Tuesday, December 20, 2011

This house would extend the right to vote in French municipal elections to non-EU residents - moderator's report

First of all, I would like to thank our debaters and followers for this extremely interesting debate. The speeches made were cleverly written and showed that good research had been done on the topic to provide accurate facts and answers.

The result of the poll is clear. 72% of the voters are in favor of the motion, which gives the victory to the proposers. Congratulations to them.

Let us now go deeper in the analysis of the different speeches to find out which team had the best arguments. 

Our first proposing speaker, AJ, quickly got to the heart of the matter by giving a good definition of the notion of citizenship, which wasn’t the case in RV’s opposing speech. One of the key issues in this debate was obviously the distinction between citizenship and nationality. AJ clearly stated that he would consider a citizen as an active member of a community, with rights and duties. As a result, giving the right to vote to foreigners in municipal elections seems normal for the proposers: foreigners should have the right to be involved in the decision making that will affect their everyday life.

This argument was questioned by an interesting comment: how can foreigners be given the right to vote in municipal elections and not in national elections, since municipalities influence the national policy? The same questioning appeared in GL’s rebuttal. This objection was cleverly addressed by BL, who explained how the decentralization process, started 30 years ago, is gradually giving more power to regions and municipalities. Thus, granting foreigners with the right to vote in municipal elections makes sense: these elections directly concern people’s everyday life.

GL’s main argument to rebut the latter was the notion of second class citizens: the opposers seemed to think that giving the right of vote only in municipal elections is not coherent, and that the solution is to modify the conditions of naturalization so that foreigners can vote in every election and take part in every decision made in the country they live in. I believe that at that moment precisely, the opposing side was starting to slowly drift away from the heart of the subject. This was confirmed by the closing speech, the conclusion of the latter being “Foreigners should be able to vote in every election, but now is not the time because French people have to unite to face the crisis”.

As VB pointed out in a very sharp and accurate comment, there is a huge difference between taking part in a local community (being a citizen) and adhering to a nation’s values (possessing the French nationality). Opposers made this mistake because of a lack of definition at the beginning of the different speeches. Again, the difference between citizenship and nationality was obviously the key in this debate.

As a result, the closing opposing speech does not seem to clearly address the motion and its conclusion is somewhat incoherent with the original position of the house, whereas the closing proposing speech sums up well both key arguments and clearly states the proposers’ position.  While reading both closing speeches, one is much less confused by the proposers’ than by the opposers’. Proof of this is found in the last comments, where followers seem to be a little lost after having read the speech.

To conclude, it seems that a side managed to argue more efficiently than another in this debate. The victory is therefore awarded to the proposers, for good arguing skills and clear speeches. Congratulations to the proposers who succeeded in winning both the vote and the argument!

by PC

1 comment:

  1. Overall, I agree with the moderator’s assessment.

    The main values upon which the proposers built their case were (1) the “principles of citizenship” where a citizen is understood to be “a member of a community willing to participate in the community’s life and decision making process”: a member, therefore, endowed with the right to vote; and (2) the furtherance of integration. The essential clash point, as I see it, between the two sides, concerns this “willingness to participate in the community’s life and decision making process”. Is a community obligated to give a say on its future destiny to someone who has no real commitment to furthering that destiny? Surely not. But then doesn’t the community have the right to demand some kind of proof of such a commitment? If so, does the simple act of registering to vote itself constitute such a proof? Or do we need something stronger, such as the opposers’ preferred option of outright naturalisation?

    The proposers state that “the process of naturalisation … is heavy in meaning and we have to respect every resident’s right to have his own national identity”, which would imply that the naturalisation test of the non-national’s commitment to the host community is too strong, but doesn’t tell us what could take its place. One feels an intermediate step between the two positions (outright naturalisation vs. simple registration to vote) should be available, but it is not clear what it would be. Neither side scores a knockout blow here. It is true however, as Opp 2 points out, that the role of local representatives in the election of the Senate complicates matters for the proposers.

    Ultimately, however, despite several good points they made in the debate which the proposers didn’t fully respond to, I feel the opposers lost because of the unconvincing nature of the social diagnosis on which they based their position. The way they found to justify their naturalisation test of commitment was to offer a vision of the crisis of unity in France today which will seem too extreme to many readers (or at least does so to this one). Furthermore, the proposers have a better story to tell about how the right to vote could conceivably further the process of integration of marginalised groups, compared to the opposers’ depressing claim that “It is not the right moment! ... people still think they should be cared of more than foreigners living with them”. Finally, the conclusions the opposers draw from their social diagnosis, that “the inhabitants of the country have to stick together and to show solidarity”, are answered by the proposers’ “I just cannot understand how making categories of voters (French people and EU residents) and non-voters would unify people living in our country”. Although this is hardly an unanswerable refutation, one feels that it is on the right track.

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