Political Institutions
Professeure des universités

(Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne - CESSP)

While studying institutions is a key aspect of the social sciences, analysis of the institutions most directly involved in exercising political power (the government, parliament, the presidency, etc.) long failed to make it onto the research agenda. This lack of interest can largely be explained by the division of research topics between legal studies and political science. Political science set itself apart from law by addressing topics that were not pre-empted by legal specialists (electoral behaviour, political parties, etc.) leaving the latter the monopoly on studying institutions. The renewal of studies in comparative politics in the 1970s and 1980s1and later the spread of the neo-institutionalist trend in France in the 1990s2had little effect on this state of affairs. At most, political institutions were included as explanatory variables in analyses of public policy, international relations, or social movements. They did not, however, gain the status of a subject in and of themselves among social science researchers and this field of inquiry therefore remained a science of constitutional texts.

However, constitutional texts can in no way fully encompass the reality of political institutions. Parliament, for example, far exceeds the “functions” and rank conferred upon it by the 1958 Constitution. While today it only has a secondary position in the circuit of political decisions, it nonetheless remains crucial for anyone interested in politics as a “profession”3 and, more broadly, in political representation4First, since public funding for political parties was indexed on the legislative election results, it has been a major trophy in party competition. Second, it is also a necessary gateway for Ministers5as well as a key locus for professionalisation where actors can build up “indigenous” capital on the ground6.

It is therefore possible to produce knowledge about political institutions that goes beyond that afforded by the legal sciences. Since the early 1990s, certain researchers in political science have pursued this goal. While they could not be called a “school” as such, they do nonetheless all openly subscribe to the approach that Jacques Lagroye and Bernard Lacroix formally defined in a pioneering book entitled Le Président de la République7, considered a seminal work in this field of inquiry in France.

Dulong - couv Président de la République

Bernard Lacroix, Jacques Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République, Paris, PFNSP, 1992.

In terms of hypotheses, key issues, and ways of conducting research, their approach differed from the English-language studies being conducted at the same time under the banner of neo-institutionalism8It was first and foremost characterised by its empirical nature. This sociology of political institutions rejected disciplinary boundaries, choosing instead to use investigative protocols combining sociological, historical, and anthropological methods (archival research, ethnographic observation, interviews, prosopography). The researchers in question all refused to subscribe to any one theoretical trend, showing no hesitation in combining perspectives often considered mutually exclusive on the other side of the Atlantic (for example, rational choice, symbolic interactionism, and genetic structuralism).

However, this empirical stance did not mean that they eschewed theoretical ambitions. Quite the contrary, the latter were a central component in how they construed their subject. The key research issue they addressed in their studies was the way in how political institutions can objectify the social order. Put differently, their primary aim was to fully embed political institutions in the social world. French researchers are less interested in institutions than in processes of institutionalisation and their aim tends to be understanding the links between these processes and the social order. In doing so, they can be said to be pursuing an avenue opened up by Max Weber, according to whom domination, when exercised over a large number of individuals in a lasting fashion, requires political and administrative apparatuses tasked with maintaining belief in its legitimacy9.

Broadly speaking, two main lines of research can be distinguished from this perspective. The first is macro-sociological and aims to understand the processes through which political institutions are invested with socially shared beliefs that legitimate the way political power is exercised in contemporary democracies. The second is more micro-sociological and examines the conditions under which relations of domination are reproduced or transformed within institutions. This second line of research sheds complementary light on the first: it deconstructs the relations of domination that tends to be objectivated by the legitimation of institutions.

Legitimating Political Institutions

Of course, contemporary democracies are not only based on beliefs. Political regimes are held together in various ways: authorities that have the right to use physical violence have monopoly over that violence, but, additionally, the interdependent relations linking those who govern and those who are governed are based on a range of exchanges and interpersonal obligations10Nonetheless, short of demonstrating that the layperson’s relationship to political institutions is only ever indifferent, submissive, and/or self-interested, the relatively robust nature of regimes cannot be fully understood without analysing the full range of beliefs that legitimate how political power is exercised and that increase the likelihood of people being willing to abide by its decisions11This research hypothesis raises at least two questions. What beliefs legitimate democratic political institutions? And how are they forged, that is to say by whom and through what processes?

Political Institutions and Rational Legal Domination

Answers to these questions were first provided in the wake of Max Weber’s work. According to Weber, the contemporary state is “modern” insofar as it is based on “rational legal” domination, which in turn rests on “a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands”12. Following on from this, some researchers have underscored the key role that the law plays in contemporary democracies: as the official language of institutions, it lends them legitimacy through the weight of its impersonal, general form13; as a doctrine relating to how public authorities are organised, it tends to mask the arbitrary aspect to power by disembodying it14. In other words, these studies shed light on the creation of a belief that is fundamental to the legitimation of democratic political institutions, namely the belief that they are neutral. This serves as a veritable “front”15 which, as James G. March and Johan P. Olsen explain, long prevented their scientific analysis16. More specifically, by retracing the genesis of Republican constitutional doctrine17, looking at how it became autonomous from political power18, or examining how it is used in the government of international institutions19, such research sheds novel light on the socio-professional conditions of political legitimation without slipping into a sociology of conspiracy. Due to both their professional ethos and the specificities of the legal field, legal specialists are in fact the first to subscribe to the justifications they produce. As for political leaders, the legal formatting of their positions constrains their actions just as much as it legitimates them.

Préambule de la Constitution de 1958
Michel Debré et le sceau de la Constitution

Constitution de 1958, the seal set by Michel Debré.

Source: www.gouvernement.fr

Article 5 of the 1958 Constitution, as we know, justifies the exceptional powers of the President of the Republic given the role of arbitre (with its dual meaning of both arbitrator, in the legal sense, and umpire). However, as a consequence of this legal definition of the presidential role, those who take it on then find themselves distanced from party support, which can place them in somewhat of a double bind when it comes to re-election.

Dulong - FH de gauche - Marianne

« Ce que Hollande répond quand on lui demande s'il est encore de gauche », Marianne, 21/02/2016.

See the article on Marianne.

In February 2016, for example, when a journalist from radio station France Inter asked President François Hollande whether he was “still left-wing”, he responded spontaneously, as if a prisoner of the legal definition of his role, “I’m the President of the Republic… I represent all French people”, drawing sarcasm and caustic comments from many editorialists and left-wing voters.

