Democracy Without Sovereignty: France’s Post-Colonial Paradox
Democracy Without Sovereignty:
France’s Post-Colonial Paradox
WILLIAM F. S. MILES
Professor of Political Science
Northeastern University
ELECTIONS WITHOUT DEMOCRACY ARE A problematic feature of politics in both developing and transitional nations. What can we say, however, of polities that meet the conditions of liberal democracy, particularly free and fair elections, yet lack sovereignty, an
attribute that advocates of third world elections ordinarily take for granted? By relegating the case of “dependent territories” to the anachronistic status of holdovers from a
bygone colonial era, pro-democracy advocates exclude millions of people worldwide
from an otherwise universal paradigm of freedom. They also tacitly endorse the legitimacy of arguments—marginal until now—for benevolent colonization: if liberal democracy can prosper uncontested in non-sovereign polities, why not integrate hitherto
democratically failed states into larger, truly democratic ones?
Take the case of France’s overseas departments and territories (known as the DOMTOM). Spread out over Polynesia, the Indian Ocean, South America, North America,
and the Caribbean, the vast majority of their inhabitants are of West Indian, East
Indian, African, and Oceanic ethnicity. They are also French citizens, enjoying the
same legal rights extended to their compatriots in metropolitan France.1 Since the
international community accepts their juridical designation as integral parts of the
French Republic, scholars and statesmen alike generally ignore the political, ideological, and moral issues that DOM-TOM politics pose to post-colonial democratization.
That is a mistake. For not only do the sheer numbers of people concerned justify
consideration of the issue; the very premise of DOM-TOM democracy affords a prism
for rethinking the relationship between democracy and sovereignty.2
WILLIAM F.S. MILES is Research Professor of International Studies (Adjunct) at the Watson Institute for
International Studies at Brown University, and author of Elections and Ethnicity in French Martinique: A
Paradox in Paradise.
Copyright © 2005 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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WILLIAM F. S. MILES
DEMOGRAPHY, ETHNICITY, SOVEREIGNTY
Approximately 2.4 million people live in the DOM-TOM. That is a small number
compared with greater France’s population of sixty million, and an infinitesimal proportion of the third world. Collectively, however, the overseas French outnumber the
populations of democratic and democratizing states that receive much greater attention: Cyprus, Fiji, and Kuwait. Table 1 (below) outlines their essential features.
TABLE 1: OVERVIEW OF OVERSEAS FRANCE
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Name
Pop.
(Location)
1999
Guadeloupe
422,000
(Caribbean)
Guyane/Guiana
158,000
(South America)
Martinique
382,000
(Caribbean)
Mayotte
136,000
(Indian Ocean)
New Caledonia
205,00
(South Pacific)
Polynesia
230,000
(South Pacific)
Réunion
705,000
(Indian Ocean)
St. Pierre & Miquelon 6,300
(N. America)
Wallis & Futuna 16,000
(S. Pacific)
Juridical
Status
department
GNP per capita
1994/5
$8,530
department
$11,401
department
$11,579
collectivity
n.a.
legislating collectivity
$15,840
“overseas country”
$15,580
department
$9,712
collectivity
n.a.
territory
n.a.
SOURCE: Compiled from data in Doumeng (2000) and UNDP Human
Development Report (1997, 1998).
As part of France, the DOM-TOM are also legally part of the European Union. Recognizing their developmental special needs, the Treaty of Maastrict (Article 227) has
granted them special dispensation as “ultraperipheral” regions. They thus constitute an
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Democracy Without Sovereignty: France’s Post-Colonial Paradox
important precedent for the application of European norms of jurisprudence—notably concerning political and human rights—to developing nations.
In terms of population, the overseas French are evenly divided into DOM (overseas departments) and TOM
(overseas territories). There
are, however, significant
ethno-historical and juridical distinctions between
them. DOM are made up
principally of descendants of
slaves and indentured laborers who, beginning in the
seventeenth century, were
transported from Africa and
India to work on island
sugar plantations. They are
Photos Courtesy of William Miles
now classically Creole popuCasting a vote for the French “presidentielles” in Fort-delations, arising from the adFrance, capital of Martinique. (21 April 2002)
mixture of distinct races and
ethnicities. Only in French
Guiana does an indigenous population (of Amerindians) subsist, albeit as a minority.
