Justice and Equality for All? Proportional Representation in Belgium and France (1883-1921)Abstract
Whereas 19th century Belgium is traditionally framed as heavily dependent on France, this image ought to be nuanced for its political system. During what Pierre Rosanvallon named the transnational ‘proportional moment’ (1899-1914), the introduction of Proportional Representation in parliamentary elections generated a French interest in Belgium as the ‘electoral laboratory of Europe’. Arguments raised in the French Chambre des Députés were similar to those used in Belgian Parliament. The present article addresses the structural differences between the electoral debate in both states. Whereas Belgian constitutional doctrine adapted smoothly to the introduction of proportionality (Oscar Orban/Paul Errera) and held a moderate position bordering on that of Hans Kelsen, French doctrine was divided between the Parisian Adhémar Esmein, who defended the majority system as the bedrock of republicanism, and provincial professors of constitutional law, who had corporatist ideas, or were in favour of judicial review (Joseph-Barthélémy, Léon Duguit).
Keywords:
Constitutional Law; Electoral Law; Public Law; Belgian Legal History; French Legal History
Resumo
Enquanto a Bélgica do século XIX é tradicionalmente enquadrada como dependente da França, essa imagem possui uma nuance diversa no que se refere ao seu sistema político. Durante o que Pierre Rosanvallon chamou de “momento proporcional” transnacional (1899-1914), a introdução da representação proporcional nas eleições parlamentares gerou um interesse francês na Bélgica como o “laboratório eleitoral da Europa”. Os argumentos levantados na Câmara dos Deputados francesa foram semelhantes aos usados no Parlamento belga. O presente artigo aborda as diferenças estruturais entre o debate eleitoral nos dois Estados. Enquanto a doutrina constitucional belga se adaptou suavemente à introdução da proporcionalidade (Oscar Orban/Paul Errera) e manteve uma posição moderada próxima à posição de Hans Kelsen, a doutrina francesa foi dividida entre o parisiense Adhémar Esmein, que defendia o sistema majoritário como a base do republicanismo, e os professores locais de direito constitucional, que tinham ideias corporativistas ou eram a favor da revisão judicial (Joseph-Barthélémy, Léon Duguit).
Palavras-chave:
Representação Proporcional; Eleições Parlamentares; Sistema Majoritário; Revisão Judicial
1 Introduction
Suum cuique. A chacun sa part
The current crisis of political representation in the West leads to calls for electoral reform. Often, the majority system is seen as the source of unease and voter dropout. Proportional representation would be more able to reconcile citizens with representative democracy, bringing society closer to politics, or allowing for a national consensus mirroring the diversity of linguistic or ethnic groups.3 When it comes to implementing reforms in majority systems, however, the ardours are far more timid. Emmanuel Macron repeatedly hinted at the introduction of a ‘dose de proportionnelle’ for the election of the Assemblée Nationale. At the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the majority system was felt as a necessary guarantee against the disorders of the Fourth Republic, which was for the major part of its existence characterised by political fragmentation, reinforced by a proportional attribution of seats4.
The recent crisis of political representation has questioned the self-evident advantages of majority systems, but the reverse is also true, as the protracted institutional crisis in Belgium (2007-2008, 2010-2012, 2018-2020) or the crisis in Spain (2016, 2019) are sometimes ascribed to the fragmentation following from proportional representation. More reactionary 19th century criticism associated proportional representation with heresy, since it put ‘truth’ and ‘error’ on the same footing5.