The fact remains that while these studies have considerably enriched our knowledge of rational legal domination, research on the legitimation of political institutions cannot stop there. First, nothing in Weber’s work allows us to think that this is the only kind of domination that subsists today, despite evolutionist readings of the different forms of domination he describes in Economy and Society. As Weber explains, they are only ideal-types, which are neither successive nor exclusive. Studies analysing charismatic phenomena in the most bureaucratised states of law have clearly demonstrated this and it is particularly true of the Fifth Republic. As Brigitte Gaïti has shown20, its legitimation was first and foremost predicated on General de Gaulle as a figure and on his “prophetic” Bayeux speech. His charisma was routinised in such a way as to place the future of the regime in the balance and was a key issue in political competition during the early years of the Fifth Republic21, which had a lasting impact on the presidential role22. The case of French political institutions, while emblematic, is far from being exceptional. As other studies have shown, the construction of European institutions also owes much to the charismatic communities that formed around Jean Monnet23 and Pierre Henry Teitgen24.

Second, certain observations relativise how important the law is in legitimating contemporary political institutions. First, voter abstention, radicalisation, and civil disobedience all indicate that a substantial number of citizens do not necessarily subscribe to this level of justification. It is also likely that many people, including those with high-level qualifications, do not have the necessary legal knowledge to think of political institutions in legal terms. Furthermore, while the legal framework of political life has developed considerably over the last thirty years, certain positions of power remain bound in a regime that is almost entirely exempt from the law. The Prime Minister and, more broadly, the government, offer a case in point as their scope of activity is largely undetermined by law25. For all these reasons, and to avoid remaining confined to legal discourse about political institutions – which actually contributes to rational legal domination – researchers have also examined the hypothesis that the legitimacy of democratic institutions is based on their capacity to be identified with certain social norms26.

Political Institutions and Forms of Social Domination

Political institutions, as we know, are particularly elitist. On this point, the statistics are incontrovertible: the higher one looks in the hierarchy of political institutions, the stronger the social over-selection of its staff. For a long time, however, this specificity was explained by exogenous factors such as the aristocratic nature of recruitment procedures – elections, nomination, coopting27 – and the fact that the sense of political competence was unevenly distributed within society28. It is only with the development of studies on the “profession” of elected official29and on the political profession in general that these explanations were supplemented with endogenous factors, specific to the institutions themselves30. These new studies demonstrated empirically that institutions are not only defined legally, they are also socially constructed31.

First, holding political office means taking on the role of elected official and this comes with certain social expectations. These may sometimes be weak or unclear in relatively recent institutions or those little known to the public, for example the Conseil Régional32 or the Conseil Général33. However, within the most established institutions, such as Mairies34 or the Presidency, these expectations serve as prescriptions determining the behaviour of those post-holders. For example, socialist party mayors proved unable to subvert the mayoral office as they had originally hoped35. Quite the contrary, in fact: the various interactions in which they were caught up as councillors (with the Préfet, the administration, the voters) progressively socialised them to the norms of their role as “notables”.

Second, whatever the expectations weighing on the roles of elected officials, advancing in Conseils municipaux, Parliament, etc. requires a certain political know-how, linked particularly to public speaking – eloquence, repartee, humour – that are not evenly distributed throughout society. It is therefore not enough to be elected in order to become a fully legitimate member of parliament, something that the first working-class parliamentarians discovered at their expense36, as did both the Poujadist tradesmen who joined the Assemblée nationale in 195637 and the firstelected officials from the Front National party38. Whether in the ranks of the Assemblée nationale itself or in the press, these socially atypical parliamentarians faced stigmatising social judgments that discredited them as representatives.

What is true for class is also true for gender. As early as 1988, Mariette Sineau showed that political institutions, while theoretically universal, were in reality gendered and gendering. In other words, they forced female elected officials to imitate the virile behaviour of their male counterparts39. In this regard, while the parity law introduced in June 2000 offers an unprecedented way of promoting women in politics, it has not necessarily made the task any easier for the women wanting to pursue a career in the field40. Elected due to their sex, they nonetheless still have to conform to the masculine norms of the role in order to avoid symbolic sanctions. Political institutions are therefore not just mirrors reflecting existing social inequalities: they also contribute actively to the unequal distribution of power in society between classes, sexes, and “races”41.

The feminist action group La Barbe intervenes to the Senate in a colloquium on the 5th Republic.

Gerard Longuet says : “I have a wife, four daughters, a mom, and when I have a dog, it is a bitch”.

Gender as a Rhetoric for Legitimating Political Institutions

Studies on women in politics do not, however, simply confirm that the universal is masculine here as it is elsewhere42. Pursuing an avenue opened up by historian Joan W. Scott, they also show that “gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power”43. In other words, it can be analysed as a political language that not only creates hierarchy and structure in the social world, but also makes the political organisation of societies objective by naturalising it. Elsa Dorlin’s work on plantocratic regimes is a prime example. She shows that, as a “matrix for race”, gender served to justify the domination of a minority of “whites” over a minority of “blacks”44. However, these political uses of gender are far from remaining confined to obsolete regimes in far away lands.

Of course, in the relatively closed circles of political activism in contemporary democracies, there is little scope for claiming a gendered political identity45. Gender is nonetheless extremely present in public commentary of political life and particularly in journalistic portraits where specific features of this language make it particularly “efficient” in a field as differentiated and conflictual as politics. Above and beyond the fact it relates to the “nature” of things, i.e. to the things considered most self-evident and indisputable, it is also universally shared. In other words, unlike legal language, it can be understood by everyone including people who have little political awareness. Consequently, it can contribute to mobilising public opinion around political views and party loyalty46. However, it also serves to naturalise hierarchical relationships between positions of power that are not framed objectively by the rule of law.

This is the case, for example, where the President/Prime Minister relationship is concerned. It is largely undetermined by law, in terms of both the boundaries of competence of each role and the hierarchy between the two. Significantly, the press talks about the “President/Prime Minister couple” and their “divorce” when certain heads of government leave the role (Jacques Chirac in 1976 and Michel Rocard in 1991). Similarly when, in 2005, the President made his Minister of the Interior (who was the leader of the majority at the time) second in the order of precedence instead of the Prime Minister, this unprecedented configuration within the executive was described as a “ménage à trois”. The rhetoric used to frame these situations is therefore neither legal nor even political but domestic. Above all, in this language, the Prime Minister is positioned on the side of the dominated/feminine gender to the extent, in fact, that it can create gender trouble for those who take on the role.

Dulong - Président et PM

President-Prime Minister, the infernal couple. See the article on Politique.net.

In the Fifth Republic, the Prime Minister is the leader of the government but not of the executive. Periods of cohabitation aside, since 1962, the leader of the government has always played the “secondary” role and even more so when appointed during the president’s term. It is striking to note that, in the press, political actors who accept this role tend to be framed in feminine terms. In other words, the qualities ascribed to them are those usually associated with women in politics (listening, being discreet, being likable, etc.) and journalists’ attention focuses to an unusual degree on their families, bodies, and clothes47. These feminine identity markers attached to political leaders can be analysed as a way of naturalising their subordinate position in the hierarchy of executive power, while symbolically preserving the gendered order of the social world.

