a. This model corresponds to the running-in period of universal suffrage. The three major functions of the electoral system are fulfilled in such a way that it could almost be categorised as being pre-democratic. Whether regarding representation, selection or investiture, each is stamped by the moral, cultural and political power of the elites vis-à-vis the great mass of the electorate granted voting rights.

Accordingly, the logic of representation is geared to obtaining votes. Prominent persons of all opinions canvassing for electors’ votes appeal to their immediate clientele, namely the section of the population that knows them directly and naturally has confidence in them in order to defend their material and spiritual interests much better than they could do themselves. The population divides according to each individual’s relationship with the immediate clientele of given prominent persons.

b. The logic of selection is a reverse selection. It is not so much the elector who chooses the elected representative than the would-be elected person who gathers together his potential electors. The personalities are pre-selected in one camp or another and are candidates only because they have all the tangible or intangible attributes of distinguished figures. This goes without saying in the conservative camp because they defend the “natural right” of the traditional
governing classes to govern, although this may also be found in the liberal camp in the form of what Maurice Agulhon described as “democratic patronage”, that is to say, the political commitment of the new governing strata who feel that they have been invested with a duty to speak in the name of the people in order to defend their interests of which they may be unaware.

c. The logic of investiture is carte blanche. Each of the clients mobilised by the competing notables delegates to them all of his powers – without having any idea of how it will affect himor her personally – in order that they should pursue in parliament or, perhaps, in government the policy which seems to them to be the best and, which therefore cannot but be the best.

d. The most functional electoral system for such a model is the single-member, one-roundballot. First-past-the-post with one round of voting because this is the simplest system to understand and agree upon in an inegalitarian, uneducated society. The single-member system is adopted because it is most commensurate with the logic of the model, based as it is on notables.