Advantages and disadvantages of proportional representation6 and majority voting are classics of political science. The present paper is concerned with the constitutional debate in France and Belgium at the turn of the century, when proportional voting was introduced for Belgian parliamentary elections (1899) and in France (1919). The ‘D’Hondt system’, designed by the Ghent professor of Civil Law Victor D’Hondt (1841-1901), became one of the most popular formulas for seat attribution in the world.7 Although conceptions of justice in power relations between political parties dominate the debate, constitutional lawyers framed the discussion using the concept of national representation and constitutional government. This debate is also an occasion to nuance the overall image of Belgian dependence on France.8
The major difference from the start is the French early adoption of universal suffrage for men. After the experiment of the Convention in 1792, universal suffrage returned for good with the Revolution of 1848. Belgium, by contrast, only abolished censitary suffrage in 1893 for parliamentary elections, and did not introduce the ‘one man, one vote’ principle before 1918, under the pressure of World War One.9 From 1893 to 1918, parliamentary suffrage was ‘plural’.10 All male inhabitants aged 25 or more11 had one vote (which they were obliged to cast).12 Beneficiaries of a university degree or appointed in a higher administrative function benefited from two extra votes and were thus ‘triple voters’.13 Those over 2514 who either paid a rent tax of five francs15 or owned their lodging had the right to an extra vote.16 Married men of at least 35 or widowers with a legitimate descent could equally claim an extra vote.17 In total, no individual could vote more than three times.
Furthermore, in Belgium, the Catholic Party ruled with an absolute majority from 1884 to 1914, irrespective of the introduction of proportional voting.18 The perceived vicissitudes of the D’Hondt system have recently been denounced for the election of MEP’s in Britain.19 These criticisms are often ill-informed.20 Another factor, district size, hampers the proportional character of seat attribution, especially when it comes to the last seats. We will come back to this point, which will highlight the essential innovation of the 1919 reform of seat attribution rules in Belgium. In contrast to Catholic and conservative Belgium, the French Third Republic was ruled by left-wing politicians as Jules Ferry (1832-1893) and Aristide Briand (1862-1932), introducing reforms such the law of separation between Church and State in 1905. Yet, the majority system did not produce stable political configurations: from 1870 to 1914, France had no less than thirty-three successive governments.21
In spite of these stark contrasts, Belgium and France have been inextricably linked in their legal culture.22 This has lead prominent Belgian scholars to state that the country had become ’dominated by France’ from the Napoleonic period on.23 Belgian 19th-century elites, including legal elites, spoke French.24 French political news dominated the frontpage of the main journals, the Liberal Indépendance belge and the Catholic Journal de Bruxelles.25
The major legal study on this topic has been written by a notorious figure of French legal academy: Joseph Barthélémy (1874-1945)26. His work L’organisation du suffrage. L’expérience belge (1912) lauded the combination of proportional representation and plural voting.27 Barthélémy’s interest in this specific Belgian combination, however, cannot be seen separate from the major difference highlighted above: Belgium did not have universal suffrage, on which the French Third Republic’s parliamentary system was founded.
2 Electoral Reform Before the Great War
In this section, electoral reform before the Great War will be discussed.
2.1 Belgium 1883: capacity suffrage for local elections, or a failed attempt to contain the rise of universal suffrage
In 1883, the liberal government headed by Walthère Frère-Orban proposed to Parliament to enlarge municipal suffrage. Local and provincial suffrage was governed by the law, and not by the Constitution, which made it the ideal locus of experiments.28 Earlier (Law of 12 June 1871), Catholic governments had attempted to transform their party’s domination of social life into political power by expanding census requirements in local elections. Under Frère-Orban’s reform, a system based on local taxation would be linked to the obtention of a degree of lower education.29 This system had been claimed for twenty years by local Liberal sections, as a ‘barrière infranchissable’ against universal suffrage.30 Catholics loathed it as a Chinese system of mandarinate.31 This liberal reform had been an attempt to tie the extension of suffrage to an elevation of the general level of education. The link between rational, positivist education in state schools and the promotion of liberalism would then have permitted the Liberal Party to gain control of local government. Unfortunately for the initiators, as with most electoral modifications, this short-term goal was not achieved. In 1884, the Catholic Party won an absolute majority in Parliament, and began an uncontested period of thirty years in power.