Having underlined the role of law and legal specialists in producing the beliefs that legitimate how political power is organised, current research now highlights the role played by gender and journalists. In this regard, the rise in work on gender in communication and media studies – whether in information and communication technologies48 or in political science49 – has contributed to furthering knowledge about the legitimation of political institutions. From this perspective, that legitimation appears less grounded in reason (legal, economic, etc.) than in nature. To use Mary Douglas’s terms, because they are linked by analogy to naturalised elementary classifications, such as the male/female divide, political institutions “are part of the order of the universe and so are ready to stand as the grounds of argument”50. What remains to be understood is how, on a concrete level, they contribute to founding the social order.

Examining the Power of Political Institutions

The power that institutions exercise over individuals is a key issue in this field of inquiry. For a long time, this question was addressed in two mutually exclusive ways: on the one hand, the likes of Emile Durkheim and Michel Foucault, to name the most renowned, showed that institutions had the power to discipline bodies and minds; on the other, people such as Erving Goffman and Anthony Giddens emphasised individual actors’ margin of freedom and their ability to play with, and even subvert, institutional rules. However, as Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé have noted, studies devoted to political institutions are strikingly different from their predecessors in this regard51. Insofar as they pay careful attention to the heterogeneous nature of relationships to institutions, they immediately reject this binary choice. Rather than judging the degree of constraint exercised over actors by objectivated bodies of rules and beliefs, they strive to show the various ways in which actors engage with these rules and beliefs.

Analysing Relationships to Political Institutions

This particular stance can be explained in two ways. The first stems from the specificity of political institutions. They are part of a relatively autonomous universe of practices, which is also characterised by its extremely competitive nature. As evidenced by the way presidential candidates include constitutional reforms in their manifestos – and even more so by the way elected Presidents tend to enact regime reforms – defining political institutions is one of the major trophy in political competition, alongside gaining power. Moreover, in this universe of institutional practices, there is no formal socialisation when it comes to actors’ behaviour52 and, to some extent, the recruitment of the people who work in political institutions escapes the control of those who run them. Given the reality of the field, trying to understand the variable relationships between political institutions and their actors was therefore more a necessity than an epistemological break with the past. The second reason lies with researchers’ libido sciendi. As Bernard Lacroix and Jacques Lagroye explain in their introduction to Président de la République, the original aim here was to break away from the presuppositions inherent to legal analysis and particularly with any reified view of the research object at hand. In this context, Emile Durkheim’s call to broach social facts as “things” seemed less of a priority that Max Weber’s call to understand actors’ motivations.

This stance was first expressed conceptually through redefinitions of the notion of “role”. In a key interview with the journal Politix, published under the somewhat telling title “We are not subjected to our roles”53, Jacques Lagroye defined a “role” as a “set of behaviours linked to an institutional position which enable that position to exist, which make it perceptible to others”. At first glance, this definition might seem vague. However, this is far from being a limitation; on the contrary, it is precisely where its value lies: as well as encouraging us to look as closely at possible at practices and collective representations of institutions, this definition offers a way of ‘escaping the futile contrast between approaches framed in terms of how roles are learnt, emphasising a certain “institutional logic”, and interactionist analysis, which, on the contrary, tends to present roles as behaviour resulting solely from the partners’ expectations’54.

Jacques Lagroye, « On ne subit son rôle », Politix, n° 38, 1997.

On a methodological level, this stance mainly translated into qualitative approaches. More often than not, it generated ethnographic style monographs studying “the dynamic encounter between what is objectivated and how people engage with that”55 on a case-by-case basis. However, with the recent rise of legislative studies in France, quantitative methods are now also being used to create typologies of parliamentarians’ behaviour and the different ways in which they perform the role of representative56. However, whatever the protocols used and whatever the institutions studied, these studies all lead to the same conclusion: the relationship between the institution and its actors is a co-constructed, dialectic relationship. Political institutions appear to be continually shaped by the actors in a position to engage in the practical and symbolic struggles involved in their social construction57. Moreover, and in relation to this, the power wielded by these institutions cannot simply be compared to that of a police force tasked with maintaining the existing social order. The Conseil général offers a good example in this regard58. On the one hand, this institution plays an important role in socialising people to political careers by allowing some of its members to go beyond the locally-rooted nature of their office. On the other hand, it is torn between an “instrumental” rationale, which tends to reduce its role to that of a front-line desk dealing with social action, and a “politicisation” rationale, introduced by certain politicians who hold dual mandates as Councillors on this assembly but also as parliamentarians at the Assemblée nationale. In some cases, this co-construction can produce social changes, even under authoritarian regimes. For example, far from consolidating the pershmega’s power, the progressive autonomy of the Iraqi-Kurdistan parliament underway since the mid-2000s has in fact weakened it59. Within this institution, elected officials’ social and political identity, as well as their allegiances, have shifted as partisan resources have given way to academic qualifications.

Non-collective political institutions, such as the Presidency, are no exception in this regard. The presidential role in France is commonly described as having been tailor-made by and for the General de Gaulle, who viewed the role as that of an arbiter – both an arbitrator, in the legal sense, and an umpire – detached from any party affiliation. However, it has in fact considerably evolved since election by direct universal suffrage was introduced.

Dulong - portrait officiel du Général De Gaulle

Official portrait of the Général de Gaulle, first president of the 5th Republic, by Jean-Marie Marcel.

From as early as the 1965 vote, the role became politicised under pressure from the left wing60, to the extent that electing a candidate with little or no party capital seems impossible today. At the same time, defining the presidential role became the main prize in a symbolic struggle where the social value of economic capability was at stake, along with the social value of the groups who could take advantage of it61. Although this struggle also went beyond this, it culminated in the 1965 presidential campaign when the General de Gaulle was forced to defend the economic results of his first seven-year term and to publicly acknowledge the importance he placed on economic issues in playing his role.

Interview of Général de Gaulle, candidate to the presidency, 13/12/1965.

Of course, these counter-intuitive examples are in the minority. But they do remind us that, in political institutions more than anywhere else, relationships of domination are never fixed: they are constantly being (re)decided. Even when domination seems to be accepted and not particularly conflictual, for example among the communist intellectuals studied by Frédérique Matonti62, this relationship can still entail ruse, double talk, or criticism. It therefore produces not only consensus but also tension and compromises. And when this domination is maintained despite legal measures aimed at reversing it, for example in the case of the French assemblies that are supposed to respect parity, this is not an iterative process that reproduces the existing situation identically – instead, it is a reconstructive process, in which the dominant only manage to keep their positions through various more or less costly investments63.

