LINKAGE POLITICS: THE FRE-NCH REFERENDUM AND THE PARIS SUMMIT OF 1972

LINKAGE POLITICS: THE FRE-NCH REFERENDUM AND THE PARIS

SUMMIT OF 1972* BY MICHAEL LEIGH

University of Sussex

I. INTRODUCTION

‘The French are up to their usual games, but it will all ,be forgotten in a fortnight.” With these words ‘a very high source in the Com- munity’ dismissed the referendum on the enlargement of the EEC, held in France on April 23, 1972. This turned out to be the year’s most accurate prediction. Today almost no one recalls the event. During the British referendum campaign of 1975 many com- parisons were drawn with the 1972 experience of the Irish, the Norwegians and the Danes, but the French referendum was scarcely mentioned.

The obscurity of President Pompidou’s only experiment with this Gaullist political weapon is not surprising. Unlike the

Irish sup remet an Scandinavian referenda, nothing seemed to hinge on its result. France itself was not considering whether to remain in or leave the Common Market. The overwhelming majority of the French public was on record, through the opinion olls, as favour- ing or being indifferent towards the enlargement of t!e Community. A negative outcome was not on the cards; and, an way, Georges

his leadership on the outcome. The mass public bristled with in- difference: at the opening of the campaign, 76 per cent of a national sample told IFOP that they had little or no interest in the referendum.’

Perhaps the political scientist should accept the verdict of those directly involved and consign the event, or non-event, to the dust-

Pompidou, like Harold Wilson three years later, re r used to wager

* The author acknowledges a gran: from the Commission of the European Communities which assisted research for this article. Responsibility for the content of the article rests with the author alone.

1 Le Monde, April 26, 1972. Quotation freely translated by the present author. 2 Le Monde, April 5 , 1972.

‘11

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hea of history. Yet the suspicion lingers that the apparent futility of &s exercise conceals a novel and important political rocess. For

members. European issues can be manipulated to serve

wise even competition for authority can tilt the balance. Conversely, internal politics can be manipulated to serve national ends in Com- munity negotiations. A demonstration of ublic solidarity behind the government’s desiderata can skew the gargaining to its advan- tage especially if ministerial instability or upcoming elections re- duce the credibility of other governments. Strug les for political

for the entire process of European integration, The French referendum of 1972 is a neglected but striking exam le of the temptations and

1972 was to be the year of President Pompidou. It was his prerogative to invite the Ten (the Nine after Norway’s referendum) to a conference in Paris. The summit, with Pompidou presiding, would be asked to endorse an agenda for Europe to which he had nailed his personal colours. Its main items were Economic and Monetary Union, a goal the French adopted, after initial hesitation, as in- surance against any drift to Atlanticism following the entry of Great Britain; and plans for a permanent political secretariat located in Paris. This scheme for superseding the Davignon Committee by detaching political cooperation from the supra-national institutions in Brussels was conceived as the germ of a Pompidolian confederal Europe. With these achievements under his belt Pompidou hoped to emerge from the shadow of General de Gaulle as the commanding figure in France and in Europe.

The following sections analyse the objectives Pompidou sought to achieve in calling the referendum and the implications of its un- expected result for French domestic politics and for Europe. The conclusion locates these developments within the framework of linkage politics.

the EEC has introduced new stakes into the politica P life of its

ends, even where the origins of domestic conflict have do with the Community. The injection of such issues

supremacy within member states now carry impications F pitfalls of this little remarked feature o P linkage politics.