Colonization of the TOM came significantly later, in the nineteenth century, and
encompassed populations that still retain pre-colonial Melanesian, Polynesian, and
Muslim cultural and linguistic identities. Even as DOM and TOM were transformed
from their prior status as colonies by French parliamentary vote in 1946, their distinctive profiles resulted in different post-colonial paths.
The older, more assimilated DOM were completely integrated into France’s administrative and juridical systems in accordance with the 1946 “law of assimilation”
and the Fourth Republic constitution of that same year. Sovereignty for the DOM,
therefore, was made constitutionally impossible early on. In contrast, France’s 1958
constitution explicitly envisioned the possibility of the TOM achieving outright independence in the immediate future, should their populations advocate leaving the Republic. French jurisprudence has, however, subsequently ruled that, despite the
preamble’s reference to the right of self-determination, the constitution no longer affords even the TOM unilateral rights to independence, as “France is an indivisible
Republic” (Article 1 of 1958 Constitution).
Departmentalization—decolonization through statehood within France—was a
demand of the “Old Colony” overseas populations themselves. None other than Aimé
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WILLIAM F. S. MILES
Césaire, the most illustrious figure in French overseas politics and history, submitted
the 1946 bill of “assimilation” to the French National Assembly. In the intervening
half-century, although local politicians have periodically demanded substantive change
in the relationship between the
French metropole and overseas
From this vantage point, the “democracy” departments (Césaire himself
that the DOM-TOM “enjoy” is a sham. The came to advocate autonomy),
few have advocated rupture.
formal attributes of a democratic polity may Momentum for outright sepabe in place...but this is an alien power’s ration is negligible: the ecodemocracy, built on a history of colonial rule. nomic benefits of remaining
part of France (and the EU) are
too great. With the blessing of
the late French Socialist government, the period from 2001 through 2002 did see
unprecedented local debate over the future of the “departmental” status of the DOMs.
Any such change, however, no matter how much power is devolved to the local island
governments, will without doubt occur within the rubric of the French Republic.
By overwhelming majorities, the people of the former colonies of Guadeloupe,
Guiana, Martinique and Réunion wish to remain citizens of France, enjoying identical
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privileges with their metropolitan counterparts. These include the right to vote for
local councilors, for representatives to Paris, and even for the president of France. There
is no option, however, to vote either for an executive head of one’s own local government (this does not occur in any French department), or for independence which, as
noted earlier, is prohibited by the French Constitution. Guadeloupeans can thus cast
ballots for Jacques Chirac or Lionel Jospin; but they cannot vote for the one person
they wish to govern their island. Nor have they the collective right to popular selfdetermination—to choose between remaining part of France or creating a sovereign
Guadeloupean state. The state of democracy, therefore, is somewhat unclear. Is the
(still) French department of Guadeloupe more, or less, democratic than the (independent) Republic of Guinea?
NEOCOLONIAL DEMOCRACY?
One of the best-known anti-colonial revolutionary theorists, Frantz Fanon, emerged
from a DOM society. In Black Skins, White Masks, the Martinican psychiatrist analyzed
the ways in which his fellow West Indians mimicked the habits, speech, and thought of
the French metropolitan.3 For Fanon, black Caribbean assimilation of Gallic identity
was not merely psychologically damaging; it was tantamount to political pathology.
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Photos Courtesy of William Miles
“Chirac: Man for Overseas [France].” (21 April 2002)
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It is tempting to extend Fanon’s analysis to the present. If the DOM-TOM passively accept their status as overseas projections of an erstwhile European colonizer, it is
because they are conditioned to do so. The educational system, the media, and consumer values all reinforce the post-colonial message of departmentalization, stressing
the benefit of the current arrangement. The elevated standard of living that DOMTOM peoples enjoy, however, comes at the cost of economic and psychic dependency.
From this vantage point, the “democracy” that the DOM-TOM “enjoy” is a
sham. The formal attributes of a democratic polity may be in place—even the proindependence minority does not contest the transparency and competitiveness of elections held in overseas France—but this is an alien power’s democracy, built on a history
of colonial rule. French campaign schedules and voting procedures are the only electoral game in town. France extends liberal democracy to the DOM-TOM, goes this
argument, in order to justify her hold over these post-colonies.
