Elections in Chanzeaux

To the voters of Chanzeaux, a wine-growing, cattle-raising township of 1150 persons in the Loire Valley near Angers, the November 18 French Parliamentary elections were a minor event. Four years ago the citizens of Chanzeaux were dissatisfied, and one hundred and nineteen of them supported Pierre Poujade, the semi-anarchist farmer who inveighed against taxes and government. In this election, despite a fiery speech in town hall. Poujade received only twenty-seven votes.

Poujade's line has remained constant, but Chanzeaux is changing considerably. The town has become prosperous and confident since 1958, according to Laurence Wylie. C. Douglass Dillon Professor of French Civilization, who visited Chanzeaux at election-time to talk and make tape-recordings for his course in French sociology.

When townsmen told him last month "This election means nothing; it changes nothing," Wylie took that remark as an important indicator of Chanzeaux's new attitude. For, with prosperity and the growth of voluntary organizations, Chanzeaux has lost its feeling of dependence upon the parties in which it long ago lost faith. The townsmen are confident that they can advance their interests effectively through their voluntary associations and by dealing directly with the civil service.

Despite the predictions of local experts that he was in trouble, the incumbent Gaullist Robert Hauret won easily on the first ballot with 369 votes, 163 more than he polled in 1958. Beside Poujade, the big loser was the Independent candidate, on the more modern right, whose total slipped to 45 votes from 137. At the other extreme, the Communists and Socialists held their 24 voters but added no one.

Essentially, Wylie feels this was a conservative vote in favor of the way things are going and against the formal party organizations of the right. The trend against the party organizations was so strong, he notes, that the Independent candidate was forced to explain tendentiously that his label indicated merely that he was the most independent candidate in the race. Most voters still don't think of de Gaulle's Union pour la nouvelle Republique (UNR) as a real party.

The prosperity that weakened the parties and destroyed Poujade was evident in the televisions, appliances, new cars, and farm machinery which gave Chanzeaux a much more modern cast than when Wylie first visited with his family in 1957.

And, significantly, prosperity is tied to the Common Market. The Market has put pressure on the town, forcing farmers to modernize in the face of stiffened competition. It has also offered incentives as cattle farmers eye the German market and expand their herds to sell in it.

Although expansion has been accomplished by plunging many farmers into debt, the only serious flaw in the changed economic structure, this has not tempered the general optimism. Chanzeaux, Wylie reports, is no longer fatalistic about its future. When he asked, "What's going to happen?" the answer last month was on verra bien (we'll see about it) instead of the usual c'est sera sera (what will be will be). This new confidence is changing what Chanzeaux--and the rest of France--expects from politics, and moderating the passion with which villagers have traditionally treated political controversy.