11. POMPIDOU’S OBJECTIVES

Pompidou had never called a referendum before and was not obliged to do so over the enlargement of the EEC. Parliament, where the government controlled 80 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly, could have ratified the Treaty of Accession and would have done so with scarcely a whimper. A permissive majority of

LINKAGE POLITICS ‘19

the mass public had existed on this issue for the past year. In June 1971, 55 per cent of a national sample said that British entry would be in France’s interest, only 17 per cent said that it would Pompidou’s announcement of the referendum merely increased the saliency of the issue and the size of the favourable majority. An IFOP poll published a week after the announcement showed 66 per cent in favour of British entry with 12 per cent ~pposed .~

The President must have been aware of the disposition of mass opinion. Within the Plite, only the Communists and the Gaullist right wing were opposed. It is reasonable to infer that the President had other objectives, besides assuring ratification of the treaty, in calling the referendum. These objectives were at once domestic and European :

I . To claim personal credit for France’s European policies and to

2. To bolster the prestige of the government and tighten his control

3. To disrupt the opposition and bring about a realignment of forces

4. To demonstrate the solidarity of public opinion behind France’s

The President did not succeed in achieving all his objectives. Each of the four will be considered in turn, followed by an analysis of the implications of the referendum result.

differentiate them from the policies of General de Gaulle.

over its members.

more favourable to the government.

position in the negotiations leading up to the Pans summit.

I . Pompidou’s bid for personal endorsement The words chosen by Pompidou to announce the referendum at his press conference on March 16 left little doubt that the vote was a straight bid for personal endorsement : ‘Having assumed personal responsibility at the Hague, at the summit talks with Mr. Heath last May and over signature of the Treaty of Accession, I consider it my duty to ask Frenchmen to pronounce on them directly.’s Given the permissive mood of the public, the accent clearly fell on ‘personal responsibility’ rather than the substance of the issue ostensibly at stake. This motivation was quite transparent to the French people. A SOFRES poll taken between March 22 and March 28 asked a national sample of 1,000:

3 Daily Telegraph, March 17, 1972. 4 France-Soir, March 23, 1972. 5 The (London) Times, March 17, 1972. Emphasis added.

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In the referendum on April 2 3 , will the French people choose between ‘Yes’ ‘No’ and abstention mainly because

.~

They are favourable or unfavourable to M. Pompidou? 40%

Common Market? 30% No Opinion 30%

They are favourable or unfavourable to the entry of Great Britain into the

Source: Le Figaro, April 4, 1972

When a third explanation of their coming decision was added a week later an even smaller percentage was willing to attribute the people’s choice to the merits of the issue:

In the referendum of April 2 3 , will the French people choose between ‘Yes’ ‘No’ and abstention mainly because

They are favourable or unfavourable to the entry of Great Britain into the

They are favourable or unfavourable to M. Pompidou? They are favourable or unfavourable to the economic and social policies

Common Market? 24%

of the government ? 21% No Opinion 18%

I 0 0 yo

3 3 y o

-

Source: Le Figaro, April 12, 1972

If interviewees were sceptical about the motives of their fellow citizens, they were no less so about those of the President of the Republic. Only 21 per cent thought that Pompidou was concerned primarily with British entry although another 16 per cent saw his decision to hold a referendum as somehow related to the European Community; 27 per cent saw his motives as essentially plebiscitarian while another 18 per cent thought he was mainly interested in disrupting the opposition :

Different reasons might have led M. Pompidou to organize this referendum. Amongst the following reasons which seem to you the most important:

To put France at the head of the European enterprise? 16%

21%

President of the Republic? 27% To put the opposition in a difficult position? 18% No Opinion 18%

I OOYn

To make the French people realize the importance of the entry of Great Britain into the Common Market? To give the French people an opportunity to renew their confidence in the

-

Source: Lc Figaro, April 4, I 972

LINKAGE POLITICS 161

These jaundiced interpretations no doubt reflected memories of earlier referenda under the Fifth Republic as well as habitual scepticism about politics. Des ite the widespread belief that Pompidou sought a personal en B orsement, 74 per cent of an IFOP sample thought he would not resign even if there were many abstentions.‘j

rsonal endorsement was intended to constitute the final

dum would legitimize an approach to the conduct of &airs which Pompidou claimed as his own.’ Between 1g6g and 1972 Pompidou gradually adopted a new image, always taking care not to an- tagonize the old guard upon whom he continued to depend. The General’s name was uttered less frequently; the word ‘integration’ was occasionally heard on the new President’s lips. These nuances aside, he iously continued to oppose direct elections to the ‘Eure

Council of Ministers. The one clean break with the past for which Pompidou claimed full credit was lifting the French veto on British membership. This achievement was reinforced b cordial personal

de Gaulle-Adenauer connection of the previous decade.* Pompidou wanted to extract maximum mileage from these accomplishments to bolster his Presidential standing, divide his opponents and win acceptance for French proposals at the Paris summit.

