As we gear up for the 2008 Presidential Elections here in the United States, many of us may be overlooking the French Presidential Election, the first round of which is April 22 of this year. Are there things that we can learn from the French elections that could help us here?

The other day, I received an email from a German researcher asking what people thought of Segolene Royale's election campaign. She is the socialist candidate who heavily draws on "debats participatifs". These are supposed to be discussions occurring both face-to-face and over the Internet. She has received a large public response: 135,000 discussion contributions on the net, 2.7 million participants, 6,500 face-to-face meetings with 700,000 attendees. If you are a Francophone, you can read more about this at http://www.desirsdavenir.org/index.php?c=mecanique.

He asks,

Does the French public perceive this as a new revolutionary method of policy making? Or is it deemed as a form of populism (as I read her rival Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed)?

How does her rival Nicolas Sarkozy generally react to her participatory strategy? Can you observe an increased use of "dialogue speak" by him, or does he even engage himself in participatory formats?

Will it help Segolene Royale to get elected? Or will this strategy backfire because her own political profile is watered down, i.e. it is not clear what her own standpoint is (as some media reports here in Germany suggest)?

If Segolene Royale is elected, will deliberative democracy take a new step in France (and elsewhere), i.e. will it inspire a new political culture, with a better sense of deliberation processes?

My first response to the preceding questions is, “is there something wrong with forms of populism?”

I received an email suggesting that Royale’s "debats participatifs" suffers from being too much of a one way street, and not a real dialog. This lack of real dialog was perceived as potentially being a fatal flaw and the writer was suggesting that Nicolas Sarkozy is more likely to come out ahead. They pointed to his videos responding to people’s questions. My reaction to these videos was that they felt a little bit too scripted, a little bit like Hillary’s “conversations”. However, I don’t speak French very well, so I am basing these reactions much more on the visuals than a Francophone might.

As I asked around I was pointed to Wampum’s coverage of the French Election. I would encourage people to stop by and read what they are writing.

Then, please provide your thoughts on the questions above, as well as what you think we can learn from the use of the Internet in the French Presidential election.

(Cross Posted on culturekitchen)