66

Beyond its political and legislative dimensions, the problem of re-election of representatives in the French Third Republic was influenced by administrative manipulation of electoral rules – in particular the introduction of proportional and list voting. Initial proposals claimed to address both electoral rules and the frequency of elections. Increasingly, however, ministerial letters of instruction to Prefects tended to conflate these two elements into a single effort to codify the pre-selection of candidates who could form the base of the desired political renewal. In this way, the monopoly of expertise relating to anticipating and predicting electoral outcomes once held political entrepreneurs was replaced by co-management of elections by them and the Prefects. This situation, in which Prefects were expected to move from predicting to managing electoral outcomes, was one for which they were singularly ill prepared. The effective control of re-election made possible by the new electoral rules bore its fruit only under the specific conditions that obtained after WW1, when Prefects and political parties were forced to collaborate closely.