2. The Government’s Prestige and Pompidou’s Control over its

The government’s authority needed refurbishing in the spring of 1972. Unemployment increased by 40 per cent during the previous twelve months bringing the total out of work to more than half a million. A pall of scandal hung over the government. Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the Prime Minister, and Jacques Chirac, the Minister in charge of Parliamentary relations, were under constant attack in the National Assembly for allegedly manipulating the income tax regulations to cover up the indiscretions of a UDR deputy char ed with fraud in a property company case. Rumours were circu 7 ating that M. Chaban-Delmas himself paid no income tax. A resounding victory in the referendum would enable Pompidou

This phase o r Pompidou’s succession to General de Gaulle. The referen-

pean Par P iamentary Assembly’ and majority voting in the EEC

relations with Edward Heath, a pivotal link w Ki ch replaced the

Mem k r s

6L.e Monde, April 5, 1972. 7Sce Dankwart A. Rustow, ‘Succession in the Twentieth Century’, in loumal of

8 And prefigured the Giscard d Estaing-Helmut Schmidt connection of the mid International Aflairs, No. I , 1964;

1970s.

162 JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES

to sacrifice the Prime Minister without seeming to do so under pressure. He could be replaced by a man who would symbolize Pompidou’s emancipation from orthodox Gaullism.

The President felt constrained by the hard core of old Gaullists who remained in his entourage. He had just exacted the resignation of Jean-Marc Boegner, the General’s long time Permanent Repre- sentative to the Commission, who presided over the confrontation phase of de Gaulle’s European diplomacy. Boegner’s characteristic parting shot before leaving Brussels in January 1972 was an un- successful bid to prevent or delay ,signature of the Treaty of Acces- sion by a representative of the Council of Ministers or the Cornmis~ion.~ His successor, Etienne Burin des Roziers, had also

’ven long years of service to de Gaulle but was less abrasive and fad not been personally associated with the vetoes or the crisis of the empty chair.

De Gaulle’s lieutenants, notably Michel Debre and Pierre Messmer, still occupied commanding heights in the government. DebrC, who had tried to get a committee of the Senate to declare the Treaty of Rome unconstitutional in 1958, had never fully accepted it. He and Messmer deplored the concession to Atlanticism which Britain’s entry implied. A massive personal endorsement on the very issue which de Gaulle never sanctioned would give Pompidou a freer hand with the old guard. ‘It is a question of the liquidation of a certain type of Gaullism’’o according to one French observer.

3. Dividing the Opposition Shortly before Pompidou’s announcement of the referendum, the Socialist Party issued invitations to the Communists, Radicals and United Socialists (PSU) to discuss a common electoral programme.” Legislative elections were scheduled for not later than March 1973- FranGois Mitterand, the Socialist leader, believed that this latest attempt to forge a united left was the only hope for defeating the UDR and its allies.

By seizing the initiative with his referendum Pompidou hoped to disrupt the ‘united’ left before it had begun to coalesce.12 Mitterand was on record as a staunch European. This had won him the en-

9 The (London) Times, January 21, 1972. For Boegner’s own view see Boegner, Jean-Marc, Le MatchC Commun de Sir a Neuj, Paris: Armand Colin, 1974, especially chapters 7/9.

