Cesare Mattina, Nicolas Maisetti - Marseille: collapse or resistance of the Defferrist system?

While it opens up new prospects in terms of alliances between social groups, the new municipality led by Michèle Rubirola remains an island of the left within a local government dominated by the right, with its roots in fragile working-class neighbourhoods.

Tribune. Michèle Rubirola, head of the list of the Printemps marseillais (a composite of left-wing and ecologist parties as well as community and civil society leaders) was elected mayor of Marseille last Saturday after twenty-five years of Jean-Claude Gaudin and the right-wing ruling Marseille. What does this victory - achieved thanks to the "third round" rallying of dissident PS senator Samia Ghali - reveal about the configuration of local power and the future of the Defferrist political system and its "third round" rallying of dissident PS senator Samia Ghali? "historic social bloc (to put it in the words of Antonio Gramsci) extended by Jean-Claude Gaudin?
Since the election of Gaston Defferre in 1953, this historic social bloc had represented an alliance between the bourgeoisie of the liberal professions in the southern districts, the middle classes of shopkeepers and craftsmen, and a section of the working classes recruited en masse from the local authorities via clientelist circuits. It was thus based on the exclusion of the northern districts (15th-16th and 13th-14th arrondissements) from municipal government. With the exception of the period between 1983 and 1995, these areas have always been run by opponents of the mayor (initially Communists, then Socialists since the Gaudin years, and even Rassemblement National between 2014 and 2020 in the 13-14th). This has had a lot to do with the abandonment of these areas by municipal public action: deindustrialisation with no alternative; inadequate transport; loss of social links between council housing estates, suburban neighbourhoods and village centres; deterioration of municipal public services and facilities (schools, swimming pools, libraries); ethno-territorial stigmatisation, etc.

Link with northern neighbourhoods
The very low turnout in these municipal elections (32.8% in the first round and 35.4% in the second) means that the analysis should be cautious. However, the electoral sociology of Printemps and the support of Samia Ghali could indicate a recomposition of alliances between social groups in the city. Le Printemps won in so-called upper-middle-class arrondissements (6-8, the historic stronghold of the Gaudinist right, and the 7th arrondissement), middle-class and lower-middle-class arrondissements (4-5) and mixed arrondissements (2-3 and the 1st arrondissement). On the other hand, Printemps marseillais failed to win in arrondissements with a predominantly working-class population, in the 13-14 arrondissement (where it withdrew between the two rounds) and in the 15-16 arrondissement (where Samia Ghali won despite remaining in the race).
Le Printemps marseillais, the embodiment of the left in this election, did not really succeed in gaining a foothold in historically communist or socialist sectors. The lack of links with the working classes in the northern neighbourhoods had been pointed out by observers and representatives of the voluntary sector. They criticised Printemps for the weight of representatives of the "old" parties, to the detriment of representatives of civil society (particularly those involved in the fight against substandard housing following the collapses in the rue d'Aubagne); the lack of candidates from "diverse" backgrounds; and the tiny presence of candidates from the working classes (far fewer than in the lists of Samia Ghali or the RN). The "third round" alliance with Samia Ghali - who has had a strong presence in these working-class neighbourhoods since 2001 - therefore enabled the PM to make up in part for this lack of representativeness among the working classes. It also creates unprecedented conditions for alliances between sectors of the intellectual middle classes with high educational qualifications and sections of the working classes.

Fallback bastions
With such a low turnout and such a narrow victory, it would nevertheless be imprudent to conclude that there has been a radical change in the system of power in Marseille. Particularly as the right, a pillar of this system for the last twenty-five years, retains powerful bastions of retreat. Firstly, it is maintaining its positions in two key areas covering the east of the city (9-10 and 11-12). Above all, she will be able to count on the metropolitan authority, at the head of which Martine Vassal, despite her defeat in the supposedly unassailable arrondissements where she was running (6-8) and on a city-wide scale, was comfortably re-elected on Thursday. She was able to count on a majority from the last municipal elections and on the support of many mayors, whose support she was able to remind of the policy of support for local authorities that she has implemented by combining this role with that of president of the departmental council.
This inter-municipal level is now predominant in the implementation of territorial public action. Transport, public housing, planning, economic development... are more than ever the responsibility of the metropolis. As a result, the new municipal authority remains an island of left-wing power in a sea of right-wing institutions: the metropolis, the département, the communes of the metropolitan area, and also the region, headed by Renaud Muselier.
Added to this are two unknowns who represented the pillars of Jean-Claude Gaudin's management: the local employers, who made no secret of their support for Martine Vassal during the campaign, and above all the majority union Force Ouvrière, a staunch ally of the municipal government that survived the post-Defferriste transition. From this point of view as from another, it is not certain that the victory of the Printemps marseillais, while opening up prospects in terms of alliances between social groups, will succeed in shaking up the cultural hegemony that has dominated the city for more than half a century.

Cesare Mattina sociologist (AMU, LAMES)Nicolas Maisetti, political scientist (UGE, LATTS)