2.2 Belgium 1893: plural voting under a majority system
Je suis grand partisan de l’égalité de tous devant la loi. Je ne conçois pas l’égalité de tous pour faire la loi. (AUGUSTE BEERNAERT)32
L’alliance des catholiques avec le peuple contre la bourgeoisie voltairienne. (JOSEPH BARTHELEMY)33
A major step was taken ten years later. Massive strikes, incurring riots, police repression and deaths, forced Belgian Parliament to modify the 1831 constitution to extend parliamentary suffrage in 1893.34 The plural voting system was a compromise favoured by the moderate Catholic Cabinet Leader Auguste Beernaert (1829-1912), future Nobel Peace Prize winner.35 Article 47 of the constitution foresaw that all male inhabitants above the age of twenty-five would have a single vote. Family fathers obtained a supplementary vote under certain conditions36, just as modest owners37. Finally, holders of a higher education degree benefitted from two supplementary votes.38 In total, no elector could have more than three votes.
As a consequence, the Belgian Workers’ Party (founded in 1885) became the second-largest political group in the Chamber of Representatives at the 1894 parliamentary elections.39 The Liberal Party crashed down to third place. This was an unexpected consequence of the majority system. Belgium, since 1831, had a plurinominal majority system. From 1877 on, lists of candidates competed for all available seats in a constituency.40 Hence, the Liberals were eliminated by joint lists of Socialists and dissident progressive Liberals in traditional strongholds, such as Liège. After 1894, Liberal and Socialist Parties became allies in proposing the introduction of proportional representation. In case of a run-off between Catholics and Socialists, Liberal voters were obliged to side with one of these blocs, which led to the erosion of their party.41
In 1894, 853 628 electors had one vote, 203 678 could vote twice, and 223 381 electors had three votes. In total, 1 370 687 voters controlled 2 111 127 votes.42 The Catholic Party obtained 104 seats out of 152 in the Chamber of Representatives, the Liberal Party 20 and the Belgian Workers’ Party 28.43 Ten years earlier, the country had counted just 124 378 voters.44
2.3 Belgium 1895: plural voting for local elections under a mixed, neo-corporatist system
Le grand principe national de la poire coupée en deux. (GEORGES LORAND, 30 March 1895, Chamber of Representatives)45
Auguste Beernaert’s compromise was despised by the most conservative group within the Catholic Party, namely the Fédération des Associations et Cercles Catholiques. Beernaert had to resign after ten years as Cabinet Leader (1884-1894),46 and was succeeded by the conservative Jules de Burlet (1844-1897). The latter introduced a stringent reform of Frère-Orban’s system of municipal capacity voting. Plural suffrage was extended to the municipal election, albeit with the possibility to add a fourth vote, increasing the gap between labourers (one vote) and wealthy landowners (four votes). The age threshold was raised to 30 years, excluding many potential left-wing voters. An additional requirement of three years of residence within the same municipality prevented the highly mobile group of labourers from fully participating. Finally, in boroughs counting over 20 000 inhabitants, supplementary seats were allotted to representatives of employers and workers.47 Ultramontanist ideas of corporatism could reinforce this anti-socialist buffer.48 Naturally, the Belgian Workers’ Party decried this loi des quatre infamies (‘Law of the four disgraces’).