10 Andre Guerin, writing in L‘Aurore, cited in Le Monde, March 18, 1972. 11 Lr Monde, March 18, 1972. 12Bernard Lavergne, ‘Le rtfkrendum du 23 Avril, ~p’, L‘Annie Politique e t

Economique, No. 225, Paris, April 1972.


dorsement of Jean Monnet in his bid to replace General de Gaulle in the Presidential election of 1965. More recently he welcomed the accession of Great Britain. Despite some mellowing in ics attitude, following the lead of the Italian Communist Party, the French Communist Party continued its ritualistic denunciations of the EEC as a prop of the capitalist system. Pompidou could be confident, therefore, that the referendum would force the Socialists to support the government and so isolate the Communists.

At the same time the referendum would dish the Centrists. Jean Lecanuet, leader of the Centre Democrats, could not deny his European faith but would have to make the nitpickin argument that a ‘Yes’ to Euro e was not a ‘Yes’ to Pompidou.13 7% e Radicals would also say yes gut only at the cost of further strains between their moderate leader, Jean-Jatques Servan-Schreiber and his left wing. With the op osition divided and the various factions of the majority galvanize! by victory, Pompidou could advance the date of the elections and score a second triumph. The UDR’s parliamentary majority, hitherto the product of a knee jerk reaction to the May events, would be placed on a securer foundation.

4. The Paris Summit Precommitment is a bargaining strategy familiar to students of the impact of public opinion on foreign p01icy.’~ If a country enters negotiations with its options already constrained by public opinion, it is more likely to get its way. The best tactic is deliberately to in- flame public opinion before negotiations begin, getting it to endorse one’s preferred outcome. Pompidou evidently had something like this in mind in 1972. Exercising his prerogative, he addressed a national television audience the day before the referendum campaign began: When at the summit conference which meets in Paris this autumn everyone knows that the French people have given me a solemn mandate to speak in its name, who can doubt that the authority of France will be enhanced? For that, the ‘Yes’ must be massive.15

Pompidou wanted to mobilize support both for his general approach to European questions and for specific proposals to be advanced at the summit. The headline above L‘HumanitP’s story, leaking

13 Lp Monde, April 8, 1972. 14 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, New York and London: Oxford

Universitv Press. 1060. DD. 27-8; and the present author’s Mobilizinp Consent: Public Opinion and AGehcan’ Foreign Policy, Wcstport, Connecticut: h w n v o o d Press, forthcoming, 1976, chapter I .

15 The (London) Times, April 11, 1972.


Pompidou’s letter to the electorate several weeks ahead of time, read POMPIDOU DEMANDS APPROVAL FOR HIS ENTIRE EUROPEAN POLICY.'^ The letter asked for approval of many specifics which did not appear on the ballot paper: maintenance of the Common Agri- cultural Policy ‘in all its principles’; political cooperation; Economic and Monetary Union; evolution towards a European confederation. The last two were cherished Pompidolian projects which did not command universal approval, especially among the prospective new members. The confederal concept subsumed France’s concrete proposal for a permanent political secretariat to be established in Paris. The referendum question vaguely alluded to these programmatic items in a qualifying clause: Do you approve, in the framework of the new prospects opening up for Europe, the Bill submitted to the French people by the President of the Republic authorizing ratification of the Treaty on the entry of Britain, Den- mark, Ireland and Norway into the European Communities?

111. RESULTS

‘The best laid schemes 0’ mice and men Gang aft a-gley.’ The referendum results did not meet Pompidou’s expectations. Public opinion proved less manipulable, domestic and European adversaries proved more resourceful, than the President had foreseen. This section considers the results and their implications for the objectives outlined above.

The results showed the highest rate of abstention in any national vote since universal suffrage was introduced in 1848: The turnout was 60.5 per cent. In addition to the 39.5 per cent who stayed away from the polls, more than two million of those voting spoiled their ballots. So, only 53.4 r cent of the registered electorate cast a valid ballot. Of these vali r ballots the ‘Yes’s’ gained a victory of more than two to one. But the Yes vote amounted to little more than 36 per cent of the registered electorate. The implications of these results for each of Pompidou’s four objectives are considered in the following analysis.

