Electoral Court and By-Elections in France: Guarantor of Electoral Integrity or Political Sideshow?

Abstract

Elections to fill vacant legislative seats outside of a general election, often called “by-elections” or “special elections,” are common in France, as they are in numerous democracies that rely on single-member districts. What differentiates French by-elections from those elsewhere is that they are frequently precipitated by electoral annulments from the Constitutional Council in an effort to preserve electoral integrity. Do these have different consequences than other by-elections because they follow problematic elections? If so, what implications does this have for the system of accountability they represent? Using a dataset covering by-elections to the French National Assembly between 1988 and 2021, I examine whether political change is more likely under different by-election conditions, finding that by-elections induced by the Constitutional Council are considerably more likely to lead to a partisan shift in the National Assembly. This finding has ambiguous implications but nonetheless provides insight into the consequences of the election dispute resolution process in France.