Analysing how Behaviour is Controlled

Broaching political institutions as a heterogeneous, conflictual, and shifting group of human beings logically means examining how behaviour is regulated within them. On this point, research has largely drawn on knowledge from the field of political sociology. Political parties are known for serving as “recruiting offices” for political leaders64. This is where actors are socialised to politics as a profession; it is also where those want to exercise power are chosen, both through the processes selecting nominees for elections and, more recently, through the primary elections for presidential candidates. It has long been established that voting systems have an impact on the composition of deliberative assemblies. In this regard, the preference for a single-member plurality system in the legislative elections is not insignificant. As well as restricting political pluralism by creating parliamentary majorities, it also gives an advantage to outgoing parliamentarians and has discriminatory effects on outsiders to political competition. Nevertheless, this kind of control over the selection of politicians does not guarantee control over expected behaviour. This is apparent in the lack of discipline regularly shown by majority parliamentarians as well as by the many conflicts that have rocked the history of President/Prime Minister relations under the Fifth Republic outside periods of cohabitation and despite the fact the President has almost sole discretionary power in appointing a government leader who will not dispute presidential precedence within executive power.

Socialists deputies as "frondeurs", France info, 01/09/2014.

President/Prime minister: a stormy and restless couple, Les Échos, 08/04/2014.

As well as these processes aimed at controlling recruitment, there are also practices aimed at managing behaviour. Daily monitoring at Matignon allows Presidents to try – more or less successfully – to control their Prime Ministers65 This is first and foremost done via members of the presidential offices that mirror the Prime Minister’s offices. They are constantly in contact with members of the other offices, attend all inter-ministerial meetings, and sometimes even bypass Matignon. Ministers are also a means of control over the Prime Minister given that the President signs the decrees appointing them. This prerogative allows Presidents to control the make-up of the government and also to keep Prime Ministers away from certain issues, which are then dealt with directly at the Élysée with the Minister in question. This can also be a way of marginalising Prime Ministers within the government, by surrounding them with Ministers whose loyalties lie more with the President. For example, following defeat in the 2014 municipal elections, President François Hollande replaced his friend Jean-Marc Ayrault with one of his main competitors for the Élysée, Manuel Valls; however, he only slightly reworked the government itself, thereby isolating the new Prime Minister from his most direct supporters66. Parliamentary discipline is also based on both voluntary and forced submission on the part of majority parliamentarians67. While it is in their interest for the government to succeed, observation of the majority parliamentary group shows that, in fact, a complex set of allegiances, self-controlled hopes, direct and indirect pressure, persuasion, and negotiations of all kinds, determine whether members follow voting instructions.

As Damien Lecomte has shown, the socialist parliamentary group – which had a majority in the Assemblée nationale under the fourteenth legislative term – was entirely focused on the quite tricky task of regulating/channelling parliamentarians’ behaviour. The key function of the group’s bureau is to ensure that members of parliament are present in plenary sessions, but it also manages its members’ activities very closely with a view to ensuring they follow the internal rules. According to these, bill proposals and amendments should only be submitted to the bureau of the Assemblée nationale after gaining approval from the parliamentary group. While it is possible to depart from this rule, amendments signed by the group are more likely to be adopted in plenary sessions, if only because one of the roles of the bureau (and the rapporteur) is to negotiate such amendments with the minister in charge of the bill. In cases of persistent disagreement, however, the group’s bureau has limited means through which to put pressure on its troupes. Sanctions do theoretically exist, but are rarely applied because they are relatively ineffective. It is therefore easier for the bureau to negotiate discipline in return for certain collective resources – requesting legislative reports, putting forward bills in the name of the group, asking questions at government “question time”, etc. The bureau can determine how such resources are distributed within the group and potentially restrict access to them to any “disloyal” members. However, this remains an imperfect means of control: first, these resources are relatively rare, and second, many members of parliament are quite happy to hold office without ever being a rapporteur, having a slot in question time, or putting forward any legislative proposals.

However, the power of political institutions can only be fully understood when we also take into account that behaviour is also controlled in unintentional ways. As several studies have shown, in order to understand how actors conform to the institution’s requirements, it is necessary to look at how their work is organised. For example, the system of different meetings involved in the deliberations of inter-municipal bodies operate as “a series of ‘sieves’ calibrating and filtering debates and decisions before they arrive in front of the Conseil68. This considerably reduces the possibility of conflicts arising in the Conseil itself and leads, de facto, to a “consensus regime” in which party resources and conduct are ineffective. Similarly, studies on women in politics have shown that the dual segregation – both vertical and horizontal – affecting female elected officials in parliaments worldwide is also linked to how work is organised through specialist committees in these sorts of assemblies. This bureaucratic organisation based on specialisation encourages female elected officials to turn to their field of socio-professional competence. Given current academic and professional career paths, this tends to lead to women being mainly present on committees devoted to “social” and/or “cultural” affairs, which are less strategic areas for building a career in politics69.

Commission des Lois
Commission des Affaires sociales

Commission of the laws; Commission of the social affairs, Assemblée nationale

Source: Assemblée nationale.

Finally, in the same line as Michel Foucault’s work, pragmatic sociology has shown that behaviour is also controlled through the most material aspects of institutions70. As Jean-Philippe Heurtin has explained, the architectural apparatus of parliamentary assembly rooms used since 1789 – face-to-face, circles, hemicycles, etc. – contributes to ordering speech within the institution71. More recently, Delphine Gardey has looked behind the scenes at the Palais Bourbon and highlighted how important administrative staff – stenographers, administrators, bailiffs, etc. – are in the way practices are institutionalised at the Assemblée nationale72. By reminding us that institutions are above all made of bodies and things, these studies pave the way for new avenues that remain to be explored. They encourage the sociology of political institutions to stop focusing solely on professional politicians and to also address other aspects, including the everyday activities which have often been ignored (because they are considered marginal and not strictly political) and yet which contribute to perpetuating the institutional order.

Today, analysis stands to gain the most from pursuing research at the margins of political institutions73. First, because administrative staff are often attached to political institutions on a more long-term basis than professional politicians and therefore carry with them an institutional memory that contributes to routinising practices. This is particularly true for the General Secretariat of the government, the General Secretariat of the Élysée and the administrators at the Assemblée nationale and the Sénat. It would also be reasonable to assume that because of how they are trained (often in legal studies) and selected (through competitive entrance exam) and because of their status (usually civil servants) and their missions (providing solely technical assistance), these actors tend to identify with the institution more than the politicians whom they serve. Their relationship to the institution certainly warrants analysing to the same extent as that of political actors.

