1.) What is the effect of this system regarding minorities? France has a minority of about 15% North Africans, mostly from Algeria, if I understand correctly. Are they proportionally represented in Parliament? Tje American system is poor in this regard, due to lack of proportional representation.
2.) How do you deal with the difference between the urban viewpoint and the rural viewpoint? In the US we have two houses of government specifically to address that issue, as you know, a Senate representing each district or state equally, and a House representing districs or states based on population. This compromise has worked pretty well; do you have a scheme that approximates it?
(It is interesting to watch the convoluted development history of the EU voting scheme as it attempts to deal with exactly the same problem. I often wonder why the EU doesn't simply set up two houses of government...)
I had the exact same wondering...seems like if the EU had something like the American House of Representatives, the sense of being left out of the loop by the people towards the political elite, might be taqken care of...they would have a voice. "Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
2)The French Senate is rather similar to the American. (Senators represent départements). So much so that it is jokingly called the "Chamber of Agriculture."
Minorities are not well represented in Parliament. There have been recent efforts to bring in minorities in government, and there is a growing awareness of the issue, but it is changing slowly (but then women are also woefully under-represented, despite specific laws to improve that).
But they will integrate, just like the Poles and Italians and Portugues did in previous generations (there was the EXACT same discourse about the Poles at the beginning of the 20th century than you have now about Muslims - they are too religious, they are too different, they don't want to integrate, etc...)
2) The rural viewpoint is OVER represented in France, with the Senate as stated above, and through the nostaligia of the age not so long ago (a generation or so) when more people lived in the countryside than in the cities. So everybody still has grandparents or great uncles in the country side and feel that that's their real "home" -thus also the French's irrational attahcment to the CAP, of which they have a romanticized view) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
