MAKING A LIVING FROM POLITICS - Careers, entourage, control

MAKING A LIVING FROM POLITICS
                              Careers, entourage, control

         Colloquium organized as part of the research on elected officials and money
               supported by the National Research Agency (ANR - ELUAR)

                                 June 30 and July 1, 2020

                                    Amiens (CURAPP-ESS)

                                     CALL FOR PAPERS

In democracies, the question of the material conditions of the exercise of elective mandates
was raised very early on. One of the solutions adopted, differently according to the
democratic system, was to compensate elective activities [Le Saout, 2019]. This long-standing
practice continues to raise questions and reservations. Indeed, criticism of all kinds has never
really ceased with regard to the status of political staff and their professionalization. It weighs
heavily on the difficulties encountered by parliamentarians in stating the very purpose of the
reforms they undertake, as they are afraid, by legislating on the allocation of financial
resources, to expose themselves to popular disapproval or accusations [Damamme, 1999].
However, as a paid activity often carried out on a full-time basis, political activity can be
considered as an ordinary professional activity even if it occupies a singular position in the
social division of labour. To be interested in the financing of this activity is to be interested in
the possibilities of engaging in it and maintaining one’s engagement. Indeed, this market is
deeply selective and very unequal in terms of material rewards: selective in the sense that for
material reasons some social agents are less able to get involved in it than others, unequal in
the sense that national mandates or local executives are the most profitable. A French
singularity often noted by foreign researchers is that elected officials represent more than
600,000 individuals, or almost 1% of the national population. Today, the financial
compensation of politicians, whether elected locally or nationally, represents an expenditure
of more than one billion euros per year. Nevertheless, the material conditions for the exercise
of mandates are rarely studied as an object of research, at least in French scholarship. [Judge
1984, Baimbridge, Darcy, 1999, Eggers, Hainmueller, 2009, Keane, Merlo, 2010, Mause,
2014, Mocan, Altindag, 2013, Pedersen, Pedersen, Pedersen, Bhatti, 2018]. One then wonders
about this relative silence, and whether it suggests that researchers, echoing the caution shown
by elected officials in this matter, have internalized the restricted nature of this question or
have not dared to venture into a subject that is potentially exposed to a populist
disqualification of political activity. The study of political remuneration therefore appears to
be a sensitive issue. However, questioning the terms and conditions of remuneration for
political mandates offers a particularly productive entry for producing information on the
labour market and political careers and more broadly on the relationship between political
actors and money.

In this perspective, the symposium invites contributions questioning these relationships in
three areas:
- The first concerns the links between money, engagement and political careers
- The second concerns non-personal uses of money
- The third deals with the issue of the control of money

1. THE RELATIONSHIP TO MONEY : ENGAGEMENT AND CAREER
The relationships between elected officials and money are partly the result of the subjective
meaning given to them by actors. This subjective meaning is linked to a series of issues, such
as tensions between continuity or accidents in political careers or the links between
aspirations or projections for the future and achievements. In particular, from when and how
do elected officials abandon their initial profession in favour of a political mandate? How has
the Anti-accumulation Act of 2017 affected strategies built on the accumulation of mandates
to ensure the economic security of political careers? How are the material consequences of
electoral uncertainties understood? What are the effects of electoral defeats and associated
financial losses on careers? For this line of questioning, attention to remuneration will make it
possible to grasp the variety of contemporary forms of political professionalization and
political career development by taking into account the political pathway, the professional
pathway and the personal pathway. While these questions are associated with the sociology of
political careers, the subjective meaning given to money can also be approached from another
angle. Various studies have shown that money does not have an intrinsic value. Indeed, its
value appears to be relatively independent of the economic rules that seem to govern it
[Zelizer, 2005]. Relationships to money, socially constructed, must therefore be analysed in a
relational and contextual way [De Blic, Lazarus, 2007]. These contributions from the
sociology of money make it possible to consider that the subjective dimension structures the
relationships that elected officials maintain with money (feeling of enrichment or
impoverishment, uneasiness about these feelings, perception of "fair" compensation...).

2. SUPPORTING POLITICAL PROFESSIONALIZATION
Various studies have highlighted the collective nature of political work [Demazière, Le Lidec
2014, Boelaert, Michon, Ollion, 2017]. Can we therefore extend these results to the material
conditions for the exercise of mandates, or in other words, think of access to compensation
and its uses as the result of collective mobilization? We are referring here, first, to the family.
Few studies provide information on the domestic economy and the financial negotiations that
can be conducted within households with a view to political professionalization [Gris, 2016].
We also think of those around elected officials [Courty, 2005, Beauvallet, Michon, 2017].
Does the money from the mandate not finance a team of collaborators (formal or informal) as
well as the elected representative? Similarly, and to direct the questioning towards the
sociology of the financing of political life, it is possible to consider that the compensation of
elected officials contributes to the maintenance of militant and partisan collectives (transfers
to political parties, associations, etc.). Finally, and more from the perspective of a sociology

of public action, it is possible to question the financial resources available to elected officials
to help subsidize certain public projects. Papers here may therefore cover relatively different
subjects, but all should be concerned with integrating into the object the collective use of
political money, whether domestic or professional.

3. CONTROLING USES OF MONEY
The uses of money in political activities are subject to multiple judgments (both ordinary and
expert, media and political). Indeed, they give rise to critical discourses that are sometimes
confused with a denunciation by political professionals. They also give rise to forms of
control that have been significantly expanded with the development of legislation pertaining
to “political life" [Rambaud, 2017, Phélippeau 2018]. Several mechanisms have been set up at
different levels to examine these political uses of money. In this area, it is more particularly
important to highlight representations and discourses that focus on the compensation of
elected officials, as well as evaluation or control practices and instruments. In particular, the
agencies controlling the use of money by elected officials (High Authority for the
Transparency of Public Life -HATVP), collectives or associations (Anticor, Regards
citoyens), and journalists, etc. can be considered here. In addition to the question of the
construction and dissemination of these representations, it will be necessary to look at the
arguments that are used to justify compensation for political work or, conversely, to disqualify
this practice in electoral circumstances or during terms of office. Papers could cover both
specific cases and sequences of debate (in Parliament, in the media, etc.). They might pay
particular attention to the functioning of evaluation and control mechanisms, as well as to the
actors involved in them and the reactions of political staff.

                       Proposals for papers of about 300 words

                      should be sent before 15 February 2020 to

                              remy.le-saout@univ-nantes.fr

                                     eluar.hypotheses.org

SCIENTIFIC AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEE
Stéphane Cadiou - TRIANGLE - CNRS - University Jean Monet - Saint-Etienne
Didier Demazière - CSO - CNRS - Science po Paris
Rémi Lefebvre - CERAPS - CNRS – University of Lille
Rémy Le Saout - CENS - CNRS – University of Nantes
Patrick Lehingue - CURAPP-ESS - CNRS – University of Picardie Jules Verne
Sébastien Vignon - CURAPP- ESS - CNRS – University of Picardie Jules Verne
Sébastien Ségas - ARENES - CNRS - University Rennes 2

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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collaborateurs politiques, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion.
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