research engineer, Stéphanie Abrial

Chloé Alexandre

Camille Bedock

Frédéric Gonthier
email: frederic.gonthier@iepg.fr

Tristan Guerra

Punish or partake? The Yellow Vests' democratic aspirations through mixed methods analysis

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

The Yellow Vests movement (hereinafter referred to as YV) has taken aback all political commentators -pundits and academics alike-when it first arose in November 2018. Rarely in recent years has a movement sparked so much debate on the background of its supporters, their main claims and expectations. The movement started as a reaction against a fuel tax and initially revolved around purchasing power issues [START_REF] Paugam | Face au mépris social, la revanche des invisibles[END_REF][START_REF] Spire | Reformuler la question sociale[END_REF], with a spontaneity that made it "elusive" for many (Le Bart, 2020, p. 9). It mostly brought together members of the working class and lower-middle class, unified by a common experience of social insecurity and rejection of party politics [START_REF] Guerra | Populist Attitudes among the French Yellow Vests[END_REF]). Yet democratic aspirations in general and the "RIC" in particular (référendum d'initiative citoyenne, citizen-initiated referendum) quickly made their way through the demands of the Yellow Vests and became increasingly central over time (Collectif d'enquête sur les Gilets Jaunes, 2019). This resulted in conflicting narratives about the democratic preferences of the YV. Among the mainstream media, political pundits and part of the academic world, many were impressed by their harsh criticism of elected representatives, the centrality of the RIC motto and the strong antielite/pro-people component of the movement. This led them to view the movement as promoting a sort of permanent direct democracy which would replace traditional forms of political representation [START_REF] Grunberg | Les « gilets jaunes » et la crise de la démocratie représentative[END_REF][START_REF] Lefebvre | Les Gilets jaunes et les exigences de la représentation politique[END_REF][START_REF] Marlière | Les 'gilets jaunes' ou le discredit de la démocratie repréentative[END_REF][START_REF] Rouban | La matière noire de la démocratie[END_REF]. Taking the complete opposite view, others saw in its horizontal organization and its citizens' assemblies the seeds of a "municipalist" and citizen-centered vision of politics based on the local level and on selfgovernment [START_REF] Hayat | Les Gilets jaunes et la question démocratique[END_REF][START_REF] Jeanpierre | Girum. Les leçons politiques des ronds-points[END_REF][START_REF] Ravelli | Le Gilet et le Marteau. L'assemblée des assemblées organise l'aile gauche des ronds-points[END_REF]. Some have nonetheless tried to reconcile the two competing perspectives by arguing that despite very strong criticisms of elected representatives and political organizations, the YV actually do not demand the abolition of traditional political representation, but rather its refoundation around three principles: the control of representatives, attentiveness to citizens' claims, and geographical and statutory proximity of elected representatives [START_REF] Bedock | Une représentation sous contrôle : visions du système politique et réformes institutionnelles dans le mouvement des Gilets jaunes[END_REF]. Even though all these views concur on the fact that the YV support some form of deepening of citizen participation, and thus the implementation of democratic innovations, they differ on how to interpret the changes being advocated. In this regard, media and academic analyses largely echo the divides within the YV movement, which gathers activists with very different levels of politicization and diverse political values.

Democratic innovations can be defined as "institutions that have been specifically designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process" (Smith, 2009, p. 1). Some of them, such as referendums or recalls, rely on direct democracy. Others, such as minipublics, participatory budgeting, or even the replacement of elected representatives by citizens drawn by lot, are based on a participatory and deliberative vision of democracy. Others still, such as citizens' initiative, rely on both (Geissel and Newton, 2012). Which type of innovation do the YV actually prefer? To what extent do the drivers of such democratic preferences differ among YV protesters as well as between the YV and the general population? How do their preferences inform us about the nature of this atypical social movement? Do the YV all advocate for the same democratic innovations, and if not, how do their political background and values influence their aspirations and discourses on democracy?

In this article, we investigate the relationship of the YV to representative democracy and democratic innovations, with a particular interest in the influence of politicization and political values on their democratic preferences. Previous research has stressed the difficulty to grasp democratic preferences with the sole use of survey data and quantitative analysis, due to the inherent complexity of this topic [START_REF] Bengtsson | Citizens' perceptions of political processes. A critical evaluation of preference consistency and survey items[END_REF]. Additionally, some scholars have called for methodological approaches giving citizens "the opportunity to speak or write freely about formal politics without being guided by tightly worded survey instruments" (Clarke et al., 2018, p. 179).

The combination of quantitative and qualitative data (Bedock and Pilet, 2020a) and the inductive use of survey data [START_REF] Pilet | Do Citizens Perceive Elected Politicians, Experts and Citizens as Alternative or Complementary Policy-Makers? A Study of Belgian Citizens[END_REF] are gateways to understanding how competing models of democracy can arise and coexist.

We draw on three complementary data sources. First, to put the preferences of the YV in perspective with those of the French population, we make use of two mirror surveys: the Populism in Europe Survey (hereinafter referred to as PopEuropa) conducted in April 2019 among a national representative sample of 1313 French respondents, which is compared to a convenience sample of 1910 Yellow Vests interviewed between September and December 2019 (Yellow Vest Values Survey, hereinafter YVVS). The third section uses this material to analyze the influence of voting -as a proxy for political values-and populism on preferences for participation and control-centered democratic innovations, as well as to investigate the differences between YV participants and their French counterparts. Additional data sources are used in the two following sections to corroborate and enhance quantitative insights. We delve, in particular, into how internal political differences within the YV movement translate into competing discourses on elected representatives and democratic institutions. For this purpose, we take advantage of an open-ended question administered in the YVVS survey to perform an inductive quantitative textual analysis and disentangle the varieties of discourses about ordinary citizens, their democratic aspirations and the relationship with the political elites. Finally, we supplement this textual analysis with a qualitative analysis of thirty three in-depth interviews conducted with YV activists in Spring 2019 within the Research Collective on the YV (hereinafter RCYV) so as to better delineate two ideal-typical discourses on political institutions and democracy, Thus, by contrasting and expanding quantitative findings with qualitative results, our methodological approach is based on both triangulation (i.e., convergence and correspondence of quantitative and qualitative results) and complementarity (i.e., clarification and elaboration of quantitative findings with qualitative findings) [START_REF] Creswell | Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research[END_REF][START_REF] Green | Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry[END_REF].

We find strong evidence that the levels of populism and of politicization are key in explaining the preferences for different types of democratic innovations, both within and outside the movement. In particular, quantitative analyses show that the YV are more supportive of democratic innovations that aim at controlling and punishing elected representatives than the French population and that higher level of populism increases support for democratic innovations based on public control rather than on civic participation. Still, whereas voting is associated with large differences in democratic preferences within the general population, the influence of the left-right opposition is less conclusive within the YV.. Quantitative textual analysis and analysis of the indepth interviews allow us to dig further into this issue. They converge to highlight contrasted discourses about democracy within the movement. The first one comes from inexperienced firsttime activists: Concerned about socioeconomic hardship and dissatisfied with the political system, they support democratic innovations aiming at controlling and punishing political elites. The second discourse emanates from more experienced and politicized YV, advocating for democratic innovations enhancing direct citizen participation.

Theoretical framework and hypotheses

Even though the literature specifically focusing on the democratic aspirations of the YV is relatively limited given the recent nature of the movement, there is a fast-developing strand of research on how ordinary citizens view the democratic decision-making process, with an increasing focus on the determinants of support for various democratic innovations, which we draw on to elaborate our hypotheses.

The first key element to bear in mind is the strong level of dissatisfaction, if not resentment towards the democratic system among YV protesters [START_REF] Grossman | France's Yellow Vests -Symptom of a Chronic Disease[END_REF], in a country where citizens are already particularly disgruntled with their democratic institutions. 'Enraged' citizens, i.e. those who are disenchanted with the current functioning of their democracy and institutions, are particularly prone to support various kinds of democratic innovations; namely, the increased use of direct democracy [START_REF] Bowler | Enraged or Engaged? Preferences for Direct Citizen Participation in Affluent Democracies[END_REF][START_REF] Schuck | Public support for referendums in Europe: A crossnational comparison in 21 countries[END_REF][START_REF] Werner | If I'll win it, I want it: The role of instrumental considerations in explaining public support for referendums[END_REF]; consultative and binding mini-publics (Bedock and Pilet, 2020b;[START_REF] Jacquet | Sortition, its advocates and its critics: An empirical analysis of citizens' and MPs' support for random selection as a democratic reform proposal[END_REF] or even the full replacement of elected politicians by citizens drawn by lot (Bedock and Pilet, 2020c). Dissatisfied citizens also support any alternative to traditional representative democracy, enhancing the role of experts, or citizens [START_REF] Bengtsson | Direct Democracy and its Critics: Support for Direct Democracy and 'Stealth' Democracy in Finland[END_REF][START_REF] Webb | Who is willing to participate? Dissatisfied democrats, stealth democrats and populists in the United Kingdom: Who is willing to participate?[END_REF]. Otherwise put, individuals who experience dissatisfaction with the democratic system are prone to support any alternative compared to the status quo.

Yet, throughout the weeks during the YV movement, the idea of the referendum (see. supra.) became central and progressively unified the demands of its participants. Two claims have been at the forefront: the will to take back power from the current political elites and the need to reinstate popular sovereignty. The "RIC" became the most identifiable motto of the movement, and acted as a rallying flag. Discourses on the RIC revolved very much around the necessity to control political representatives [START_REF] Bedock | Une représentation sous contrôle : visions du système politique et réformes institutionnelles dans le mouvement des Gilets jaunes[END_REF]. The participation in the YV movement therefore operates as a politicizing factor for demonstrators, making them more sensitive to certain forms of democratic innovations. Hence our first hypothesis:

H1. Individuals who identify with the Yellow Vests movement and Yellow Vests activists are more prone to support democratic innovations that aim at controlling political representatives than the rest of the population.

Meanwhile, the YV have often been labelled as "populists", mainly due the strong antielite/pro-people component that structures this movement. Populist attitudes are indeed prevalent among YV participants: 63percent of the YV strongly agree that "the people and not political leaders should take the most important decisions for the country", compared to 28percent of the rest of the French population [START_REF] Guerra | Populist Attitudes among the French Yellow Vests[END_REF]. In the literature, populist attitudes are usually associated with stronger preferences for direct democracy [START_REF] Goldberg | Deliberating or Thinking (Twice) About Democratic Preferences: What German Citizens Want From Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Jacobs | The voice of populist people? Referendum preferences, practices and populist attitudes[END_REF][START_REF] Mohrenberg | Love at first sight? Populist attitudes and support for direct democracy[END_REF]. Populism can be understood as an alternative form of representation to party government, founded on a unitary, nonpluralist and unmediated vision of society's general interest based on the putative "will of the people" [START_REF] Caramani | Will vs. Reason: The Populist and Technocratic Forms of Political Representation and Their Critique to Party Government[END_REF]. Populist preferences therefore foster support for innovations allowing to control political leaders to make them more responsive, or even to replace current political elites to make sure that "popular sovereignty" prevails. Simply put, populist attitudes are essentially "people-centered" [START_REF] Mudde | Populism: A Very Short Introduction[END_REF].

H2a. The more individuals hold populist attitudes, the more they are likely to support democratic innovations that aim at controlling or even replacing elected representatives.

H2b. The effect of populism is stronger among Yellow Vests participants than the rest of the French as they are more sensitive to the issue of referenda and popular sovereignty due to the politicizing effect of the movement.

In addition, various studies have evidenced the influence of citizens' political values on democratic preferences. Indeed, political parties develop distinctive discourses on democracy. Leftwing parties, in particular radical left-wing parties with limited access to political power, tend to promote values such as self-determination, independence, participation and individual autonomy.

As a result, they are more supportive of democratic reforms enhancing citizen participation that contribute to an inclusive and egalitarian society (Junius et al., 2020a). Various studies confirm that left-wing representatives -and radical-left representatives in particular -are more prone to advocate for participatory and deliberative democratic innovations than their right-wing counterparts [START_REF] Bol | Electoral reform, values and party self-interest[END_REF][START_REF] Close | Rapport au système représentatif et soutien à la démocratie directe et délibérative. Analyse comparée des attitudes des élus nationaux en Europe[END_REF]Junius et al., 2020b;[START_REF] Núñez | Changing Democracy? Why Inertia Is Winning Over Innovation[END_REF]. Radical right parties also challenge representative democracy, but through a plebiscitary lens which corresponds to their key ideological features (nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, [START_REF] Mudde | Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe[END_REF]. More specifically, the introduction of plebiscitary referendums to bypass current political elites and institutional counter-powers constitutes the cornerstone of their democratic reform proposals [START_REF] Best | Democracy Reform as a Populist Policy Supply[END_REF][START_REF] Lisi | Saving representative democracies? Institutional reforms and populist agenda[END_REF]. Consequently, radical right representatives are more prone to support plebiscitary and anti-elitist direct democratic tools (Junius et al., 2020a;[START_REF] Núñez | Changing Democracy? Why Inertia Is Winning Over Innovation[END_REF].

Elite preferences are mirrored by their voters: radical left and radical right voters have been found to be more critical towards the functioning of representative democracy [START_REF] Hernández | Democratic discontent and support for mainstream and challenger parties: Democratic protest voting[END_REF] and score higher on referendum support than moderate voters, with radical right voters scoring the highest, but with specific motivations: anti-elitism for radical-right voters, and power redistribution for radical-left voters [START_REF] Rojon | Are radical right and radical left voters direct democrats? Explaining differences in referendum support between radical and moderate voters in Europe[END_REF]. As the YV are very heterogeneous in terms of political attitudes and behaviors, we expect that such differences will be further reflected in their democratic preferences. Finally, the YV movement has been tricky to understand as it was bringing together individuals with various ideological backgrounds and very heterogeneous levels of politicization.

First-time protesters with a very remote relationship to politics rubbed shoulders with particularly experienced activists who progressively managed to impose their codes within the movement (Collectif d'enquête sur les Gilets Jaunes, 2019; [START_REF] Reungoat | Becoming Yellow Vests: The Politicization of Ordinary Citizens (France 2018-20[END_REF]. Usually "apathetic" citizens therefore mobilized together with individuals who already had a strong experience of protest politics and a left-leaning background. For the latter, their level of politicization and their experience of collective action in various contexts makes them more likely to support participatory and deliberative mechanisms, because they are used to -and keen on-taking part in complex, cognitively demanding and time-consuming collective mobilizations involving debates and compromises [START_REF] Ravelli | Le Gilet et le Marteau. L'assemblée des assemblées organise l'aile gauche des ronds-points[END_REF]. Experienced activists are also probably more aware of the plurality of preferences within the population and of the current functioning of French institutions. By contrast, those who are protesting for the first time are less acquainted with how political life works, and considering their distant history with politics [START_REF] Reungoat | Becoming Yellow Vests: The Politicization of Ordinary Citizens (France 2018-20[END_REF], they should support democratic innovations that do not involve intense citizen participation, but rather allow to control decisions and punish political representatives [START_REF] Bedock | Une représentation sous contrôle : visions du système politique et réformes institutionnelles dans le mouvement des Gilets jaunes[END_REF].

H4. First-time activists are more prone to support democratic innovations that aim at controlling political representatives whereas experienced activists are more prone to support participatory and deliberative mechanisms.

Comparing the Yellow Vests and the French population. Between and within variations in democratic preferences

In this section, we draw primarily on quantitative statistical data from PopEuropa and YVVS surveys to compare the YV' democratic preferences to the rest of the French population. PopEuropa quantitative data were collected online through a national representative sample of 1313 French in April 2019. 59 percent of the sample supports the YV movement, whereas 13 percent have taken part in a YV protest action -which complies with statistics provided by polling agencies [START_REF] Hoibian | Le mouvement des Gilets jaunes ou les limites d'un modèle de société[END_REF][START_REF] Moati | Qui sont les 'gilets jaunes[END_REF]. YVVS data are made up with a sample of 1910 YV protesters, recruited through the 250 most active Facebook groups at the national and local levels between September and December 20191 . Most of them (76 percent) support the movement and participated in a protest action. 24 percent are supporters of the movement but not activists.

In addition to the same set of behavioral and attitudinal variables (further detailed in Appendix A), the questionnaires of the two surveys included an identically-worded item tapping support for democratic innovations. Respondents were first presented with a randomized list of "reform proposals on the way to make political decisions" they could be supportive of. Then they were asked to choose up to two of the following six innovations: recall referendum, legislative referendum, sortition, public consultation, citizen initiative (i.e., "enable civil society associations to make law proposals and referendum proposals"), or municipalist initiative (i.e., "shift power to localities where constituents could debate and organize themselves") 2 .

The six items mirrored in the two quantitative studies allow to cross check democratic preferences and investigate whether certain types of democratic reforms are more popular among the YV activists and supporters than in the general public. Figure 1 displays the percentage of respondents who support or do not support each proposed democratic innovation across the two samples. As expected, we find that the YV (right panel) are more supportive of democratic reforms that aim at controlling and punishing elected representatives. 49 percent choose the legislative referendum and 45 percent the recall referendum, compared to 36 percent in the French population (left panel) (H1).

Conversely, democratic innovations that are more resource-demanding for ordinary citizens (i.e., public consultations, citizen initiative and municipalist initiative) are half as popular among the YV than in the general public. This is particularly true of citizen initiative that is supported by less than one YV in ten. Opinion gaps are less clear-cut with sortition, which is as likely to be chosen by the YV than by the French population (17 v. 16 percent). Descriptive results thus lend some first empirical credence to the hypothesis that in combining popular sovereignty, direct democracy and democratic control -as illustrated in the famous motto "RIC en toutes matières"-, the collective action frame from the YV movement echoes the democratic preferences of its sympathizers.

Figure 1. Support for democratic innovations among the French population and the Yellow Vests Note: Entries display the percentage of respondents selecting (or not) a democratic reform among the French population (left panel -results weighted by sex, age and education) and among the YV movement (right panel)

To be sure and better account for the direction of the causality (from protesters to the YV movement v. the other way around), we performed binomial logistic regressions comparing the probability of supporting each democratic innovation, depending on the level of commitment to the movement. Models control for usual sociodemographics, as well as for confounding political factors (i.e., political interest and support for redistribution) that may also influence democratic preferences (see Appendix B for detailed results). Predicted probabilities plotted in Figure 2 (left panel) confirm that those French who take side with the YV movement are significantly more inclined to support a repertoire of democratic innovations based on public control than the rest of the population. More specifically, in the general public, sympathizing with the YV increases the probabilities of supporting recall referendum, legislative referendum and sortition by 75 percent (1.75; p<0.01), 60 percent (1.59; p<0.01) and 57 percent (1.57; p<0.05), respectively3 . Within the YV movement (Figure 2, right panel), with the exception of public consultation that is more supported by the most active YV (1.61; p<0.05), all YV -whether active and only supportive-turn out to share the same level of support for democratic reforms. Altogether, our findings suggest that what matters most for democratic preferences is whether the French support or oppose the YV movement than the intensity of their commitment when they are sympathizers.

We come back to this argument in the following sections, using qualitative data to highlight that the framing effect of the YV movement nonetheless operates through the way core protesters and remote supporters differentially reflect on their relationship to democratic institutions.

Figure 2. Effect of commitment to the YV on support for democratic innovations among the French population and the Yellow Vests Note: Entries are predicted probabilities (odds ratio) from two sets of six binary logistic regressions estimating variations in support for democratic references between YV supporters and non-supporters among the French (left panel), as well as between active and supportive YV within the movement (right panel), with 95 percent confidence intervals. Models adjust for sociodemographics and political characteristics.

Next, we addressed our second and third hypotheses by adding populist attitudes and voting -as a proxy for political values-in the logistic regressions. Results for the general population are displayed in the left panel of Figure 3 (full models are presented in Appendix B). They substantiate the notion that populist citizens, whether or not YV, are more prone to favor democratic innovations based on public control than on civic participation (H2a). In particular, a one standard deviation increase in populism amplifies the probability of supporting recall referendum by almost 40 percent (1.39; p<0.01). The impact of populism is of 41 percent on legislative referendum (1.41; p<0.01) and of 21 percent on sortition (1.21; p<0.05).

The right panel of Figure 3 shows more limited differences within the YV movement. Sortition is all the more popular since the YV endorse a populist mindset (1.9; p<0.01). Yet the most populist YV are not more supportive of recall and legislative referenda. This could be explained by the fact that most of the YV have greater and more homogeneous populist scores than the general public (mean=0.88; sd=0.13 v. mean=0.66; sd=0.19), which mechanically results in moderate statistical variations. All in all, we find only limited support for the hypothesis that populism and protest activism add up to maximize preferences for reforms that ensure strict control and punishment of elected officials (H2b).

Turning to the vote in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, models demonstrate that among the French, whether or not YV, radical right voters are significantly more in favor of democratic reforms revolving around popular plebiscite than their center counterparts, even when populist attitudes are controlled for. This is the case with both recall (1.63; p<0.05) and legislative referenda (2.14; p<0.01). Conversely, radical right voters are the least likely to support democratic reforms that involve more citizen participation, such as citizen initiative (0.51; p<0.05) (Figure 3, left panel). Still, the effect of voting for the radical right seems to wear off among the YV, as it is only significantly positive with support for the recall referendum (2.92; p<0.05) (Figure 3, right panel)4 .

In tune with what was anticipated, radical left voters are found to be more supportive of legislative referendum (1.66; p<0.05) in the French population. However, contrary to our expectations, they are not more supportive of participatory and deliberative innovations 5 . Once again, the effect of the political values, as captured by the voting proxy variable, wears off among the YV. All in all, findings are consistent with the hypothesis that radical right voters have a strong preference for plebiscitary mechanisms (H3a), but they provide more limited evidence of a direct relation between radical left voting and inclusive democratic reforms (H3b). In addition, the effect of voting preferences which is notable within the French population does not seem to be as influential among the YV.

To sum up, quantitative results demonstrate that as far as democratic aspirations are concerned, variations between the YV and their French counterparts are way greater than variations within the YV movement. Typically, both the level of populism and voting preferences turn out to be way less influential among the YV than within the French population, which suggests that despite large differences in political values and voting behaviors, the YV are quite homogeneous with regards to their democratic preferences. In the next section, we take advantage of qualitative data also collected in the YVVS to make sense of how internal political differences within the YV movement shape competing views about democracy and representation issues. Thus, following triangulation and complementarity principles, we aim at corroborating our quantitative results with qualitative findings but also seek a finer-grained qualitative description of the underlying process. Most notably, we shed light on the role of politicization whose influence is not that straightforward when looking at the YV only through a quantitative lens6 .

Discourses about the people and democratic aspirations among the Yellow

Vest: a textual analysis

To address the reasoning of YV protesters on democratic innovations, and to pursue an approach that values triangulation and complementarity of data sources, we analyzed a corpus of 1262 GJ responses to an open-ended question asked in the fall of 2019 within the YVVS. The wording of this question was intentionally simple and explicit: "What do you think of the Yellow Vest movement?".

Using the IRaMuTeQ software -a textual statistics tool based on the R environment-, we worked on a principle of counting, enumerating occurrences, and classifying lexical forms present in the corpus in order to highlight its specific semantic structures. We then used the classification method described by [START_REF] Reinert | Une méthode de classification descendante hiérarchique : application à l'analyse lexical par contexte[END_REF][START_REF] Reinert | Alceste une méthodologie d'analyse des données textuelles et une application: Aurelia De Gerard De Nerval[END_REF] to classify the YVs responses in distinctive groups. Specifically, we made use of the Reinert textual clustering method to operate as a divisive hierarchical clustering algorithm whose aim is to maximize the inter-cluster Chi-squared distance (see Appendix C for a presentation of the algorithm). The respondents' preferences in terms of democratic innovations, as well as other characteristics related to their social and political backgrounds, employed in the quantitative analysis presented above, are introduced as auxiliary variables to help qualifying the class obtained, and ultimately to verify our hypotheses (see Appendix D for an exhaustive overview of auxiliary variables).

To value the singularity of each answer, we chose to make a simple classification on text, fixing a maximum number of classes at 13. This method proved to be relevant as it allowed us to classify about 96percent of the texts in the corpus in three different classes. Our results highlight two large distinctive discourses that cut across the YV movement (as can be seen on the cutree in Figure 1). First, we found a set of discourses structured by the social concerns of the respondents, through the evocation of their lack of material security and the financial difficulties they face in their daily life (Class 1). Second, another collection of texts gathers the very protest experience induced by the mobilization, as well as the political values they attribute to the social movement (Classes 2 and 3). Indeed, the first class is opposed to the latter two on the first horizontal axis, deriving from the correspondence analysis on which the clustering algorithm is performed (Figure 1, bottom panel).

In the subsequent analysis, we present the universes of discourse identified by the clustering method. To answer our research hypotheses in a more formal way, we inductively use the content of the most representative verbatims associated with each class, but also regarding the democratic and political preferences indicators significantly associated with a class7 .

Figure 4. Cutree and most specific terms of the 3-classes clustering (top panel) and 2-dimensional representation of the correspondence analysis (bottom panel)

Struggling to make ends meet, blaming the elites

The first class (class 1, red, 33percent of the classified texts) clearly brings together texts centered upon the social difficulties respondents face in their everyday life: paying bills, taking care of children, being able to take care of oneself, housing issues, living decently, having access to some leisure activities, are all unbearable realities from which the arguments for commitment to the YV movement are crystallized. Their support for the YV is built upon the evocation of a feeling of deep injustice and a great anger towards political elites who are considered as "privileged" and "corrupted". There is almost no mention in this class of the deliberative aspect of democracy, or of possible alternative mechanisms of collective improvement of its functioning. The respondents are under such social difficulties that they do not spontaneously place alternative democratic mechanisms at the center of their discourse. Rather, they focus on denouncing social injustices with anger. However, the texts often emphasize the need to hold political leaders accountable for the harshness of their life, thus corroborating H1. Among the most contributing texts of this class, we find many statements that combine a set of three distinct elements: a raw denunciation of social reality, the attribution of a very strong responsibility to political leaders, and thus a need to blame them:

« Aujourd'hui pour la majorité des gents ont se prive de tout ont vie pour payer son loyer ces facture sa bouffe et a la fin du mois quand ont a de la chance il nous reste 50 euros pour se faire plaisirs (…) aujourd'hui prés de 1 ans plus tard les choses ont changer j ai compris que le problème été plus grave que ça ce n est pas un mauvais calcule mais une volonté politique que de mètre a genoux les plus pauvres et de tout faire pour eviter qu il ne puissent se relevé et le gouvernement ne se cache plus ont est entrée dans une période noir régie par l argent la corruption de despotisme la liberté a été perdu car la violence policière crée la violence citoyenne »8 « le peuple en a marre de ne plus avoir d'argent en fin_du_mois alors que nos dirigeant vivent dans le luxe pour eux pas de problème de retraite et plein d'autres chose c fini le peuple se défend on a essayé sans violence mais personne écoute le peuple alors ça pète »9 « Marre de ce système 2 poids de mesures qui détruit et broie tout aveuglement le gouvernement n'est qu'une mascarade de pantins corrompus vendus pourris jusqu'à l'os nous sommes formatés dès l'enfance à devenir bon esclave les gains indécents de ces milliardaires sont à gerber marre de ces hold-up par les cols blancs en toute impunité »10

The verb "to live" is particularly evocative of this universe of discourse, as it refers more to a situation of "survival" than general life aspirations or constructed values. The fact of getting involved in the YV movement, of supporting it or feeling close to it, thus seems to be more a reaction to one's life situation. Besides, and quite unsurprisingly, this class has a strong populist appeal, in the sense that the YVs mobilize here a full-fledged anti-elitist discourse (anti-elitism being one of the three subdimensions of populist beliefs [START_REF] Wuttke | When the Whole Is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: On the Conceptualization and Measurement of Populist Attitudes and Other Multidimensional Constructs[END_REF]).

In fact, we note that what also characterizes this class is the low politicization of its respondents. YV categorized in this group are more often women than men (p < .05), have a lower level of educational attainment (p < .001), have not been involved in other movements (p < .001). Consequently, they are not very familiar with politics and describe themselves as not interested in politics (p < .01). When they do vote, they tend to support the radical right (p < .001). The YV in this class are more in favor of the recall referendum more than others (p < .05), and do not seem to express a preference for more participatory mechanisms, such as municipal initiative (p < .05) or the citizens' initiative (p < .05). Their preferences for democratic innovations provide additional confirmation of our hypothesis (H4) about the support of the less politicized YVs for the idea of dismissal and punishment of elected officials and political elites, rather than a more direct democracy.

Deepening democracy by supporting innovations enhancing citizen participation

Beyond the first class described above, we can observe that there is another one that mobilizes more direct references to the YV movement and the protest experience. This lexical register is internally separated into two subgroups: one, referring to the evocation of actions and claims (class 2), the other echoes the values, grievances, and core principles of the YVs. The theme of democratic innovations is much more present in this last bag of texts (class 3).

The former (class 2, green, 33percent of the classified texts) is built on the answers favoring the arguments and the claims that characterize the support to the movement. It gives an account of the experience of the respondents within the movement. They mention quite a lot of reasons for the mobilization and reveal the circumstances of their experience. It is a textual class that values the emotions and feelings, while reflecting on their commitment to the movement. At the top of this classification are terms like "demands", "never give up", "support", "movement". And this is what it is all about: staying mobilized, collectively pursuing the actions. The movement is seen as a struggle that comes from below, from "the people", and that intends to make the government bend to give citizens the possibility to seize their decision-making power. It is indeed the idea to act so that the citizens find their place in the democratic arena that is achievable through enduring protest actions. This universe of discourse is then based on two feelings expressed precisely in connection with the way of conceiving the relationship to democracy: legitimacy and anger. Legitimacy relies on the citizens who are the bearers and actors of claims to be defended. Anger is also that of citizens facing the contempt of the governments who forget them and do not involve them in anything when it comes to deciding. By contrast, this kind of anger is not the same as that of those who suffer from their socio-economic conditions (class 1). It is based here on the strong feeling of the confiscation of political power by the rulers. These respondents are primarily disappointed and left-behind citizens.

« J'attends cela depuis 40 ans les raisons de la colère sont légitimes la population est méprisée par des politiques qui confisquent le droit de chacun à participer à l'élaboration de la gestion de notre pays le gouvernement ne comprend pas ou ne veut pas comprendre les racines du malaise ses réponses sont obsolètes le gouvernement est aveugle aux changements profonds qui se préparent déjà dans le monde je soutiens parce que je suis persuadé du bien fondé de ce mouvement » 11 « Mouvement légitime et qui pour moi est issu en majorité des déçus de la politique donc du bon tiers de votants qui se sont abstenus ou voté blanc comme moi pour la première fois de ma vie ma santé ne me permet plus comme en 1995 d être dans la rue mais je soutiens leurs revendications » 12 We find that the YV classified in this group have an intermediate level of education (p < .01) and are overrepresented in small towns (p < .001). They are particularly committed to the movement, as we found more activists in this group (p < .001). Therefore, they overreport their grassroots experience and testify to their commitment in movement. Of special interest for us, this class is not distinguishable in terms of specific democratic preferences.

Finally, the third group (class 3, blue, 34percent of the classified texts) is the one that explicitly refers to the universe of values at the core of the YVs grievances: democracy, solidarity, fraternity, citizenship, and social justice. These values constitute the very foundations of their relationship to democracy and show that in terms of democratic innovations, these respondents are clearly advocating for the improvement of the degree of direct citizen participation in an all-new institutional setting. It comes as no surprise that democracy is the most representative term associated with this class (p < .001). Many respondents in this class say that France is not -or no longer -a democracy, precisely because the features of representative democracy and the institutional setting in the country mismatch their orientations toward more direct democratic preferences. The most significant verbatims make the link between the engagement within the movement and a support to a more direct, local, solidary, and fraternal functioning of democracy: « Mouvement enthousiaste hétéroclite souhaitant un changement radical de société une démocratie directe ancré localement partout en France et donc à l'image des gens qui le compose localement » 13 « Favorable au mouvement il faut aller vers plus de démocratie le ric me paraît être l'avenir les réponses du gouvernement montrent leur totale incompréhension de ce que vivent les français » 14 « Grande solidarité entre les gilet jaune on voit que la solidarité entre les citoyens mobilisés existent on demande le ric pour que la démocratie reprenne sa place dans le pays des droits de l'homme nous partons dans une dérive totalitaire et seul le peuple uni pourra vaincre ce fléau le gouvernement ne propose rien si ce n'est amplifier les inégalités » 15 « Le mouvement des gilet jaune pose les questions essentielles d'une société et d'un pays telles que la justice sociale fiscale l'égalité des droits de la justice la démocratie participative la solidarité la fraternité l'empathie la problématique d'une oligarchie méprisante et décomplexée » 16

« Je participe au mouvement nous ne arrêterons plus tant qu'on ne reviendra pas à une vraie démocratie participative et l'application du ric » 17 « Mouvement historique qui a fait vaciller le mouvement qui prône une justice sociale et justice fiscale une meilleure répartition des richesses qui réclame le droit de vivre dignement du fruit de son travail une démocratie plus participative » 18We notice two important characteristics of both form and content that are very specific to this group of responses. On the one hand, the respondents' remarks are expressed in a particularly constructed style, written, with a rather precise and rather rich vocabulary. In parallel, we observe that some respondents wrote long developments and expressed a wellconstructed thought. On the other hand, one of the recurrent themes associated with this class is a specific democratic innovation, namely the Citizen Initiative Referendum (CIR, or "RIC" in French). Indeed, the CIR is presented as a credible alternative to the current functioning of representative democracy in France: a mechanism of citizen involvement that allows "real" democracy to function. The answers containing the term CIR are primarily associated with this group. YV in this group hold political and general reflections on the relationship of citizens to institutions and rulers. The fact that this class is marked by substantiated reflections on democracy is undoubtedly linked to the social and political profile of the respondents overrepresented in this group. Indeed, protesters in this cluster are more often male (p < .001) and they are more politicized. They are very interested in politics (p < .001) and tend to vote for the radical left (p < .001). They are not first-time protesters (p < .001), which means that they took part in other social mobilization in the past. They live more than others in large cities (p < .05) and are overrepresented among the YV with a university background (p < .05). It is worth noting that they encounter fewer professional difficulties since they are employed (p < .05). Concerning their preferences on democracy, and in line with hypothesis H3b, they prefer direct democracy mechanisms that strengthen direct citizen participation, such as sortition (p < .01) or municipalist initiatives (p < .01). In contrast to the first class, they are less likely to choose the recall referendum (p < .01). They are not in search of punishment of political elites but supporting a greater involvement of citizens in the actual decision-making process. Therefore, the CIR is positively associated with this class (p < .001). Moreover, the word is very often employed by these protesters and, consequently, the term is associated with this class of discourse (p < .001), similarly to "direct" (p < .001), which reflects this interest in direct democracy itself. This vocabulary emerged from respondents with a high level of political sophistication and some knowledge of direct popular participation mechanisms that can be implemented. At last, in terms of populist appeal, the YV in class 3 hold another side of populist beliefs: they emphasize people-centrism/popular sovereignty while YVs in class 1 hold more common anti-elitist attitudes (belief in unrestricted popular sovereignty is another crucial facet of populist attitudes [START_REF] Wuttke | When the Whole Is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: On the Conceptualization and Measurement of Populist Attitudes and Other Multidimensional Constructs[END_REF]). Even if, similarly to class 1, they share a conflicting relationship with political elites, there orientations toward popular sovereignty are much more pronounced.

