotheses linking system-, party- and individual-level factors to these two dimensions of dissent. At the empirical level, the dissertation analyzes the causes of dissent within parliamentary parties in a comparative perspective. The analysis examines parliamentarians’ attitudes across 15 European national parliaments and tests the hypotheses formulated in the theoretical part by using the PARTIREP MP Survey dataset. <p><p>The results first show that, while European parliamentary parties are usually viewed as united blocks in terms of voting behavior, looking at MPs’ attitudes provides a more nuanced picture: European parliamentary parties show important variations in their MPs’ frequency of disagreement and attitudes of non-loyalty. Among the factors that explain these variations, both institutional (electoral rules, state structure, effective number of parties, intraparty organization) and sociological (gender, age, socialization, ideological preferences) factors need to be considered. In addition, the research shows that the two dimensions of dissent, though they are connected by a sequential relationship, should be studied distinctly, as different factors affect them respectively. The frequency of disagreement is best explained by the MP’s gender and previous elected office at a lower level than the national one, by the ideological distance between the MP and her/his party’s position in interaction with the party ‘family’, and by intraparty organizational factors (candidate selection procedures and EPO-PPO power balance). Non-loyalty depends more on the institutional structure (multilevel vs. unitary state, ENP) and on the candidate-centeredness of the electoral system; but is also affected by individual-level factors (age and length of incumbency) and by the party ‘family’. On the whole, by contrast to what is usually argued, ‘the party’ matters’ in determining the level of intraparty cohesion: the impact of intraparty organizational structure and party ideology or family is determinant, but more research is definitely needed in order to disentangle the ‘organizational’ vs. the ‘ideological’ effects.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished