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CIAO DATE: 10/06
Surveiller et faire élire : surveillance politique et pratiques de la « candidature officielle » sous la restauration
Christophe Voilliot
No. 53 - Spring 2004 - Cross Perspectives On Political Surveillance
Abstract
Elections are generally analysed as an exercise in political autonomy of the individual. In this sense, political surveillance might seem as contradicting any electoral process. However, this article argues that through the analysis of activities of surveillance of practices of “official candidacy” in the French elections of the 1830s, it is possible to define more concretely what “political surveillance” is. Indeed, these practices of surveillance illustrate how the state tries to control and discipline the free will of the people and thus to define a specifically political surveillance that can be distinguished from other forms of control. The author insists on the fact that these practices of surveillance however rapidly become practices of promotion of the “official candidates” supported by the state.