Overall, the classification of the responses to our open-ended question shed light on an internal divide in the values and arguments mobilized by the YVs to explain their support for the movement. Our analysis reveals two main discourses about democratic aspirations among protesters (H4). The first discourse supports sanction and control over political leaders and is mainly carried by first-time YVs activists who are facing economic and social difficulties.

Another discourse is more popular among highly educated, experienced and politicized protesters who support democratic innovations with a strong emphasis on direct citizen participation. Both discourses highlight different facets of populist beliefs, which are quite widespread among the YV. While the former carries very strong anti-elitist attitudes, the latter conveys a desire for unrestricted popular sovereignty. Reflecting their democratic preferences, the YVs seem to distinguish themselves less on their absolute level of populism, but rather on the internal configuration of their populist mindset in link with their level of politicization. The subtleties of these two cohabiting representations of political institutions and democracy among the YV activists are even better captured from in-depth interviews.

Two cohabiting representations of political institutions among the Yellow

Vests

Despite the fact all YV activists share a large number of views, beginning with the rejection of Macron, globalization and supranational governance, as well as a very critical discourse on French political elites and regime, there are also crucial differences in terms of democratic aspirations. The analysis of semi-directed interviews conducted with participants in the YV movement enables us to inform the results of the previous section and to identify two ideal-typical discourses on political institutions and democracy of YV activists, which in turn explain their different preferences on democratic innovations. It also provides further empirical evidence of the crucial role of politicization to differentiate these two discourses on political institutions (H4).

The first discourse supports political institutions allowing for a better distribution of political power and participation of the citizens. It is typically held by disillusioned left-wing activists who often had open conflicts with their previous organizations and with ample experience of social and political movements prior to the YV. The second ideal-typical discourse insists on the need to install institutions enabling to control and sanction national politicians -the president in particular -and focusing on the economic privileges of the political elites. It is typically held by first-time activists with a precarious economic situation and strong anti-system convictions.

The following findings are based on the inductive coding of thirty three semi-directed interviews conducted mostly in Spring 2019 (see Appendix E on the selection of interviewees and coding process). Focusing in particular on the part of the interview dealing with the conceptions of the political system of YV participants, several themes structure their discourses on political institutions and democratic aspirations: their conception of politics, their process preferences, their vision of political representatives, the definition of the people and the characterization of the French political regime. The following analyses are based on the most frequent codes out of the forty-two that we used to investigate these five themes.

Redistributing power: the discourse of disillusioned left-wing activists

The first ideal-typical discourse gives a central role to inclusiveness and political participation, giving the citizen a central stage in the political system. It is typically held by experienced political activists with a left-wing background, who are used to intensive forms of political participation in various organizations and who found themselves in open conflict with these organizations.

It is first characterized by a particular sensitivity to the issue of political pluralism, considering that although citizens do not all share similar ideas, the YV movement in particular and politics in general should aim at overcoming these different aspirations to act for the common good. This discourse insists on the importance of various types of counterpowers, and considers that one of the main issues of the French political system is the excessive concentration of powers in the hands of a single individual, without any ability for citizens to interfere and participate between elections. For instance, according to François, (male, 62, former manager in civil engineering), "[when you vote] you give a blank check to your president, well to your monarch, to MPs, and then after five years nothing happens, that's quite embarrassing, it would be quite normal for things to be interactive".

The idea that the president is a "monarch" is quite telling, as left-wing leaders have criticized the Fifth Republic on such grounds since its creation in 1958.

The interviewees who are closer to this discourse consider that all political opinions should be represented in the Parliament through proportional representation (PR), or even through more complex and sophisticated proposals such as compulsory voting or majority judgment vote. When it comes to direct democracy and to the "RIC", the activists who hold this discourse are in favor of direct democracy as a way to allow citizens to participate in the political process, but they are not unconditional supporters of all forms of direct democracy. Several activists even mention the risk of "populism". For instance, Amani (male, artist, 58), argues:

"The RIC is something that I can defend to a certain extent, but there is an aspect that I like a little less, which is the mistrust of all political representatives. (...) The "all rotten" notion can lead to a certain populism that is a bit dangerous".

These activists insist on the need to "raise awareness" on the topics at stake and to develop political education. Some prefer to prevent certain topics from being subject to abrogation (such as death penalty or gay marriage for instance), even though they admit that citizen initiated legislative referendums are an instrument of political participation. Activists with an anarchist activist background express reservations about the RIC, as they consider it insufficient to achieve selfgovernment. According to Aurélien (male, 32, unemployed, active in student circles):

"The RIC is totally insufficient, but it carries within itself the seeds of a desire for self-government. So that's what I say to people who defend the RIC, I say, 'yes, it's good, you want to take control of your daily life'"

As most French citizens (Grossman and Sauger 2017), the experienced activists who hold this discourse are critical of their representatives and consider them as disconnected from citizens' needs. For them, this disconnection mainly derives from the lack of concreteness and awareness about the everyday concerns of the citizens, in particular at the national level. For Murielle (female, 64, former schoolteacher):

'"The national level is terribly inaccessible and terribly detached from the realities of the people of the country.

Whereas at the local level (…) the actions are targeted and concrete and still respond to local needs".

In this first ideal-typical discourse, interviewees are very critical of the figure of Emmanuel Macron, but equally skeptical about the opportunity to call for his resignation, as it would not resolve the poor functioning of the French democratic system. Their criticisms revolve around the personalized and authoritarian view of the political power of Macron rather than on his person itself. Sylvie (female, 60, former schoolteacher) considers that Macron is "a caricature of the Fifth Republic".

The YV frequently refer to "the people" in their discourses, stressing a strong dichotomy between the people and political elites. However, they do not all share the same conception of what "the people" actually means and which subgroups it comprises. The most politicized and experienced YV activists often tend to position themselves alongside the people rather than within them, as an enlightened vanguard. Jean-Claude (male, 68, former pointsman) is the one who expresses this idea most directly:

"As soon as the people are in the street and they protest, all my commitment, both trade union and political, is in line with that! Even if this people is multiple and diverse! (…) Lenin had said an extraordinary sentence: (...) You don't make a revolution only with enlightened people! (…) And today I'm in the street with my comrades who are a little less enlightened, or revolted. To see that you have revolted to the point of taking to the streets is great, (...) you're in the street and you have demands, and I've been supporting them for 20 years!"

These activists therefore define "the people" as an abstract political and collective entity. The idea of popular sovereignty and self-government of the people, in particular among those who are active in anarchist circles, transpires through this definition.

Punishing and controlling the political elites: the discourse of the angry first-time activists

In this second archetypical discourse, the YV insist on the fact that there are "good ideas everywhere" in all parts of the political spectrum. As already evidenced by other authors working on the US (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002) or on the UK [START_REF] Clarke | The Good Politician: Folk Theories, Political Interaction, and the Rise of Anti-Politics[END_REF]), these interviewees reject party politics as it creates unnecessary divisions and prevents the implementation of policies supported by "the people". They support the inclusion of the blank vote in the votes cast, as a "signal" to the political elites, to show them how unrepresentative they actually are. This discourse is particularly typical of first-time activists with a limited previous involvement in all political activities, including voting.