Alternately, one could argue that ethnicity is no bar to citizenship and that DOMTOM peoples are French, regardless of history. Rejecting their claim to Frenchness on
account of ethnic profile, national origin, or geographical distance from the metropole
smacks of racism. It would be tantamount to rejecting the very pluralism that lies at the
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heart of contemporary liberal democracy, especially for a France that for at least two
decades has officially recognized the ethnic and cultural multiplicity functioning within
an expanded notion of French nationhood. If Guiana and Réunion are unfree postcolonies, one could retort, so then are Alaska and Hawaii.
TABLE 2: OVERSEAS FRANCE FRONT RUNNER RESULTS
First Round, 2002
Chirac
Jospin
Taubira
Le Pen
Guyane
Guadeloupe
Martinique
St. Pierre & Miqln.
Mayotte
Réunion
New Caledonia
Wallis & Futuna
French Polynesia
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19%
28.9%
32.9%
30.8%
43%
37.2%
48.4%
50.6%
62.4%
10.6%
23.1%
29.1%
13.7%
18.8%
39.0%
22.4%
35.8%
24.7%
52.3%
37.2%
27.8%
6.1%
5.3%
2.1%
1.3%
0.5%
0.5%
5%
2.9%
1.8%
13.4%
2.5%
3.8%
10.8%
0.8%
4.2%
Italics represents territory or collectivity
Twelve other candidates not listed
SOURCE: Conseil Constitutionnel, Election présidentielle 2002, Résultats du
1er tour, 21 avril 2002 <http://www.conseil-constitutionnel/fr>
Assessments of global democracy that exclude the DOM-TOM from their purview
tacitly endorse the French position. They treat these overseas territories and departments as internal units of France and therefore are not subject to the kind of monitoring, ranking, or analysis that they conduct on neighboring, democratizing nations.
Freedom House, for instance, omits the DOM-TOM even from its “related territories”
and “disputed territories” categories. Puerto Rico and Northern Ireland, in contrast, do
qualify as “related territories” of the United States and United Kingdom, respectively.
In other words, Freedom House tacitly accepts that peoples need not enjoy the option
of political sovereignty to fulfill conditions of liberal democracy.
The central issue is the option of political sovereignty. In the case of the DOMTOM, there is little doubt that, if presented with a referendum tomorrow, the overwhelming majority of voters would choose that their homelands remain part of France.
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Such was the 1998 outcome in the TOM of New Caledonia, which a decade prior had
experienced fatal political violence. Yet for the majority of DOM-TOM polities we
only “know” this preference for remaining French on the basis of public opinion polls
and inferential research data. These are of little validity in settling points of international law. The point is that France does not allow the holding of binding referenda for
her departments––overseas or metropolitan. The very notion of permitting such a choice
of sovereignty is anathema, an affront to the “Frenchness” of the overseas departments.
This line of thinking argues that it is sufficient that the people of overseas France are as
politically free as those of metropolitan France. Let us then examine the prevailing state
of democracy within the DOM-TOM today, as exemplified in recent elections.
DOM-TOM VOTING IN 2002
With one important caveat, DOM-TOM voting outcomes in the elections of 2002 do
buttress French claims regarding the robustness of liberal democracy in overseas France.
They also substantiate the argument that the former colonies eschew political independence.
In the first round of the presidential elections in April 2002, in six of the nine
DOM-TOMs, voters gave a plurality to the incumbent conservative president, Jacques
Chirac. In the campaign, President Chirac had positioned himself as a staunch advocate of the status quo relationship between metropolitan and overseas France. In all of
France, Chirac gained 19.9%; in the DOM-TOM, he netted 37.9%. In Réunion, it
was the socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, who gained a plurality in the field of
sixteen candidates.
In two of the DOM, it was a black female presidential candidate who bested both
Jospin and Chirac; in a third DOM, she netted a respectable 27.8%. Indeed, in her
homeland of French Guiana, Christiane Taubira managed an actual majority of first
round votes. Although running on the Radical Party of the Left platform, Taubira had
long before renounced her pro-independence position in favor of advanced decentralization and local power-sharing within the French Republic.