Most importantly for the present paper, the majority system was amended for local purposes. If a single list conquered the majority of all votes expressed, it would obtain all seats in the local council. However, if it failed to (which was the case in most larger towns), proportional representation (the D’Hondt system)49 would be used in the second round. The Catholics hereby hoped to retain absolute power (without opposition) on the countryside, and divide their Socialist and Liberal opponents in the major cities.50 This first and biased introduction of PR at the local level nevertheless helped to institutionalise the method in Belgium.51
2.4 Belgium 1899: proportional representation for parliamentary elections
Était-il même prudent, de la part des catholiques, de conserver un mode de scrutin qui lui assurait sans doute des majorités écrasantes, mais qui avait pour effet de supprimer brutalement le parti libéral? (GEORGES LACHAPELLE)52
De Burlet’s conservative law generated the risk that Catholics could be eliminated altogether from city councils, when Socialists and Liberals would constitute a single list and obtain the majority. This happened in Antwerp and Brussels in 1911.53 Yet, the majority system endangered the stability of the parliamentary system as a whole. Violent street protests, and even an invasion of Parliament, forced the Catholic Party’s hand. Under pressure of an ad hoc-coalition of Socialists, Liberals and its own Christian Democrat wing, with the support of King Leopold II, the Catholic majority introduced proportional representation in 1899.54
Seats would be shared out in proportion to every political party’s share of the vote. However, careful not to squander its domination in the countryside, the Catholic Party stuck to a system of relatively small constituencies, where only 2 to 3 seats were available.55 In rural areas, Socialists nor Liberals bothered to propose a list of candidates!56 Consequently, the Catholic Party obtained 86 seats out of 152 at the elections of 27 March 1900. A loss of 16, but still more than the recrudescent Liberal Party (33) and the Socialist Party (32) taken together.57
Proportional representation was introduced to soften the opposition between conservative Flanders, dominated by Catholics, and the increasingly more Socialist boroughs in the Walloon steel basin, a region which had developed significantly due to the Industrial Revolution.58 Paul Errera (1860-1922)59 notes in his Traité de droit public belge that the advent of the Socialist parliamentary group in 1894 was feared to bring about the disappearance of parliamentarism itself, just as it would undo the traditional bipartisan system of Catholics and Liberals.60 The perspective of facing solely the Socialists as opposition exposed the dangers of the majority system. If the elector is forced to choose between two alternatives, the system logically leads to a victory of the other pole.
Paul Errera explains proportional representation as a ‘Third Way’ of representation, allowing to avoid the disadvantages of uninominal majority (which lead to the ‘triomphe des médiocrités sur les hommes de grande valeur’)61 and plurinominal majority systems (leading the elector to vote for candidates which he has not chosen himself)62.
Proportional representation allowed the coexistence of multiple parties, which softened the impact of lists. Errera points to the feeble majority at parliamentary elections in the district of Brussels in 1893. 18 seats at a stroke could shift due to a couple of hundred or even dozens votes.63 On the conceptual level, Errera explained proportional representation as a more adjusted and specific concept of the electoral function.64 First, Errera agreed that the majority rule - within Parliament - was indispensable. The minority had to acquiesce when a majority of representatives agree on voting a law. However, there was no fatality for the elector himself to see his choice evaporate when it did not conform to not that of the majority of the votes cast. In other words, a distinction between ‘droit de décision’, a corollary of the parliamentary function, and ‘droit de représentation’. The latter is designed to help citizens exercise their part of national sovereignty, not to favour a specific government.65
Of course, Errera pursued, direct democracy, or legislation through referenda, could provide an alternative to the problem of representation: citizens would become legislators themselves. This would render the triumph of the ‘yes’ acceptable to those who opted for ‘no’.66 Yet, within the representative system, the question of the weight accorded to an elector’s choice would be one for ‘mathematicians, not politicians’ to resolve.67
Proportional representation conforms best to the veracity of the electoral result. New parties can break through at the national level. If front bench candidates are elected as most prominent candidates on the list, lesser known homines novi can enter parliament through the system of suppléants or replacement candidates.68 Errera sincerely hoped that PR would undo the fixed relationship between a one-party parliamentary majority and its cabinet, and preferred ‘des majorités d’un jour, ce qui nous changera des accords constants et souvent funestes’.69
3 French Debates Before 1914: ‘Affranchir le suffrage universel’’ 70
Les inconvénients arithmétiques du régime majoritaire ne sont rien auprès de ses inconvénients moraux. (HENRI POINCARE)71
Le péril pour la République n’est point désormais du côté de la droite. Il est ailleurs. Il est dans l’immoralité des mœurs politiques et électorales qu’a perpétuées le scrutin d’arrondissement, dans les excès de la candidature officielle, dans les abus du favoritisme qui ont suscité un moment de révolte.’