The same way as more experienced left-wing activists, interviewees closer to the second discourse insist on the importance of counterpowers, but consider that these counterpowers will come from the ability to recall and sanction political elites in general and the president of the Republic in particular, "to undermine Macron" and force him to listen to the people. The "employer's rhetoric" is pervasive: interviewees insist on the fact that politicians should be treated "just as any other worker". Estelle (female, 42, school auxiliary) argues:

"my son, who is eight years old, said to me one day (…), but why doesn't the president have a trial period, like at work in fact? And yes, I think it's not that stupid. (…) Because in five years we can make so many bad choices.

So there you have it. Removable. Representatives, but who can be recalled at any time."

Isabelle (female, 45, animator in a local authority) defines recall votes as such:

"the revocation is like the sword of Damocles, listen to the people, the sword of Damocles is put on your head, you have to do as you are told." Direct democracy is not conceived as a permanent, interactive and participatory process, but rather as a means for "the people" to counteract the government and the president.

In this second discourse, interviewees consider that politicians do not represent the people because they do not have the same living conditions and financial constraints. Unlike experienced left-wing activists, first-time activists express criticisms of the political representatives that are extremely personalized and centered around Emmanuel Macron. Interviewees often mention the advantages of current and former presidents and ministers: chauffeurs, very high retirement pensions, lifelong salaries, official accommodations, etc. These financial privileges are sometimes exaggerated. For instance, Jean-Bernard (Male, 70, former technician) is convinced that "if [he] had gotten into politics, [he] would drive a Rolls Royce". Estelle (female, 42, school auxiliary) argues that the difference between "us" and "them" (the professional politicians) is just too wide to comprehend:

"for us 100 Euros.... For them it's maybe... I don't know, a million euros".

Several interviewees refer to the Elysée and describe it as a "something all in gold". This wealthy and inaccessible universe is opposed to "the people" as a whole, defined as the reverse mirror of this world of privileges. Macron epitomizes these privileges and this distance. Various interviewees mention his "contempt", his collusions with the financial world and with powerful interests, or his divisiveness for the country. These activists understand "the people" as opposed to the privileged and self-serving political elites. Politicians are perceived as physically, financially and geographically distant. Some define the people as the "Third Estate", others as "people who suffer", "the workers", the "lower class", but the majority of these first-time activists define the people as all of those who are not sharing the condition of the privileged political elites.

Discussion and conclusion

The Yellow Vests are not a uniform group, but a complex movement cut across by numerous cleavage lines. The combination of survey analysis, textual analysis and in-depth interviews bears out the relevance of a methodological approach based on triangulation and complementarity. It helps to evidence, in particular, the key role of politicization and better make sense of how internal political differences within the YV movement can translate into competing discourses on elected representatives and democratic institutions.

With this in mind, our research brings a twofold contribution. First, it highlights the stronger support of the YV for democratic innovations punishing and controlling political elites compared to the general population, in particular among the most populist protesters who vote for the far-right.

Second, we refine the analyses of the preferences by stressing the divide with regard to democratic preferences between those YV who got involved for the first time in a social movement and leftwing experienced activists. The former group tends to frame their participation within the movement based on their economic and social difficulties, and develop a discourse on the political system based on a strong rejection of political elites -and Emmanuel Macron more specifically.

Democracy is not at the very heart of their activism, and when it is mentioned, they plebiscite democratic innovations allowing punishing political representatives, such as recall or legislative referendums. These activists typically share a non-pluralist and a unitary vision of "the people" [START_REF] Caramani | Will vs. Reason: The Populist and Technocratic Forms of Political Representation and Their Critique to Party Government[END_REF]. The more experienced counterparts, on the opposite, have a more politicized discourse based on their greater knowledge of the political system. Democracy is much more central in their discourse, which places participation at the forefront. They have a pluralist vision of politics inherited from their previous politicization and favor all sorts of democratic innovations, including more time-demanding ones resulting in a greater citizen involvement. Our findings fully corroborate other studies stressing that the representation of the general interest (pluralist, or unitary) is one of the most structuring lines to analyze the democratic aspirations of French citizens [START_REF] Bedock | Citizens' contrasting aspirations about their political system: entrustment, participation, identification and control[END_REF].

On a more general note, our mixed-method analysis suggests that democratic aspirations feed on democratic practices, and not only the other way around: Activists who have experienced various forms of political participation (vote, strike, demonstrations, public meetings, etc.) also develop a view on the role citizens should play within the political system, that is a more active one. Direct democracy is only one of the various sources for democratic innovations they support, in particular when it involves citizens' initiatives. By contrast, first-time activists who feel very remote from politics have a very negative and monolithic view of the political class, seen as distant, privileged, self-serving, and full of contempt. The real aspiration is not so much to participate or to deliberate more than to be able to punish political elites when they do not pay enough attention to ordinary citizens. Following the seminal research from [START_REF] Akkerman | How Populist Are the People? Measuring Populist Attitudes in Voters[END_REF], we computed an additive scale measuring agreement with the 5 following items: 'The politicians need to follow the will of the people'; 'Elected officials talk too much and take to little action'; 'The political differences between the elite and the people are larger than differences among the people'; 'The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions'; 'I would rather be represented by a citizen than by a specialized politician'.

Appendix

Support for redistribution

'To establish social justice, we should take from the rich to give to the poor': Disagree or strongly disagree; Agree; Strongly agree.

PopEurop a & YVVS

Continuous (standardiz ed)

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H3a.

  Whether or not acquainted with the Yellow Vests, radical right voters are more inclined to support plebiscitary and anti-elitist direct democratic mechanisms such as recall. H3b. Conversely, radical left voters likely support all forms of democratic innovations, including participatory and deliberative ones.

Figure 3 .

 3 Figure 3. Effect of populist attitudes and voting on support for democratic innovations among the French population and the Yellow Vests Note: Entries are predicted probabilities (odds ratio) from two sets of six binary logistic regressions estimating the impact of populist attitudes and voting in support for democratic references among the French (left panel) and within the YV movement (right panel), with 95 percent confidence intervals. Models adjust for sociodemographics and political characteristics.

  Exponentiated coefficients * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 Models 7 to 12: Effect of commitment to the YV on support for democratic innovations among the Yellow Vests (Figure 2, right panel)

  Exponentiated coefficients * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 Models 13 to 18: Effect of populist attitudes and voting on support for democratic innovations among the French population (Figure 3, left panel)

  -Exponentiated coefficients * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 Models 19 to 24: Effect of populist attitudes and voting on support for democratic innovations among the Yellow Vests (Figure 3, right panel)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  -Exponentiated coefficients * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

A. Variables used in quantitative analysis

	NAME/NOTION	DESCRIPTION & CATEGORIES	SOURCE	TYPE
	Dependent variables
	Recall referendum	Vote to dismiss elected representatives before the end of the term if he or she has done a bad job	PopEurop a & YVVS	Binary
	Legislative referendum	Rely more on referenda than Parliament to decide on the most important issues	PopEurop a & YVVS	Binary
	Sortition	Stop electing representatives and draw by lots ordinary citizens instead	PopEurop a & YVVS	Binary
	Public consultation	Organize consultations with pools of citizens to help evaluate policies and take decisions	PopEurop a & YVVS	Binary
	Citizen initiative	Enable civil society associations to make law proposals and referendum proposals	PopEurop a & YVVS	Binary
	Municipalist initiative	Shift power to localities where constituents could debate and organize themselves	PopEurop a & YVVS	Binary
	Independent variables
	Commitment	Involvement in the social movement: Active YV have
	to the YV movement	taken part in at least on action; Passive YV support without participating: Others do not support or	PopEurop a & YVVS	Nominal
		participate
	Populist
	attitudes

A first round was fielded at the early stage of the movement, between December

and April

(n=4643), with no items about democratic preferences.2 Respondents also had the possibility to answer that they only had one preference, or no preference.