Moreover, certain institutional actors are in a particular heuristic position, at the intersection of several social and institutional worlds. This is particularly true of members of Ministry offices and the staff of elected officials, but also presidents of Parliamentary groups, rapporteurs, etc. Focusing on these individuals could address two of the blind spots in current research. Until now, political institutions have been considered in isolation, resulting in segmented knowledge of the space they compose. Working on people who lie at the intersection of several political institutions would offer a way of understanding the impact of the vertical and horizontal interdependent relationships linking them together74. Finally, certain actors also play a role as an interface with the public. For example, a team of sixty-three people sorts through the correspondence received by the President of the Republic and responds to the requests, complaints, and comments sent to the Élysée. And when people appeal to their elected officials, in town halls or local constituencies, it is the representatives’ staff who deal with their complaints. Studying these “marginal” actors and their activities would therefore afford an understanding of the relationship between ordinary citizens and political institutions, an issue that is all too often left to the remit of opinion polls and communications advisors75.

Unfold notes and references
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1

Pour une synthèse analytique de ces travaux, voir Sophie Béroud, « Retour sur quelques enjeux de la politique comparée », Les cahiers de l’IRICE, vol. 1, n° 5, 2010.

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2

Peter A. Hall, Rose-Mary Taylor « La science politique et les trois néo-institutionnalismes », Revue française de science politique, vol47, n° 3, 1997, p. 469-496.

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3

Olivier Rosenberg, Éric Kerrouche, « Retour au parlement », Revue française de science politique, vol. 59,  3, 2009, p. 397-400 ; Olivier Nay, « Pour une sociologie des pratiques d'assemblée : note sur un champ de recherche quelque peu délaissé », Sociologie du travail, n° 45, 2003, p. 537-554.

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4

Claire de Galembert, Olivier Rozenberg, Cécile Vigour (dir.), Faire parler le Parlement. Méthodes et enjeux de l'analyse des débats parlementaires pour les sciences sociales, Paris, LGDJ, 2014.

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5

Valentin Behr, Sébastien Michon, « Les filières d’accès au gouvernement français (1986-2012) : les apports de l’analyse des données », communication au Ve congrès des associations francophones de science politique, Luxembourg, 2013.

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6

Florence Haegel, Frédéric Sawicki, « Résistible et chaotique, la résistible présidentialisation de l’UMP et du PS », in Y. Déloye, A. Dézé, S. Maurer (dir.), Institutions, élections, opinions. Mélanges en l’honneur de Jean-Luc Parodi, Paris, Presses de Science po, 2014, p. 19-39.

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7

Bernard Lacroix, Jacques Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992.

Retour vers la note de texte 971

8

Pour une présentation plus détaillée de cette approche, voir Jacques Lagroye, Michel Offerlé (dir.), Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010. On y trouvera notamment une analyse comparée des travaux menés en France et aux États-Unis réalisée par Nicolas Freymond. Pour une synthèse des acquis théoriques des travaux réalisés en France, voir Delphine Dulong, Sociologie des institutions politiques, Paris, La découverte, 2012 et Virginie Tournay, Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, PUF, 2011.

Retour vers la note de texte 57

9

Max Weber, Économie et société, Paris, Plon, 1971.

Retour vers la note de texte 1919

10

Norbert Elias, La Dynamique de l’Occident, Paris, Pocket, [1975], 2007.

Retour vers la note de texte 973

11

Jean-Louis Briquet, Frédéric Sawicki (dir.), Le Clientélisme politique dans les sociétés contemporaines, Paris, PUF, 1998.

Retour vers la note de texte 60

12

Jacques Lagroye, « La légitimation », in M. Grawitz, J. Leca (dir.), Traité de science politique, tome I, Paris, PUF, 1985, p. 395-467.

Retour vers la note de texte 61

13

Max Weber, Économie et société, Paris, Plon, 1971, p. 289.

Retour vers la note de texte 974

14

Pierre Bourdieu, « La force du droit. Éléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n°64, 1986 ; Bernard Lacroix, « Le politiste et l’analyse des institutions. Comment parler de la Présidence de la République », in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 13-78.

Retour vers la note de texte 63

15

Jacques Chevallier, L’État de droit, Paris, Montchrestien, 2003.

Retour vers la note de texte 975

16

Le terme est utilisé ici au sens que lui donne Erwin Goffman, c’est-à-dire « la partie de la représentation qui a pour fonction normale d’établir et de fixer la définition de la situation qui est proposée aux observateurs » (La Mise en scène de la vie quotidienne, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1973, p. 29). Pour une application aux institutions, voir le numéro consacré aux façades institutionnelles par la revue Sociétés contemporaines (n° 88, 2012).

Retour vers la note de texte 1920

17

James G. March, Johan P. Olsen, « The New Institutionalism : Organizational Factors in Political Life », American Political Science Review, vol. 78, n° 3, 1984, p. 734-749.

Retour vers la note de texte 66

18

Guillaume Sacriste, La République des constitutionnalistes. Les professeurs de droit et la légitimation de l’État en France (1870-1914), Paris, Presses de science po, 2011.

Retour vers la note de texte 1406

19

Bastien François, La Cinquième République dans son droit. La production d’un corps de connaissances spécialisées sur la politique et les institutions, thèse pour le doctorat en Science politique, Université Paris 1, 1992.

Retour vers la note de texte 976

20

Voir parmi les travaux des auteurs suivants : Yves Dezalay, Bryan Garth, Global Prescriptions : The Production, Exportation and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy, University of Michigan Press, 2002 ; Antoine Vauchez, L’Union par le droit. L’invention d’un programme institutionnel pour l’Europe, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2013 (traduit en anglais chez Cambridge University Press en 2015) ; et les travaux du groupe de recherche Polilexes.

Retour vers la note de texte 1932

21

Brigitte Gaïti, De Gaulle, prophète de la Ve République, Paris, Presses de Science po, 1998.

Retour vers la note de texte 954

22

Delphine Dulong, Aux origines de la Cinquième République, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Retour vers la note de texte 977

23

Bastien François, « Le Président pontife constitutionnel. Charisme d’institution et construction juridique du politique », in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 303-332.

Retour vers la note de texte 956

24

Antonin Cohen, De Vichy à la communauté européenne, Paris, PUF, 2012.

Retour vers la note de texte 957

25

Julie Bailleux, Penser l’Europe par le droit. L’invention du droit communautaire en France, Paris, Dalloz, 2014.

Retour vers la note de texte 958

26

Jacques Fournier, Le Travail gouvernemental, Paris, Presses de Sciences po et Dalloz, 1987.

Retour vers la note de texte 978

27

Cette hypothèse est énoncée par Jacques Lagroye dans « La légitimation », in M. Grawitz, J. Leca (dir.), Traité de science politique, tome I, Paris, PUF, 1985, p. 395-467.

Retour vers la note de texte 960

28

Pierre Rosanvallon, Principes du gouvernement représentatif, Paris, Flammarion, 1996.

Retour vers la note de texte 961

29

Daniel Gaxie, Le Cens caché, Paris, Le Seuil, 1978.

