Le rendement des dépenses électorales en France. Le cas des élections législatives de 1997

This article aims at evaluating the influence of campaign spending on legislative vote share within a new French campaign finance law. From an empirical analysis derived from the 1997 French legislative election, we show that the electoral outcomes are sensitive to campaign spending. Using ols and 2SLS methods and taking into account the bias of endogeneity, we demonstrate that the spending of incumbent candidates have a direct and positive effect whereas the spending of their challengers have an indirect and negative effect. In the context of the implementation of a new campaign finance regulation (characterized by both spending ceiling and public repayment), this result means that financial barriers to entry into political market are not entirely reduced. In conclusion, the return of French campaign spending is not quite different from those empirically verified within the American electoral process. Classification JEL : D72