I. Bid for Personal Endorsement By any criteria this result was a severe rebuff to the President. Before the referendum Pompidou’s aides said the President would be satisfied if the Yes votes totalled 45 per cent of the registered

16Cited in Le Monde, April 2/3, 1972. A similar leak occurred during the British referendum campaign in May 1975.


electorate.” In the event they came to only 36.1 per cent. This was almost exactly the same percentage secured by Pompidou in the second ballot of the Presidential election in 1969.’~ On that occasion the Centrists opposed him, throwing their support to Alain Poher, who took up the European issue a week before the second ballot. But in the referendum Lecanuet advised Centrists to vote Yes. The Yes total also comprised Radicals and splinters from the Socialists whose leader, Mitterand, advised h s followers to abstain. So although it looked as if Pompidou had at least kept up with his 1969 performance, he had only done so through the temporary allegiance of opposition voters. There had been an erosion of s u p port among UDR voters many of whom had deserted to the No and the abstention camps. We shall return to the abstention camp when considering the effects of the referendum on the unity of the left.

Pom idou also failed in his goal of differentiating his approach

pai ned for a Yes vote. The best way of rationalizing this break w i g de Gaulle’s views on British membership was to insist on the fundamental continuity in the French approach. ‘We are witnessing the triumph of the ideas of General de Gaulle,’ proclaimed Michel Debrt, the architect of the constitution of the 5th Republic.” Christian Fouchet called the referendum the ‘consecration’ of de Gaulle’s concept of a ‘European’ and not an ‘Atlantic’ Europe. Pressed by television interviewers to explain the presence of the General’s old adversaries in the Yes camp, Fouchet replied that they must have changed their minds ! 2o Only Gaullist mavericks like Louis Vallon and the General’s brother-in-law Jacques Vendroux openly denounced Pompidou’s slide towards Atlanticism. The Com- munists fervently agreed with them; both drew the appropriate conclusion and counselled a negative vote. Lecanuet and Servan- Schreiber had no alternative but to agree that Pompidou had turned de Gaulle’s policies on their head. For how else could they rational- ize their support of the government? Commentators in the tlite press, whose judgements were somewhat less self-serving, could find no evidence of a clean break with the past.*’

from t K at of General de Gaulle. Most orthodox Gaullists cam-

17 Financial Times, April 24, 1972. 18The figure was 37 per cent. David B. Goldey, ‘The French Presidential

Elections of 1st and 15th June, 1969’, Pdiamentary Affairs, 22 (4), Autumn, 19%. 19 New Yor t Times, April 9, 1975. 2 O L e Monde, April 14, 1972. 21 Andre Fontaine undertook an extensive survey of the continuity of Gaullist

foreign policy in Le M o d e , Apri! 14, April 15, April 16, 1972.


2. The Government’s Prestige and Pompidou’s Control ouer its

The referendum failed to strengthen Pompidou’s hand with his colleagues. The old line Gaullists felt vindicated and immediately exerted pressure for a cabinet reshuffle in which their views would be better represented. Their task was facilitated by the persistence of scandal, lapping ever closer to the door of Chaban-Delmas. In May the Secretary-General and Chairman of the ORTF resigned, after Senate allegations of ‘clandestine’ advertising and corruption. Pompidou accepted the resignation of a junior minister after charges had been made of abuse of his official position. Chaban-Delmas had not helped himself by earlier refusing the resignation.

But when Chaban-Delmas departed, six weeks after the referendum, Pompidou lacked the freedom to make a bold, new appoint- ment. Instead he turned to de Gaulle’s associate and army minister Pierre Messmer, who promptly re-enforced the orthodox Gaullist contingent by elevating Jean Foyer and Hubert Germain to the cabinet. Since the referendum palpably demonstrated a disenchant- ment with Pompidou and not with the EEC, the European federal- ists, principally represented in cabinet by Giscard d’Estaing, also felt strengthened. Thus the government which faced the 1973 elections emerged as a loose coalition, little beholden to the Presi- dent, including two groups, the old Gaullists and the Independent Republicans, which had profited from the referendum at his ex- pense. In the elections the government’s share of the vote fell to 36 per cent, a decline not just from the exceptional 47 per cent gained in 1968 but also from the 38 per cent gained in 1967.~~

