Word: royales
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Where does representative democracy end and populism begin? The question has been posed high and low in France for the last couple of days since S?gol?ne Royal, the clear frontrunner to be the Socialist candidate in next spring's presidential election, proposed tossing a new wrench in the already dysfunctional French mode of governance. Her idea is to establish "citizens' juries," drawn by random lot, to assess the work of representatives between elections. Such "popular surveillance" of deputies and other elected officials, she said, would help bridge France's chronic gulf between the elected and the electorate...
...country that considers itself the cradle of representative democracy, it was a bold departure. And like many of the proposals Royal has advanced in the year since she threw her hat in the presidential ring, this one surprised even her staff, left pundits and pols sputtering with outrage, but apparently found favor with the French people...
...piece with her other unrealistic proposals like making union membership mandatory and "scaring the capitalists" by regulating the free flow of international capital. Brice Hortefeux, a prime lieutenant of the probable conservative presidential candidate, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, called her idea "an attack on the Republic." In fact, as Royal's staff noted in a quickly disseminated clarification, such popular juries are nothing new; Royal first voiced the idea back in 2002, and well before that it emerged from "Anglo-Saxon theories of empowerment." For years, such selective citizens' committees have been used in Berlin to steer municipal policies where...
...Still, the idea seemed to jeopardize the apparently impregnable lead Royal maintains over her Socialist rivals, former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. They both gleefully attacked the juries this week in the second of four televised debates scheduled before Socialists select their candidate in mid-November. Strauss-Kahn noted that a just society can't be "built on the general suspicion" invoked by subjecting elected officials to juries. Fabius suggested the idea was "a kind of populism that would end up serving the far right...
...pessimistic as I was," said Royal Masset, a longtime Texas Republican operative. "I think she has a real outside chance, maybe a one in 20 shot. I am amazed at how the party has united behind her." Some Democrats, including Andy Hernandez, a former Democratic National Committee staffer and Hispanic voting expert, are being cautious. "It's still a Republican district," he said...