tes voted for drops out of
the contest, unless by voluntary withdrawal; new candidates, at even
so late a day, may enter the race; and whoever, at the second
balloting, secures a simple plurality is declared elected. By
observers generally it is considered that the principle of the second
ballot, in the form in which it is applied in France, possesses no
very decisive value. Through a variety of agencies the central
government is accustomed to exert substantial influence in
parliamentary elections; but all of the more important political
groups have profited at one time or another by the practice, and there
is to-day a very general acquiescence in it, save on the part of
unsuccessful candidates whose prospects have been injured by it.

IV. THE PROBLEM OF ELECTORAL REFORM

*347. Scrutin de liste and scrutin d'arrondissement.*--Within recent
years there has arisen, especially among the Republicans and
Socialists, an insistent demand for a thoroughgoing reform of the
electoral process. Those who criticise the present system are far from
agreed as to precisely what would be more desirable, but, in general,
there are two preponderating programmes. One of these calls simply for
abandonment of the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ and a return to the
_scrutin de liste_. The other involves both a return to the _scrutin
de liste_ and the adoption of a scheme of proportional representation.
The arrondissement, many maintain, is too small to be made to serve
satisfactorily as an electoral unit. Within a sphere so restricted the
larger interests of the nation are in danger of being lost to view and
political life is prone to be reduced to a wearisome round of compromise,
demagogy, and trivialities. If, it is contended, all deputies (p. 320)
from a department were to be elected on a single ticket, the elector
would value his privilege more highly, the candidate would be in a
position to make a more dignified campaign, and issues which are
national in their scope would less frequently be obscured by questions
and interests of a petty and purely local character. Professor Duguit,
of the University of Bordeaux, who is one of the abler exponents of
this proposed reform, contends (1) that the scheme of _scrutin de
liste_ harmonizes better than does that of _scrutin d'arrondissement_
with the fundamental theory of representation in France, which is that
the deputies who go to Paris do so as representatives of the nation as
a whole, not