Members

3. Disrupting the Opposition Predictably, the referendum did divide the left. Georges Marchais, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, advocated a resounding No while Francois Mitterand counselled politically motivated abstention. Both appeals succeeded. The 17 per cent No vote demonstrated that Communist voters were well-disciplined; this figure was an improvement over the 15.7 per cent of the votes gained by the party in the 1968 election. But the No total also contained a mixture of discontented Gaullists, latter day poujadists and splinters from the Centre, the Socialists and the PSU.z3

Mitterand could claim an equal victory. Obviously the 39.5 per 22 Rene de Lacharri&re, ‘Gaullism Mark 11: The Elections of 1973’, Government

23 Byron Criddle, ‘Politics by plebiscite in France’, The World Today, Vol. 28, and Opposition, Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 1973.

June 1972.


cent who abstained were not just manifesting their indifierence. The average level of abstentions in 5th Republic referenda was

r cent. It was reasonable to conclude that the majority of the

Some of this increment came from hard core Gaullists and ujadists.

holds like Marseilles demonstrates the impact of Mitterand’s cam- ~ a i g n . ~ ~

The referendum also divided the Centre Democrats and the Radicals from the left, and aggravated the Ieftlright division within the Radicals. On the other hand, Lecanuet’s Yes to Europe but not to Pompidou theme had been upheld by the electorate.

The success which each bloc of the opposition could claim vitiated its overall disarray and improved the prospects for a rapprochement within the left. Consultations between the Communists and the Socialists for an electoral alliance continued, even while the parties condemned each other from the hustings. By June Georges Marchais was able to announce the most comprehensive popular front agreement since 1936, when the binding force was fascism. Conceding that differences over Europe persisted, Marchais could point to far reaching concessions on both sides. According to the agreement, a Socialist-Communist government would hope ‘to participate in the construction of the European Economic Community, its institutions and its common policies,’ but with the goal of ‘liberalizing it from the domination of capital, democratizing its institutions, supporting the claims of the workers and directing Community efforts towards their interests.’2S The left did not perform spectacularly in the 1973 elections but it did poll more votes than the ‘majority’, 40 per cent compared with 36 per cent. The referendum failed to decimate the left although it did not project it into a parliamentary majority either.

,,fr ad itional 17.5 per cent abstentions were politically motivated.

But the higher than average level of abstentions in socia p“ 1st strong-

4 . The Paris Summit The im act of the referendum was most decisive not on domestic politics ut on intra-Euro ean negotiations. ‘It’s clearest consequence is that M. Pompidou wi! not be able to reside over the “summit” in Pans next October with the authority e expected to gain from a “massive, clearcut Yes.” ’26

R P E

24 Mitterand’s responsibility for securing the additional abstentions is questioned in A. Lancclot, ‘I1 ne faut jurer de rim: le rkfkrendum du 2.3 A d 1972’, Project 67, Paris, July/August 1972.

2s L‘Humanit4, June 27, 1972. Z6Pierre Drouin, writing in Le Monde, April 25, 1972. See also A. Grosser,

‘AprPs le rkfi.rendurn, quelle politique exterieure?’ Etudes, Paris, June 1972.


Since the precommitment-by-public opinion ploy had failed, Pompidou resorted to other tactics to secure his objectives. The general approach was to make Community acceptance of the French agenda a precondition for holding the summit at all! By demonstrating that he held within his hands the power to summon his partners to Paris or to deny them, Pompidou hoped to recoup personal prestige and to appeal to the supposed nationalism of the French people. But since the referendum demonstrated no fresh upsurge in popular preoccupations with national sovereignty, this tactic won applause from the narrowest stratum of nostalgic Gaullists.