(GEORGES LACHAPELLE on the 1910 elections for the Chambre des Députés)72
Notre ami Vandervelde a dit que s’il était socialiste français, il regarderait à deux fois et s’il était radical français, à trois fois, avant d’établir en France la représentation proportionnelle. (ERNEST BRETON, Chambre des Députés, 24 October 1909)73
Let’s now turn to France. Activism for proportional representation generated leaflets, pamphlets and treatises in both Belgium and its neighbour country. The Ligue pour la représentation proportionnelle held meetings in Paris as well as in Brussels.74 Its advocates presented proportional representation as an advance of humanity in general.75 This idea was not utopian, since, at a mere five hour train ride from Paris, a more advanced and civilised system of seat distribution was already in operation. Personal exchanges with leading Belgian politicians and scholars fuelled French PR activism.76 Belgian Liberal MP Paul Janson77 was quoted in the Chambre des Députés, praising the election of Socialist and Liberal MPs ‘infeudated’ to the Catholics for centuries.78 Conservative Catholic politician Charles Woeste’s denunciation of ‘des foyers d’infection’ through the disparate election of Liberal and Socialist MPs were eagerly noted by the French left. In his review of Barthélémy’s elaborate study on the Belgian system, ULB law professor Maurice Vauthier (1860-1931) noted that many French observers were seeing proportional representation as the ‘élixir merveilleux dont […] un grand nombre de ses compatriotes, attend la régénération du régime electoral de la France’.79 The absence of true universal suffrage in Belgium frustrated Socialist and Liberal attempts to do away with the Catholic absolute majority.80 Barthélémy would not have understood the profound nature of the confessional divide in Belgian politics and society.81
Legal historian and constitutional lawyer Adhémar Esmein (1848-1923) criticised proportional representation and favoured the ‘simple’ and clear majority system.82 The root of Esmein’s criticism resided in his equation of the right of representation to a collective right, of which the Nation was the bearer, and not the individual. Raymond Carré de Malberg (1861-1935) followed Esmein in stating that proportional elections were nothing but a purported disguise of a denaturation of the French representative system. Proportional elections were based on ideas of proportional representation, a necessary step in a descent towards direct government. Proportional representation would have created ‘semi-representative’ government, where the monopoly of MPs to represent the nations was encroached on by individual voters.83
Errera (cf. supra) applied the distinction between the majority rule for the decisional function of MPs and proportional representation for their election. Carré de Malberg vehemently rejected this idea. From the moment of their election on, MPs should not worry about the ‘diverse and heterogenous elements composing the electoral corps’, but should see themselves as the ‘exclusive organ of the nation by which it can express a will’.84 The representatives of the nation did not have to worry to ensure a representation of all opinions or interests within the assembly, ‘à aucun moment, pas même à l’époque des élections’.85
Yet, the same political criticism as in Belgium existed in La Grande Nation.86 Gambetta chastised the disproportionate effect in seats of a handful of voters changing their minds.87 Thomson, by contrast, defended the ‘majorité homogène et compacte’ brought about by Universal Suffrage in France. There could not even be a Republic, if the will of the majority could not dominate!88 This argument is refuted by Errera in his treatise. Yet, specific French circumstances explain Thomson’s point of view: in his speech, he refers to the intrusion of a multitude of political parties, among which some might even be suspected to be unconstitutional. In other words, Thomson refers to the Legitimists, who favoured the restauration of monarchy in France.89 An ‘imposing republican majority’ was a necessity. Otherwise, no reform whatsoever would have been possible.
