Le rendement des dépenses électorales dans un cadre réglementaire strict : le cas des élections législatives françaises de 1997

Abstract

This article aims at evaluating the influence of campaign spending on legislative vote share within a new French campaign finance law. From an empirical analysis issued from the 1997 French legislative election, we show that the electoral outcomes are sensitive to campaign spending despite the existence of a restricting campaign finance law. Using MCO and 2SLS methods, we demonstrate that the spending of incumbent candidates have a direct and positive effect, whereas the spending of their challengers have an indirect and negative effect. More precisely the amount of the incumbent spending is closely linked to the first challenger spending's amount : the incumbent candidate has to maximize the difference between the both amounts. Furthermore, the effect of the other opponent's spending is closed and homogeneous. Therefore the campaign finance regulation (characterized by both spending ceiling and public repayment) does not influence the electoral process as a race of contributions and spending.