France’s 2002 presidential elections will be best remembered for the second place
showing (and hence second round runner-off status) of the far right National Front
candidate, and presumed racist, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Less recognized is that the candidacy of French Guianese Taubira may very well have edged Jospin out of second place.
Throughout all France of, fewer than two hundred thousand votes separated
Jospin from Le Pen. Overseas, Taubira netted nearly eighty thousand votes. About
three hundred thousand French West Indians (both migrants and offspring of mi-
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grants) of voting age live in metropolitan France. It is not unreasonable to assume that
as many as half cast their votes for Taubira. Now there are no exit polls in France that
would indicate, say, votGiven the opportunity of renouncing national ing turnout by race. But
sovereignty and rejoining the French Republic if we assume that the
presence of a West Indian
—not as colonized subjects but as full citizens— candidate stimulated her
what would Chadians or Haitians choose?... compatriots to participate at a twelve percent
More importantly, why would such an option higher rate than that of
not be morally and democratically, legitimate? the French metropolitan
electorate at large (sixtyeight percent for the first round), then consider the following scenario: If only a little
over half of those who supported Taubira had voted for Jospin instead, the Socialist
Prime Minister, and not the National Front candidate, would have faced Chirac in the
run-off election. DOM-TOM democracy may very well have shaped the 2002 electoral outcome for all of France.
Legislative elections in Martinique, following the presidential ones, reflect the
diversity in ideological outcome that characterizes DOM-TOM democracy. Of the
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four winning candidates sent to Paris as members of the French national assembly, one
was a socialist, who beat a staunch advocate of the departmental status quo. A second
was an ex-communist who bested a pro-autonomy incumbent endorsed by Aimé Césaire.
A pro-independence incumbent squeaked by to defeat a departmentalist challenger.
But the candidate who won by far the greatest margin was a sitting mayor who situated
himself squarely within the Chirac camp. In short, voters in this one DOM took full
advantage of the ideological diversity offered them in elections that are procedurally
free and fair.
As to the caveat hinted at above: election turnout rates in the DOM-TOM are
much lower than they are in the metropole. Some take this as an indication of alienation from French politics; others see it as a consequence of pro-independence calls to
boycott “foreign” (i.e. French national) elections. Suffice it to note that DOM-TOM
adults vote twenty to thirty percent less than those in metropolitan France—and therefore at roughly the same rates as the electorate in the United States.
TOWARDS A DEMOCRATIZING COLONIZATION?
Is it because democracy advocates accept France’s position of decolonization through
administrative integration that they ignore the DOM-TOM conundrum? Unlikely.
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Photo Courtesy of William Miles
French presidential posters in the tropics of the Caribbean. (21 April 2002)
Were independence movements in the DOM-TOM to adopt tactics of mass protest or
violence, democracy activists and scholars would then reject French claims that her
overseas departments and territories are sufficiently democratic. They would do so just
as surely as they dismissed South African claims that apartheid guaranteed adequate
representation. Democracy in the absence of sovereignty is acceptable as long as the
peoples concerned do not revolt.
What are the implications for democratic policy in an era of failed states, rogue
regimes, and stunted development? In a controversial essay and book, Robert Kaplan
has argued that dire political and economic conditions in a number of third world
nations justify their recolonization by the West.4 Few have taken Kaplan seriously.
Given the collapse of polity and economy in certain corners of the third world, however, the prospect—especially when considered alongside impressive economic development in the DOM-TOM—is not all that preposterous.
Given the opportunity of renouncing national sovereignty and rejoining the French
Republic—not as colonized subjects but as full citizens—what would Chadians or
Haitians choose? What choice would majorities within any of the other thirteen former
French colonies that the United Nations currently classifies under the rubric of “low
human development,” make? More importantly, why would such an option not be
morally and democratically, legitimate? What if the United States were willing to inte-
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grate a notoriously undemocratic and underdeveloped state within its political system?
Could France—otherwise proud of her far-flung post-colonial DOM-TOM domains—
seriously contest the principle?
At first blush, merely considering the renunciation of political sovereignty for the
sake of accelerated economic development—even if desired by the people so concerned—
strikes the global democrat as reactionary. But why? This has been the non-sovereign
path of the DOM-TOM for millions of people in dozens of homelands throughout
the global South for nearly four decades. If democracy without sovereignty is inherently flawed, then advocates of democracy should be denouncing France’s control over
the DOM-TOM. If democracy without sovereignty is legitimate, however, then democracy advocates would be hard pressed to deny a similar option for other peoples,
now and in the future.