Léon Duguit (1859-1928) was more favourably inclined towards proportional representation, and did not envisage the opposition between representation and proportional elections.90 In his Manuel de droit constitutionnel, he inventoried the frequent criticism of the French majority system. First, the arbitrary consequences following from the combination of a majority in parliament and the majority principle in the designation of MPs. The controversial law on the separation of Church and State had been voted by representatives in the Chambre des Députés assembling in total 2,6 out of 10 million French voters.91 Condorcet (1743-1794),92 Victor Considérant (1808-1893),93 John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Jean Jaurès (1859-1914), all three famous names, advocated replacing the inequitable majority system. Yet, Duguit thought the question was asked in the wrong way. Not proportionality between political ideas as such, but a guarantee for the representation of minorities counted most.94
Arguments in favour of proportional representation did not only emerge from the voters’ interest to be liberated from the yoke of local potentates, but also from deputies’ own freedom.95 In 1927, the Communist Jean Garchery (1872-1957) called upon his colleagues to liberate themselves from the ‘servitude’ of their local constituency, in order to exercise their parliamentary voting right in dignity, with morality, preferring the battle of ideas to the battle of persons.96 ‘Malheur à qui voudra se réfugier dans l’arrondissement’: small constituencies were the political graveyard of big ideas.97
A second argument on MP’s freedom was the ‘ignoble second tour’. In the second round, French politicians were obliged to cater to the needs of other voters than those who supported them in the first round, leading to the sacrifice of ‘ceux du premier tour qui pensent comme lui, mais dont il est sûr’.98
The most eloquent advocate of proportional representation was Jean Jaurès (1859-1914). In 1910, the French legislative elections were won by the Radical-Republican-Socialist Party and the Socialist Republican Party, of which many members favoured PR. Jaurès (SFIO) challenged the idea that a majority of Frenchmen could be constituted by the addition of local majorities.99 According to Jaurès, the equal right of all citizens to control and direct human activity was the founding principle of sovereignty. The majority can only decide if is built on fundamentally equal individuals. Jaurès noted the marginal position of proportional representation only three to four decades earlier, and its remarkable rise in countries with an intense political activity. He attributed this rise to the ‘esprit d’association’, or the necessity to integrate individuals within social structures such as trade unions.100 This movement was essential! Without the esprit d’association, universal suffrage risked destroying itself through fragmentation in parliament.101 Proportional representation ought thus to generate political parties, or in Rosanvallon’s words ‘appréhender le pluralisme social sous les espèces du pluralisme des partis’.102
Jaurès recalled that the growth of the French state had been a consequence of administrative centralisation. Local resistance had been broken during the French revolution. If the legislative branch of government allowed itself to be splintered in hundreds of small fiefs, the executive would wield excessive power.103 Proportional representation would arouse voters’ attention: finally they would be free to vote for an idea, rather than for a local face. Furthermore, without regular reform, Jaurès warned, systems of freedom (‘les régimes de liberté’) would inevitably come to their end. Even if there would probably not be a majority for the socialisation of all individual property, he was persuaded that one could be found for a minimum programme of social reform.104 Individual strife between local potentates should not divide political forces with a higher calling.105
When reacting to these arguments, equally put forward by Barthélémy106, Vauthier was not convinced of the impact PR had had on party organisation, nor on the focus on an elevated debating climate dominated by high ideas. To his interpretation, Belgium was locked in a linguistic crisis, which PR could not have prevented.107
PR was adopted in 1912 by the Chambre des Députés, but defeated in the French Sénat in 1913. The radicals of Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) and Emile Combes (1835-1921) swung against the text adopted by the Chambre des Députés and dropped their support.108
4 After the Great War: the end of the “Belgian Laboratory”
In this section, the end of the “Belgian Laboratory” will be discussed after the Great War.