Belgian premier Gaston Eyskens was little more than an innocent bystander on the occasion, a state visit to Paris, chosen by Pompidou to drop the first hint that the summit might be in doubt. A united front against French preconditions emerged almost at once. After the referendum debacle, electoral uncertainty and ministerial instability in the other member states redoubled their determination not to let the Paris summit fall victim to French prevarications. Pierre Harmel, Belgium’s Talleyrand-like foreign minister, retorted that the proposed political secretariat in Paris would be unacceptable if it deprived the Commission and the Parliament of political in- fluen~e.~’ Dutch foreign minister Norbert Schmelzer later com- mented that it would be ‘no tragedy’ if the summit were not held.2s Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel, whose coalition had been weakened in the Baden-Wurttemberg Land elections, held the same day as the French referendum and which faced a national electoral test before December, were unwilling to sacrifice their ‘Westpolitik’ to French intransigence. Sources in Bonn wafted out a trial balloon, to the effect that upward speculative pressure on the franc was the most likely conse uence of continued prevari~ation.~~ The Com-

refused to permit it to be represented at the preparatory meeting of foreign and finance ministers in Rome in early September.

Faced with a united opposition, Pompidou relented and agreed to drop the political secretariat proposal from the summit agenda. He was compensated by agreement that Economic and Monetary Union should be the summit’s ~entre-piece.~’ This satisfied the federalist impulse elsewhere in the Community and the Gauliist desire to

mission joined in 1 t e pressure with a threat to resign if the French

27 Financial Times, June 8, 1972. 28 The (London) Times, July 19, 1972. 29Financial Times, June 26, 1972. 30A detailed survey of the Paris summit goes beyond the sco of this article.

For a summary see Avi Shlaim, ‘The Paris Summit’, The Wor fTor l ay , Vol. 28, December 1972.


redress the balance after a tilt towards Atlanticism. It is unclear how intent Pompidou was on securing the political secretariat. But it is quite likely that the objective would have been achiwed if the referendum had yielded a massive Yes.

IV. CONCLUSION

Linkages occur when events in one political systcm have reper- cussions in another. Since the European Economic Community still disposes of few resources by comparison with its member states, linkages between domestic political systems and the Community system are weak. Political scientists have rightly maintained that ‘as an issue for election outcomes political integration plays only a very minor In this it resembles traditional issues in foreign policy. When Community issues are perceived as domestic rather than foreign policy questions and the Community is seen to decide, to a greater extent, who gets what, when and how, linkages can be expected to multiply.

But even in present conditions, the low saliency of European integration to the mass public does not preclude the injection of European issues into domestic politics when this serves other objectives. The French referendum of 1972 is a compelling example of a political leader choosing to ‘go public’ with questions of little general interest to achieve domestic and European goals. Previous sections indicated what those goals were and why the strategy was only partially successful.

Perhaps the comparative immaturity of this form of interde- pendence can be gauged from the direction of the predominant flow of influence: today outcomes within the Community system are determined by events in national political systems and not the reverse; outcomes in domestic political systems are affected by events at the Community level but to a much lesser extent. The Community is perceived primarily as the provider of additional

stakes when domestic antagonists risk failure or stale- mate bargainink in t eir internal struggles for supremacy.

This type of linkage may not be what was envisaged by the founding fathers of the Community. But since European public

31 This was the conclusion reached by two American scholars following a survry of European legislators. Werner Feld and John K. Wildgem, ‘Electoral Ambitions and European Integration’, International Organizah’on, Vol. 29, No. 2, Spring 1975. For further reflections on the referendum in this context, see C. Leleu, ‘Le rifirendum du 23 Avril, 197z’, France-Forum 18, July 1972.


opinion is generally well disposed to European integrati~n,)~ perhaps enli htened self-intexest will lead politicians to perform the right dee f for the wrong reason.

32 See Euro-Barometer, a quarterly survey of public opinion in the Community, prepared by the Commission of the European Communities, Division of Press and Information.

LINKAGE POLITICS: THE FRE-NCH REFERENDUM AND THE PARIS SUMMIT OF 1972

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