Few contest that the people of East Germany were entitled to dissolve their sovereign state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and merge within the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG). By doing so, East Germans sacrificed national sovereignty and their distinct political identity for the sake of citizenship within a different,
democratic, and developed state. For sure, this process was cast as “reunification” into
a national (and supposedly natural) homeland. Yet East Germans were just as entitled
by democratic choice to construct a non-communist polity within their inherited Cold
War borders, just as partitioned peoples elsewhere have made do with the artificial
boundaries that colonialism bequeathed them. Political independence is more flexible
and more negotiable than was usually thought to be the case up to the fall of the Berlin
Wall; the Anglo-U.S.-led invasion of Iraq further refutes the inviolability of national
sovereignty. The DOM-TOM add a longstanding and multi-ethnic dimension to the
sans sovereignty scenario of liberal democracy.
FREEDOM AND FANON
In the decades following World War II, it was assumed that decolonization and democracy were of a single piece: only under conditions of national sovereignty did elections
make sense and it was understood that liberal democracy could only flourish under
conditions of political independence.
Third world authoritarianism has put to bed the myth that freedom would follow independence for the formerly colonized. Accordingly, national sovereignty has
been more modestly reappraised as a necessary but insufficient condition for liberal
democracy. DOM-TOM democracy challenges even this modest claim. For unless
democracy analysts can dismiss the otherwise free and fair electoral reality of the DOM-
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TOM as inherently flawed, national sovereignty must be rejected as a prerequisite of
liberal democracy in former colonies.
To return to Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary theorist of national liberation and
anti-colonialism: Fanon did not remain in the West Indies to fight French psychological or political neo-colonialism. Assigned in the early 1960s to work with the French
medical military in North Africa, he switched sides to join the National Liberation
Front (FLN) during the Algerian fight for independence.5 In hindsight, given Algeria’s
post-independence record of bloody internecine conflict fomented by Islamic fundamentalism and high-handed military efforts to suppress it (highlighted by the army’s
nullification of the 1992 elections), his trajectory is ironic.
Who can say that independence has brought Algeria closer to either liberal democracy or economic development? DOM-TOM democracy, on the other hand, has
brought both, to Fanon’s native homeland of Martinique and to multiple non-sovereign departments and territories throughout the former French empire. Of course, one
can claim that embattled Algerians (along with impoverished Haitians), enjoy a national dignity that Tahitians and Martinicans lack. Dignity, however, is even more
difficult to quantify than democracy. It is not, in any event, a value that outsiders can
prioritize for indigenes.
In an era of “régime change” and “guided democracy,” earlier taboos against violation of national sovereignty are falling fast. Illiberal democracy and economic underdevelopment may very well force democratizers to revisit questions of decolonization
that history had supposedly put to rest. Especially when pressures of globalization
diminish the pretense of sovereignty, France’s DOM-TOM represent a longstanding
challenge to traditional notions of democracy and independence.
Advocates of political freedom must either confront the undemocratic nature of
the DOM-TOM and confront France on the issue; or accept that democracy without
sovereignty is acceptable, and extend the principle elsewhere. In either case, DOMTOM reality forces us to rethink the conventional wisdom linking democracy to sovereignty in the developing world. WA
N OTES
1. In contrast, inhabitants of British overseas territories and crown colonies do not elect representatives
to parliament. Nor do they have unfettered rights of migration to the British metropole.
2. With respect to the French Caribbean, see William F.S. Miles, “Fifty Years of Assimilation: Assessing
France’s Experience of Caribbean Decolonization through Administrative Reform,” in A.G. Ramos and
A.I. Rivera, Islands at the Crossroads: Politics in the Non-Independent Caribbean (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 2001).
3. Frantz Fanon, Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952).
4. Robert Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1994; Robert Kaplan, The Ends
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WILLIAM F. S. MILES
of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century (New York: Random House, 1996); See also Robert
Kaplan, “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” Atlantic Monthly, December 1997.
5. See Frantz Fanon, Pour la Revolution Africaine (Paris: François Maspero, 1964).
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