4.1 Belgium 1918-1921: the advent of ‘pure’ PR for parliamentary election, and the defeat of the ‘loi des quatre infamies’
Belgium introduced Universal Suffrage under pressure. Contra constitutionem, the elections of November 1918 were organised without the double and triple voting system of 1893. Politically and morally, the government felt it impossible to discriminate against the one vote-electors who had risked or given their lives in the Great War, especially with the spectre of the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia in the background.109 Two million voters participated in the elections, without any distinction according to wealth or education. Consequently, the Catholic Party lost its absolute majority, opening the era of coalition government, where proportional representation represented justice between political parties. The Catholics came down to 73 seats out of 186 (a loss of 26 seats). The Socialists gained 30 seats and obtained 70 MPs in the Chamber of Representatives. The Liberal Party lost slightly, but maintained its representation. For the first time, five Flemish Nationalists were elected.110
The introduction of the one man, one vote-principle was not the only innovation in electoral law. First, the loi des quatre infamies was necessarily sacrificed to the exigencies of the Belgian Workers’ Party. Second, the iniquitous small constituencies on the countryside had to become true territories of democracy.111
Municipal elections were held according to pure universal suffrage, including suffrage for women.112 The major reform of parliamentary elections consisted in allowing for the regrouping of surplus votes at provincial level. Seats were distributed first in constituencies. Yet, if it was not possible to attribute seats directly, the remaining seats were allotted to the parties with the highest number of remaining votes at a higher level. In total, the repartition of seats was conformable to what would have been the outcome if the election had taken place at the provincial level. Consequently, votes for Socialist, Liberal, Communist or Flemish Nationalist candidates in rural areas were not lost anymore, but counted together with those expressed in the provincial capital. Whereas the one man one vote-principle had killed off the Catholic absolute majority, the new system of apparentement, inspired by the Liberal MP Victor Van de Walle (1849-1927),113 assured an equitable distribution of seats between rural and urban areas.114 Hence, the ‘effets détestables’ of the D’Hondt system in small constituencies could be resolved.115
4.2 France 1919: a conditional PR experiment
France introduced proportional representation for the election of the Chambre des Députés with the law of 12 July 1919.116 This text was a compromise, out of fear of too much fragmentation in the representative landscape. Candidates obtaining the absolute majority of votes were automatically elected. Proportional representation only became applicable for those seats where no individual candidate had obtained an absolute majority.117 Furthermore, under certain conditions, the largest party received a bonus.118 Hence, Carré de Malberg contended that individual voters would have acquired the quality of organ of the nation, which he reserved for elected MPs only.119
In the 1925 edition of his Allgemeine Staatslehre, the Austrian constitutional lawyer Hans Kelsen ironically remarked that the shift away from Carré de Malberg’s idea of the nation as a collective sovereign had not always been evident (‘selbstverständlich’). Kelsen recognised Carré de Malberg’s reasoning was correct: proportional representation implied that not the Gesamtwählerschaft (all voters), but Teilkörper (parts of the electorate) became the bearers of the right to elect (droit d’élire). It was thus highly probable that proportional representation would increase the degree of Unmittelbarkeit (direct link) between individual voters and government.120 Thanks to proportional representation, the definition of these subgroups was not a matter of ‘unnatural’ territorial criteria, but of an affiliation between persons agreeing on the same political ideas (alle Personen der gleichen politischen Überzeugung).121
Carré de Malberg focused excessively on an extreme case (‘ideeller Grenzfall’), whereby the representative system as such would be destroyed. Kelsen fully adhered to Errera’s distinction between the operation of the majority rule for decisions made in parliament, on the one hand, and every citizen’s right to be represented, on the other hand. Proportional representation was a consequence of the ‘individualistische Prinzip der Freiheit’. All minorities in society, by their mere existence, exert an influence on political decisions. The narrower a political majority becomes, the more it will be inclined to build its decisions on compromise. As a consequence, proportional representation ensures the majority will not abuse of its power, to let ‘die Wille der Mehrheit schrankenlos über den der Minderheiten herrschen’.122 Minorities could not prevent the majority from acting according to its wishes, but proportional representation offered them the possibility to come ‘unwesentlich näher’ (almost unimaginably close) to a culture of compromise and pacification.