Retour vers la note de texte 979

30

Voir Politix 28, 1994  et n° 35, 1996.

Retour vers la note de texte 1324

31

Michel Offerlé (dir.), La Profession politique (XIXe-XXe siècles), Paris, Belin, 1999.

Retour vers la note de texte 1325

32

Peter Berger, Thomas Luckman, La Construction sociale de la réalité, Paris, Méridien Klinscksiek, 1986. La traduction de cet ouvrage en français a joué un rôle décisif dans le développement des travaux de Science politique sur les institutions.

Retour vers la note de texte 982

33

Olivier Nay, La Région, une institution. La représentation, le pouvoir et la règle dans l’espace régional, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Retour vers la note de texte 983

34

Thomas Procureur, Le Département, institution caméléon ? Les formes paradoxales d’une légitimation, Thèse pour le Doctorat en science politique, IEP de Rennes, 2013.

Retour vers la note de texte 984

35

Christian Le Bart, Les Maires. Sociologie d’un rôle, Lille, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2003.

Retour vers la note de texte 985

36

Rémy Lefebvre, « Le socialisme français soluble dans l’institution municipale ? Forme partisane et emprise institutionnelle. L’exemple de Roubaix (1892-1983) », Revue Française de Science Politique, vol. 54,  2, 2004, p. 237-260.

Retour vers la note de texte 1921

37

Michel Offerlé, « Illégitimité et légitimation du personnel politique ouvrier en France avant 1914 », Annales ESC, vol. 39, n° 4, 1984, p. 681-716.

Retour vers la note de texte 2419

38

Annie Collovald, « Les poujadistes ou l'échec en politique », Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 36, n° 1, 1989, p. 113-133.

Retour vers la note de texte 989

39

Guy Birenbaum, Le Front National en politique, Paris, Balland, 1992.

Retour vers la note de texte 990

40

Mariette Sineau, Des femmes en politique, Paris, Economica, 1988.

Retour vers la note de texte 1923

41

Catherine Achin et al., Sexes, genre et politique, Paris, Economica, 2007.

Retour vers la note de texte 992

42

Ici au sens de racialisation des rapports sociaux.

Retour vers la note de texte 993

43

Pour une présentation de ces travaux et leurs apports à la science politique, voir Catherine Achin, Laure Béréni (dir.), Dictionnaire genre et politique, Paris, Presses de science po, 2013.

Retour vers la note de texte 2420

44

Joan W. Scott, « Le genre, une catégorie utile d’analyse historique », Cahiers du GRIFF, vol. 37, n° 1, 1988, p. 125-153.

Retour vers la note de texte 995

45

Elsa Dorlin, La Matrice de la race. Généalogie sexuelle et coloniale de la nation française, Paris, La Découverte, 2006.

Retour vers la note de texte 998

46

Delphine Dulong, Sandrine Lévêque, «  Une ressource contingente. Les conditions de reconversion du genre en ressource politique », Politix, n° 60, 2002, p. 81-111.

Retour vers la note de texte 999

47

Delphine Dulong, « Drôles de genres et genre de rôle. Edith Cresson à Matignon ou le (mauvais) genre en politique », in M. Gateau, M. Navarre, F. Schepens (dir.), Quoi de neuf depuis la parité ? Du genre dans la construction des rôles politiques, Dijon, PUD, 2012, p. 53-68.

Retour vers la note de texte 1924

48

Delphine Dulong, Frédérique Matonti, « L’indépassable féminité. La mise en récit des femmes en campagne », in J. Lagroye, P. Lehingue, F. Sawicki (dir.), Mobilisations électorales, Paris, PUF, CURAPP/CRAPS, 2005, p. 281-305.

Retour vers la note de texte 1002

49

Virginie Julliard, Nelly Quemener, « Le genre dans la communication et les médias : enjeux et perspectives », Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, [revue en ligne]  4, 2014.

Retour vers la note de texte 1003

50

Sandrine Lévêque, De la professionnalisation journalistique à la professionnalisation politique au prisme du genre, mémoire pour l’habilitation à diriger des recherches, Université Paris I, 2016.

Retour vers la note de texte 1004

51

Mary Douglas, Comment pensent les institutions, Paris, La découverte/MAUSS, 1999, p. 71.

Retour vers la note de texte 1006

52

Jacques Lagroye, Michel Offerlé (dir.), Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010.

Retour vers la note de texte 1007

53

Lucie Bargel, Jeunes socialistes et jeunes UMP. Lieux et processus de socialisation politique, Paris, Dalloz, 2009.

Retour vers la note de texte 1009

54

Jacques Lagroye, « On ne subit pas son rôle », Politix,  38, 1997, p. 7-17.

Retour vers la note de texte 1011

55

Catherine Achin, Elsa Dorlin, Juliette Rennes, « Capital corporel identitaire et institution présidentielle : réflexions sur les processus d’incarnation des rôles politiques », Raisons politiques, n° 31, 2008, p. 5-17.

Retour vers la note de texte 1013

56

Jacques Lagroye, Michel Offerlé, Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010, p. 15.

Retour vers la note de texte 1926

57

Olivier Costa, Éric Kerrouche, Qui sont les députés français ? Enquête sur des élites inconnues, Paris, Presses de Sciences po, 2007 ; Julien Navarro, « Les rôles au Parlement européen. Une typologie des pratiques de représentation », Revue française de science politique, vol. 59, n° 3, 2009, p. 479-506 ; Cécile Vigour, « La représentation parlementaire en France : ressources politiques, diversité des modes et logiques de la représentation à l’Assemblée Nationale », in Alice Mazeau (dir.), Pratiques de la représentation politique, Rennes, PUR, 2014, p. 81-99. Ces travaux rejoignent et confirment ceux de Donald D. Searing, Westminster's World. Understanding Political Roles, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1994.

Retour vers la note de texte 1016

58

Bernard Lacroix, « Le politiste et l’analyse des institutions. Comment parler de la Présidence de la République », in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 13-78.

Retour vers la note de texte 1017

59

Thomas Procureur, Le Département, institution caméléon ? Les formes paradoxales d’une légitimation, Thèse pour le Doctorat en science politique, IEP de Rennes, 2013.

Retour vers la note de texte 1018

60

Mohammed Hardy, Genèse et autonomisation du parlement du Kurdistan irakien. Contribution à une sociologie des institutions politiques, Thèse pour le doctorat en Science politique, Université Paris 1, 2016.

Retour vers la note de texte 1019

61

Olivier Duhamel, La Gauche et la VeRépublique, Paris, PUF, 1992.

Retour vers la note de texte 1020

62

Delphine Dulong, Aux origines de la Cinquième République, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Retour vers la note de texte 1021

63

Frédérique Matonti, Intellectuels communistes. Essai sur l’obéissance politique. La Nouvelle Critique (1967-1980), Paris, La Découverte, 2005.

