An open-access analysis of one of the most fragile mainsprings of our representative democracy: the gap between what candidates give to be seen and what they really put in their programmes.
The image that illustrates this analysis is not a caricature: it is a barely exaggerated representation of what our current electoral system produces. A dazzling smile. A vague slogan. A crowd in emotional trance. And, just below, in very small print, what no one reads: the real programme, that is to say what the candidate really intends to do once elected.
This gap between the staging of the campaign and the reality of the exercise of power is not an accident. It has become the structural mode of functioning of our modern representative democracies, and it poses a fundamental question for the citizen debate that opens as the presidential election of 2027 approaches.
The observation: the reading of programmes in free fall
The successive surveys conducted on the electoral behaviour of the French all converge towards the same observation: the proportion of voters who really read the candidates' programmes before voting is marginal. The majority of electoral choices are made on the basis of other criteria: the sympathy aroused by the candidate, their physical appearance, their oratorical capacity, their media positions on a few emblematic subjects, the knock-on effect of their social entourage, the opposition to an adversary judged worse.
The programme, that is to say the written document that commits the candidate to what they will do if elected, is largely short-circuited. It exists formally, it is even sometimes printed and distributed, but it is not the main support of the electoral decision. This reality is not a cyclical defect of distracted citizens: it is structural, and it is maintained by the whole of the contemporary media and political apparatus.
Why the programme no longer makes the vote
Several factors converge to explain this drift.
First, the growing length and technicality of the programmes. A serious presidential programme today runs to several hundred pages, deals with dozens of technical subjects (taxation, pensions, defence, energy, immigration, education), and uses an administrative and legal vocabulary that is often hermetic. Reading such a document in full demands dozens of hours of concentration. Few citizens have the time, and even fewer the desire after a day of work.
Next, the systemic gap between the programme and the effective action once in power. The accumulated experience of the last decades has convinced a large part of the electorate that campaign promises are not kept. What is the point of reading a programme that one knows in advance will be applied only at the margins, or even contradicted from the first months of the mandate? This learned cynicism, the fruit of so many successive disillusionments, feeds the disinterest in programmes and the slide towards the emotional vote.
Finally, the evolution of the media system. Television, then social networks, have favoured short, emotional, visual formats. The substantive debate gives way to the clash, analysis to commentary, argument to the punchline. What retains attention is no longer what enlightens judgement, but what produces buzz, virality, emotional engagement. Programmes, by nature long and arid, are structurally disadvantaged by this media ecosystem.
The political consequences of this slide
The slide from programmatic democracy towards the democracy of appearance has major political consequences, which must be clearly named.
First consequence: the selection of candidates now favours those who master the image rather than those who master the files. Political parties, perfectly aware of this mutation, present as a priority young, telegenic candidates, at ease in the media, capable of producing viral sequences. The real skills of public administration, of knowledge of technical files, of operational experience, become secondary. The modern politician resembles more and more a film actor: selected for their appearance, trained in media performance, framed by communication advisers who write their interventions.
Second consequence: once elected, the candidate is no longer bound by their programme. Since voters did not vote for a programme but for an image, the programme loses its morally binding character. The elected candidate finds themselves with a great freedom to conduct a policy that may diverge substantially from what they had promised. This freedom is systematically exploited, and it in turn nourishes electoral cynicism.
Third consequence: the structural distancing between the elected officials and the popular base that carried them to power. If the vote is no longer an act of programmatic delegation, but an act of emotional adherence, then once the electoral sequence is over, the adherence evaporates and the elected official finds themselves alone facing the economic, media, technocratic powers which, for their part, never sleep. The popular mandate, for lack of having been a precise and written mandate, no longer weighs anything against the permanent pressures of organised interests.
A few avenues to escape this trap
Recognising the problem is not enough, one must also sketch out ways out. Several avenues deserve to be explored and debated within the framework of the citizen debate that opens.
First avenue: the simplification and standardisation of programmes. Rather than documents of several hundred pages, require of candidates a short and standardised format, for example an A4 sheet per major subject (taxation, pensions, immigration, defence, education, etc.), with commitments that are costed, dated and verifiable. Such a format would oblige candidates to clarify their intentions and would facilitate the citizen comparison between the political offers.
Second avenue: the reinforcement of the mechanisms of accountability during the mandate. Condition the possibility of standing again on a public assessment measured against the campaign commitments, organise mid-term votes on the structural reforms, facilitate the procedures of citizen-initiative referendum to allow voters to reorient the policy conducted without waiting for the end of the mandate.
Third avenue: education in the critical reading of electoral campaigns. Integrate into the school programmes a training in the mechanisms of political marketing, in the comparative analysis of programmes, in the distinction between a precise commitment and an incantatory formula. This education is today absent from the school curriculum, whereas it is more essential than ever.
Fourth avenue, more radical: the revision of the voting method and the reintroduction of the binding mandate on the major orientations. Several democratic traditions (Switzerland notably) show that it is possible to regularly submit the major political orientations to the direct vote of the citizens, thus short-circuiting the risk of a gap between the campaign promises and the effective action. This avenue demands substantial constitutional revisions, but it deserves to be seriously debated.
For a debate at last enlightened
The objective of this analysis is not to make the citizen despair, nor to push them towards abstention. On the contrary: it is to give them the intellectual tools to become once again a conscious actor of representative democracy, rather than a passive consumer of electoral spectacle.
Read the programmes. Compare the commitments. Verify the antecedents of the candidates. Distinguish what pertains to the media image from what pertains to real political action. Vote in full knowledge of the facts, not by emotional adherence. And, once the vote is expressed, demand accountability throughout the mandate.
This citizen discipline is demanding. It requires time, effort, lucidity. But it is the only one that allows representative democracy to function as it is supposed to: a system where enlightened citizens delegate to chosen representatives the exercise of power, in return for precise and verifiable commitments, under the permanent control of the electoral body.
This analysis is in coherence with the Plan for the Rupture and Restoration of the State and with all the works published on this site, which share the same objective: to restore a real French democracy, founded on knowledge, debate and deliberation, rather than on emotion, image and slogan.
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