4.3 France 1925-1927: the triumph of majoritarian orthodoxy
After the return to the majority system, Léon Duguit, who had defended ‘PR’ before World War One, showed himself very critical of proportional representation. In his course on public law professed at the University of Cairo in 1926, he doubted whether the concept would be compatible with national sovereignty at all, and stated that Belgium had ‘no majority left whatsoever’.123 This a reference to the severe financial tensions during the 1925-1926 government of Socialists and Catholics, which was brought down by speculation.124 However, one could also use the opposite argument, as Jaurès did during the 1912 debate, at the apex of the ‘mouvement proportionnaliste’ of 1906-1913: the majority system in France had not assured stable majorities.125 Duguit’s rejection in 1926 is rather surprising. Three years earlier, the 1923 edition of his Traité de droit constitutionnel, echoed Carré de Malberg’s preference for the term proportional ‘election’. However, Duguit added that proportional ‘representation’ in itself was an ill-conceived term, since a proportional distribution of seats did not necessarily entail a new theory of representation or of national sovereignty. One could infer that Duguit did not consider PR incompatible with the republican idea of national sovereignty.126
One year after Duguit’s Cairo lectures, the Chambre des Députés opted to scrap proportional representation with the law of 21 July 1927, with y a very thin majority (295 against 265).127 The return to the majority system was defended in an ulterior debate by Thomson. He stated in the Chambre des Députés that the majority system had been conformable to the ‘génie même de notre regime politique et parlementaire’128, ever since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1848.129 Yet, the association of proportional representation and justice did not disappear with the wiping out of the system in 1925, as its multiple resurrections indicate.130 The republican Blaisot (1881-1945) argued that the ‘justice électorale’ was still an ideal cherished by the majority of his compatriots.131
5 Conclusion
From 1883 to 1921, the Belgian electoral system underwent systemic changes, designed to adapt representative institutions to the advent of universal suffrage and end the disenfranchisement of at least the male half of the adult population. An elitist well-off group of at most 100 000 electors could no longer embody the collective national will. The parallel development of arguments on proportional representation in France, within the broader international ‘élan proportionnaliste’ of the later 19th century,132 is striking. Parisian defenders of the republican regime staunchly opposed the introduction of this reform up to the Great War, whereas Belgian conservatives bowed fourteen year earlier, admitting PR, however without introducing the one man one vote-principle, and without corrections in district size.
Proportional representation was defended across borders by activists and legal scholars using the tautological moral slogan of ‘justice and equality’. Yet, ‘equality’ in electoral affairs did not necessarily imply the one man-one vote principle (in the Belgian case), nor a right of mimetic representation (in the French case). Proponents and opponents of PR could conceive of alternative definitions of justifiable differences in treatment. For Carré de Malberg, equality in voting was restricted to ‘l’aptitude au vote’, and not applicable to the consequences of a vote cast, ‘ceux-ci peuvant demeurer négatifs pour les électeurs qui forment la minorité’.133
Before the Great War, caught between conservative Germany, where the 1871 constitution still consecrated monarchical sovereignty134 and progressive, secular France, where left-wing and republican governments were feared as a factor of political instability in Europe, Belgium steered a middle course with experiments in its electoral ‘laboratory’. Yet, due to the transnational constitutional and democratic reverberations of the Great War, the characteristic of ‘justice’135 attached to PR would truly emerge, to transform the country profoundly.
In the long run, proportional representation had massive consequences for the operation of the Belgian political system. The country’s culture of pacification gradually required the representation of all minorities, across the linguistic divide. Tensions between regions and linguistic communities are resolved in federalism (1970), tensions between employers and employees gave rise to a complex system of corporatist social negotiations (1919), tensions between Catholics and non-Catholics resulted in important pacts on schools (1959) and cultural life (1973).136 The increasing devolution of competences (1970, 1980, 1988, 1993, 2001, 2012) has entrenched PR-pacification mechanisms within each constituent entity of the Belgian state. In that sense, the introduction of PR in 1899 was the most fundamental reform of the Belgian political system, the consequences of which reached further than its initiators could have imagined.
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