Retour vers la note de texte 1928

64

En ce sens que les hommes se sont alors repliés sur les positions institutionnelles les plus prestigieuses. Voir Catherine Achin et al., Sexes, genre et politique, Paris, Economica, 2007.

Retour vers la note de texte 1929

65

Mosei Ostrogorski, La Démocratie et les partis politiques, Paris, Le Seuil, 1979.

Retour vers la note de texte 1026

66

Dominique Damamme, « Le service du Premier ministre. Pour une analyse des conventions constitutionnelles », in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 195-222.

Retour vers la note de texte 1028

67

Les deux seuls nouveaux entrants (François Rebsamen et Ségolène Royal) sont en effet des proches du Président et non du Premier ministre.

Retour vers la note de texte 1029

68

Sur cette question, voir les travaux rassemblés dans Herbert Döring (dir.), Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995.

Retour vers la note de texte 1031

69

Damien Lecomte, Le Socialisme parlementaire
 à l’épreuve du fait majoritaire de la Ve République. Des relations du groupe majoritaire avec le pouvoir gouvernant et de la discipline parlementaire à l’Assemblée nationale les deux premières années de la XIVe législature, Mémoire pour l’obtention du Master 2, Sociologie et insitutions du politique, Université Paris 1, 2014.

Retour vers la note de texte 1033

70

Fabien Desage, Bastien Sibille, « L’emprise de l’institué », in J. Lagroye, M. Offerlé (dir.), Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010, p. 151-175.

Retour vers la note de texte 1034

71

L’encadrement des femmes en politique est à cet égard tout autant politique que social. Pour les institutions politiques locales, insérées dans des espaces sociaux le plus souvent non médiatisés par les partis politiques, l’encadrement des conduites féminines est même essentiellement social. Voir sur ce point Victor Marneur, Rapports sociaux de sexe et pouvoir municipal dans les espaces ruraux. Le cas des « petites » communes de Gironde au tournant des réformes paritaires, Thèse pour le doctorat de Science politique, IEP de Bordeaux, 2016.

Retour vers la note de texte 1039

72

Sur cette approche dans l’analyse des institutions, Virginie Tournay, Sociologie des institutions, Paris, PUF, 2011.

Retour vers la note de texte 1036

73

Jean-Philippe Heurtin, L’Espace public palementaire. Essai sur les raisons du législateur, Paris, PUF, 1999.

Retour vers la note de texte 1037

74

Delphine Gardey, Le Linge du Palais-Bourbon : Corps, matérialité et genre du politique à l’ère démocratique, Bordeaux, Editions du Bord de l’eau, 2015.

Retour vers la note de texte 1084

75

Damien Lecomte, Le Socialisme parlementaire
 à l’épreuve du fait majoritaire de la Ve République. Des relations du groupe majoritaire avec le pouvoir gouvernant et de la discipline parlementaire à l’Assemblée nationale les deux premières années de la XIVe législature, Mémoire pour l’obtention du Master 2, Sociologie et institutions du politique, Université Paris 1, 2014.

Retour vers la note de texte 1089

76

Fabien Desage, Bastien Sibille, « L’emprise de l’institué », in J. Lagroye, M. Offerlé (dir.), Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010, p. 151-175.

Retour vers la note de texte 1090

77

L’encadrement des femmes en politique est à cet égard tout autant politique que social. Pour les institutions politiques locales, insérées dans des espaces sociaux le plus souvent non médiatisés par les partis politiques, l’encadrement des conduites féminines est même essentiellement social. Voir sur ce point Victor Marneur, Rapports sociaux de sexe et pouvoir municipal dans les espaces ruraux. Le cas des « petites » communes de Gironde au tournant des réformes paritaires, Thèse pour le doctorat de Science politique, IEP de Bordeaux, 2016.

Catherine Achin, Laure Béréni (dir.), Dictionnaire genre et politique, Paris, Presses de science po, 2013.

Catherine Achin, Elsa Dorlin, Juliette Rennes, “Capital corporel identitaire et institution présidentielle: réflexions sur les processus d’incarnation des rôles politiques”, Raisons politiques, n° 31, 2008, p. 5-17.

Catherine Achin and al., Sexes, genre et politique, Paris, Economica, 2007.

Julie Bailleux, Penser l’Europe par le droit. L’invention du droit communautaire en France, Paris, Dalloz, 2014.

Lucie Bargel, Jeunes socialistes et jeunes UMP. Lieux et processus de socialisation politique, Paris, Dalloz, 2009.

Valentin Behr, Sébastien Michon, “Les filières d’accès au gouvernement français (1986-2012): les apports de l’analyse des données”, paper given at the Ve congrès des Associations francophones de science politique, Luxembourg, 2013.

Peter Berger, Thomas Luckman, La Construction sociale de la réalité, Paris, Méridien Klinscksiek, 1986.

Sophie Béroud, “Retour sur quelques enjeux de la politique comparée”, Les cahiers de l’IRICE, vol. 1, n° 5, 2010.

Guy Birenbaum, Le Front National en politique, Paris, Balland, 1992.

Pierre Bourdieu, “La force du droit. Éléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n°64, 1986, p. 3-19.

Jean-Louis Briquet, Frédéric Sawicki (dir.), Le Clientélisme politique dans les sociétés contemporaines, Paris, PUF, 1998.

Jacques Chevallier, L’État de droit, Paris, Montchrestien, 2003.

Antonin Cohen, De Vichy à la communauté européenne, Paris, PUF, 2012.

Annie Collovald, “Les poujadistes ou l'échec en politique”, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 36, n° 1, 1989, p. 113-133.

Olivier Costa, Éric Kerrouche, Qui sont les députés français? Enquête sur des élites inconnues, Paris, Presses de Sciences po, 2007.

Dominique Damamme, “Le service du Premier ministre. Pour une analyse des conventions constitutionnelles”, in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 195-222.

Fabien Desage, Bastien Sibille, “L’emprise de l’institué”, in J. Lagroye, M. Offerlé (dir.), Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010, p. 151-175.

Yves Dezalay, Bryan Garth, Global Prescriptions: The Production, Exportation and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy, University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Herbert Döring (dir.), Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995.

Elsa Dorlin, La Matrice de la race. Généalogie sexuelle et coloniale de la nation française, Paris, La Découverte, 2006.

Mary Douglas, Comment pensent les institutions, Paris, La découverte/MAUSS, 1999.

Olivier Duhamel, La Gauche et la Ve République, Paris, PUF, 1992.

Delphine Dulong, “Drôles de genres et genre de rôle. Édith Cresson à Matignon ou le (mauvais) genre en politique”, in M. Gateau, M. Navarre, F. Schepens (dir.), Quoi de neuf depuis la parité? Du genre dans la construction des rôles politiques, Dijon, PUD, 2012, p. 53-68.

