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The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is launching a local consultation around the parking rate for SUVs in Paris on February 4. Behind this popular participation system lies a powerful political communication tool.
“More or fewer SUVs in Paris?” This is the phrase that has featured on many advertising inserts in recent weeks in the capital. Objective: to encourage Parisians to participate in the local consultation organized by the environmentalist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, on February 4. In reality, the question put to the vote is this: “For or against the creation of a specific rate for the parking of heavy, bulky, polluting individual cars?” If the first question does not entirely correspond to the measure submitted for consultation, the second also seems to guide the expected response. And this is not contrary to the principle of local consultation.
Local consultation vs referendum
As part of a local referendum, a city asks its citizens to vote for or against a measure that will be implemented directly. The city, instead of voting something in its municipal council, asks citizens to vote and this vote binds the municipality. This is a direct democracy system.
The local consultation exercise is different since, as its name suggests, it involves consulting the population. The city is not required to apply the result of the consultation, it does not commit it to anything. It will then be necessary to vote in the municipal council according to the usual procedures. Local consultation is a tool of participatory democracy in the sense that it is intended to involve residents. Hugo Touzet is a sociology researcher: “The city of Paris already has its idea, as it already had on scooters. And besides it does not hide it, it is for limiting the place of SUVs as it was for banning scooters. So it uses this tool as a means of strengthening its political weight by saying ‘We were against it, we consulted the Parisians, the Parisians who are also against it, so that gives us additional strength.'”
The legal framework for consultations is much more flexible than that of referendums, specifies the researcher: “What the law says on this is that the cities decide on the modalities of organization of their vote, of its supervision. The city is setting up a commission to ensure the smooth running of the vote and all of those things.”
The question asked
There is also no obligation regarding the wording of the question asked. The question from the city of Paris for its consultation on SUVs is also very clearly oriented, underlines Hugo Touzet: “The City of Paris is pursuing a general policy of reducing car space and this consultation must also be read as a stone in their general policy. This consultation appears as a public policy tool available to the City of Paris . We are in a search for membership, for mobilization rather than in a search for neutrality.”
The way the question is asked influences the response of the person consulted, a phenomenon well documented in social sciences: “I’ll take a somewhat caricatured example. If you say to people: ‘Are you for or against the death penalty?’ Or if you say to them: ‘Are you for or against the death penalty in the case of pedophiles, repeat offenders, child rapists?’ You touch on the emotional, you will arouse in people something which will be of the order of empathy and therefore you will have very different responses.
The desirability bias
Social sciences also theorize what is called desirability bias : “If the question is oriented in a way where we have the impression that there is an answer that is good, an answer that is bad, well, we will have a tendency to want to be socially desirable and therefore to give the response that is expected of us. In the same way, if we want to measure racism or intolerance in a survey, we are not going to ask people ‘Are you racist?’ Because we know that people will know better than to answer yes.”
Who participates ?
In consultations, it is also important to observe who is being interviewed. Still in Paris, in April 2023, on the subject of scooters, few people participated. The result was 89% in favor of the ban expected by the town hall but less than 8% of the electorate voted. The consultation on SUVs is only aimed at Parisians registered on the electoral lists while the increase in fines mainly concerns non-residents. “The people who might be most affected don’t even have the right to vote,” remarks the sociologist.
Furthermore, consultations are not subject to a duty of neutrality on the part of those questioned, unlike surveys: “When a polling institute investigates to find out what the French think about immigration, to have objective data it will have a great responsibility on these issues of neutrality of the people questioned. This is not the aim sought by the city of Paris.” The organizer of a local consultation also has no obligation to authorize a contradictory campaign: “There is no requirement to leave billboards for opponents.”
Hugo Touzet then questions the interest of the consultation in terms of participation: “In my opinion, it is a fairly ineffective tool. If only because people who agree have little interest in voting: if you agree, you know that in any case it is “That’s the answer that’s going to win, so you’re not very inclined to move for that either.”