Delphine Dulong, Sociologie des institutions politiques, Paris, La Découverte, 2012.

Delphine Dulong, Aux origines de la Cinquième République, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Delphine Dulong, Frédérique Matonti, “L’indépassable féminité. La mise en récit des femmes en campagne”, in J. Lagroye, P. Lehingue, F. Sawicki (dir.), Mobilisations électorales, Paris, PUF, CURAPP/CRAPS, 2005, p. 281-305.

Delphine Dulong, Sandrine Lévêque, “Une ressource contingente. Les conditions de reconversion du genre en ressource politique”, Politix, n° 60, 2002, p. 81-111.

Norbert Elias, La Dynamique de l’Occident, Paris, Pocket, [1975] 2007.

Jacques Fournier, Le Travail gouvernemental, Paris, Presses de Sciences po et Dalloz, 1987.

Bastien François, La Cinquième République dans son droit. La production d’un corps de connaissances spécialisées sur la politique et les institutions, PhD Diss. in Political Science, Université Paris 1, 1992.

Bastien François, “Le Président pontife constitutionnel. Charisme d’institution et construction juridique du politique”, in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 303-332.

Brigitte Gaïti, De Gaulle, prophète de la Ve République, Paris, Presses de Science po, 1998.

Claire de Galembert, Olivier Rozenberg, Cécile Vigour (dir.), Faire parler le Parlement. Méthodes et enjeux de l'analyse des débats parlementaires pour les sciences sociales, Paris, LGDJ, 2014.

Delphine Gardey, Le Linge du Palais-Bourbon: Corps, matérialité et genre du politique à l’ère démocratique, Bordeaux, Éditions du Bord de l’eau, 2015.

Daniel Gaxie and al., (dir.), L’Europe des européens. Enquête comparative sur les perceptions de l’Europe, Paris, Economica, 2011.

Daniel Gaxie, Le Cens caché, Paris, Le Seuil, 1978.

Erving Goffman, La Mise en scène de la vie quotidienne, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1973.

Florence Haegel, Frédéric Sawicki, “Résistible et chaotique, la résistible présidentialisation de l’UMP et du PS”, in Y. Déloye, A. Dézé, S. Maurer (dir.), Institutions, élections, opinions. Mélanges en l’honneur de Jean-Luc Parodi, Paris, Presses de Science po, 2014, p. 19-39.

Peter A. Hall, Rose-Mary Taylor, “La science politique et les trois néo-institutionnalismes”, Revue française de science politique, vol. 47, n° 3, 1997, p. 469-496.

Mohammed Hardy, Genèse et autonomisation du parlement du Kurdistan irakien. Contribution à une sociologie des institutions politiques, PhD Diss. in Political Science, Université Paris 1, 2016.

Jean-Philippe Heurtin, L’Espace public parlementaire. Essai sur les raisons du législateur, Paris, PUF, 1999.

Virginie Julliard, Nelly Quemener, “Le genre dans la communication et les médias: enjeux et perspectives”, Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, n° 4, 2014.

Bernard Lacroix, Jacques Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992.

Bernard Lacroix, “Le politiste et l’analyse des institutions. Comment parler de la Présidence de la République”, in B. Lacroix, J. Lagroye (dir.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèse d’une institution, Paris, PFNSP, 1992, p. 13-78.

Jacques Lagroye, “On ne subit pas son rôle”, Politix, n° 38, 1997, p. 7-17.

Jacques Lagroye, “La légitimation”, in M. Grawitz, J. Leca (dir.), Traité de science politique, tome I, Paris, PUF, 1985, p. 395-467.

Jacques Lagroye, Michel Offerlé (dir.), Sociologie de l’institution, Paris, Belin, 2010.

Christian Le Bart, Les Maires. Sociologie d’un rôle, Lille, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2003.

Damien Lecomte, Le Socialisme parlementaire
 à l’épreuve du fait majoritaire de la Ve République. Des relations du groupe majoritaire avec le pouvoir gouvernant et de la discipline parlementaire à l’Assemblée nationale les deux premières années de la XIVe législature, discussion for the Master 2 “Sociologie et institutions du politique”, Université Paris 1, 2014.

Rémy Lefebvre, “Le socialisme français soluble dans l’institution municipale? Forme partisane et emprise institutionnelle. L’exemple de Roubaix (1892-1983)”, Revue Française de Science Politique, vol. 54, n° 2, 2004, p. 237-260.

Sandrine Lévêque, De la professionnalisation journalistique à la professionnalisation politique au prisme du genre, dissertation for the authorization to manage researches, Université Paris I, 2016.

James G. March, Johan P. Olsen, The New institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life , American Political Science Review, vol. 78, n° 3, 1984, p. 734-749.

Victor Marneur, Rapports sociaux de sexe et pouvoir municipal dans les espaces ruraux. Le cas des “petites” communes de Gironde au tournant des réformes paritaires, PhD diss. in Political Science, IEP de Bordeaux, 2016.

Frédérique Matonti, Intellectuels communistes. Essai sur l’obéissance politique. La Nouvelle Critique (1967-1980), Paris, La Découverte, 2005.

Julien Navarro, “Les rôles au Parlement européen. Une typologie des pratiques de représentation”, Revue française de science politique, vol. 59, n° 3, 2009, p. 479-506.

Olivier Nay, “Pour une sociologie des pratiques d'assemblée: note sur un champ de recherche quelque peu délaissé”, Sociologie du travail, n° 45, 2003, p. 537-554.

Olivier Nay, La Région, une institution. La représentation, le pouvoir et la règle dans l’espace régional, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Olivier Nay, Andy Smith, “Les intermédiaires en politique: médiations et jeux d’institutions”, in O. Nay, A. Smith (dir.), Le Gouvernement du compromis. Courriers et généralistes dans l’action publique, Paris, Economica, 2002, p. 47-86.

Michel Offerlé (dir.), La Profession politique (XIXe-XXe siècle), Paris, Belin, 1999.

Michel Offerlé, “Illégitimité et légitimation du personnel politique ouvrier en France avant 1914”, Annales ESC, vol. 39, n° 4,1984, p. 681-716.

Thomas Procureur, Le Département, institution caméléon? Les formes paradoxales d’une légitimation, PhD Diss. in Political Science, IEP de Rennes, 2013.

Pierre Rosanvallon, Principes du gouvernement représentatif, Paris, Flammarion, 1996.

Olivier Rosenberg, Éric Kerrouche, “Retour au parlement”, Revue française de science politique, vol. 59, 3, 2009, p. 397-400.

Guillaume Sacriste, La République des constitutionnalistes. Les professeurs de droit et la légitimation de l’État en France (1870-1914), Paris, Presses de science po, 2011.

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