We conducted additional logistic regressions (not displayed here) to gauge possible differences between active YV (i.e., participating in protest actions) and supportive YV (i.e., supporters but not activists). In the French population, legislative referendums appear to be a little more popular among supportive YV, and sortition among active YV. The two subgroups do not, however, differ significantly from each other.

Interestingly, the recall referendum is more likely supported by YV with low educational levels (1,2; p<0.05) and who are also supportive of redistribution (1.7; p<0.01).

Further analysis suggests that the linkage between radical left voting and inclusive democratic reforms is contingent upon material and symbolic resources, and effective only for richer, more educated and more politically attuned radical left wingers.

As it turns out, political interest increases the probability of supporting municipalist initiative in the general public.

We use the chi-square (χ 2 ) and the associated p-value to significantly determine the association between a word or a characteristic of survey respondents with the corresponding class.

Man, between 35-49-year-old, lower secondary diploma, unemployed, income between 1440 and 2100€, living in a small village, vote for the radical right.

Man, between 25-and 49-year-old, lower secondary or less, employed.

Woman, employed, live in a village, vote for the moderate right.

Man, over 65-year-old, lower secondary or less, retired, vote for center, income between 2100 and 2910€.

Man, between 18-and 34-year-old, upper secondary education, employed, vote blank, between 1440 to 2100€, live in village.

classifications in 6 or 8 classes were very high too (more than 90percent of the texts). Ultimately, we opted for a 3-class solution for both clarity regarding our research question and hypotheses about the Yellow Vests democratic aspirations.

Models 1 to 6: Effect of commitment to the YV on support for democratic innovations among the French population (Figure 2, left panel)

Appendix C. Introducing the Textual Clustering Algorithm

In the results section, we relied on a hierarchical descending algorithm to analyze the discourses of the Yellow Vests on the social movement from an open-ended question in a purposive sample of Yellow Vests activists (YVVS). Hereby, we present the specificity of the method employed in greater details. The algorithm -which the first articles describing it date back to 1983 -assigns each text to one cluster, unlike methods like Latent Dirichlet Association (LDA) used in topic models. Instead, the algorithm uses a singular value decomposition of a document-term matrix. The resulting matrix is then weighted as binary, so only the presence/absence of terms are considered, not their frequencies. The aim is to iteratively split this matrix into two clusters by maximizing the Chi-squared distance between those. To get a good approximation in a relatively short time, texts are ordered according to their coordinates on the first axis of the correspondence analysis of the binary matrix. Then, the texts are grouped in two clusters based on this order, and the grouping with the maximum inter-cluster Chi-squared distance is kept. Based on this first clustering, each text is in turn assigned to the other cluster. If this new assignment gives a higher inter-cluster Chi-squared value, it is kept. The operation is repeated until no new assignment gives a higher Chi-squared. Finally, on the resulting clusters binary matrices, features are selected based on their frequency and on a contingency coefficient minimum value, and the biggest of the two resulting clusters is then split with the same algorithm iteratively. For more detail on the algorithm, see [START_REF] Reinert | Une méthode de classification descendante hiérarchique : application à l'analyse lexical par contexte[END_REF][START_REF] Reinert | Alceste une méthodologie d'analyse des données textuelles et une application: Aurelia De Gerard De Nerval[END_REF]).

In the main section, we opted for a 3-class classification for several reasons. While a higher number of identified clusters might improve the deep understanding of the entire discourses of the Yellow Vests protesters on the social movement in which they were involved, we think this would hamper the readability of our analyses without improving our knowledge of the democratic preferences of YV activists. First, the alternatives solutions are composed of 4, 6 and 8 classes maximum. If we follow the divisive logic of the clustering highlighted by the junctions of the alternatives cutrees, we observe that the alternative solutions are all divisions of the three classes reported in the main analysis, but do not reveal essential different classes. For example, in the case of class 1 (i.e., the YVs that exhibit poverty issues), the 6-or 8-classes solutions add another class that talks more about taxes and charges. While this might expand the general understanding of the movement, it is of limited interest for our research question. Second, our approach in this article intends to be as parsimonious as possible. Since the other solutions do not provide substantial gain for our hypotheses and research question, but without compromising the results obtained with the simplest solutions in any cases, we opted for the 3-class solution.

Support for redistribution

To establish social justice, we should take from the rich to give to the poor': Disagree or strongly disagree vs. Agree or Strongly agree. Secondly, we talked about their engagement within the Yellow Vest movement. Finally, we addressed our interviewees' conceptions of the political system, starting with very general questions about what "politics" evoked for them before dealing with their feelings about the French political system and the reforms that seemed desirable to them.

YVVS

All of the interviews were then transcribed in full and coded in the Nvivo software. The second step consisted in the inductive coding of the interviews for each of the themes covered in the interview guide. The initial codes were elaborated inductively thanks to the interviews with the 32 lay citizens, whereas we used and completed the existing thematic codes for the interviews with Yellow Vests activists [START_REF] Bedock | Citizens' contrasting aspirations about their political system: entrustment, participation, identification and control[END_REF]. Each of these general themes is divided into subthemes. Each sub-theme is constituted of various codes. Every time that a new idea came out, we created a new code and classified this code into the general themes and sub-themes. We then reread the whole corpus, merged certain codes which were redundant and checked the integrality of the corpus in order to stabilize the codes used. A single text segment could refer to several codes when it contains several ideas.

For the analysis presented in this article, we focused in particular on six out of the 42 codes used to characterize their conception of the political system. These codes were selected because they are the most salient in our corpus. They correspond to the ones that have been the most frequently discussed by our interviewees on the following subthemes: conception of politics, process preferences, vision of political representatives, the characterization of the French political regime and the definition of the people. The codes selected are the following: "conflict and compromise" (conception of politics), "RIC and referendums" and "representativeness and diversity" (process preferences), "world apart and disconnected" (vision of political representatives), "dictatorship / Oligarchy / totalitarianism" (characterization of the French political regime), and any reference to the "people". After having analyzed the integrality of the references to these different codes, which have enabled to identify and describe the two ideal-typical discourses, we related them to the profiles of the participants.


Evidence of chlordecone resurrection by glyphosate using Paleo-Critical Zone approach in French West indies En

The widespread use of pesticides in agriculture during the last several decades has contaminated soils and different Critical Zone (CZ) compartments. However, the long-term fate, storage, and transfer dynamics of persistent pesticides in CZ in a changing world remain poorly understood. In the French West Indies (FWI), chlordecone (CLD), a toxic organochlorine insecticide, was extensively applied to banana fields to control banana weevil from 1972 to 1993 after which it was banned. However, CLD is still persistent in most of the CZ compartments with severe toxic effects to human populations. Depending on the soil type and considering negligible CLD degradation, it was estimated that CLD could remain in soils for at least several decades and up to centuries (Cabidoche et al., 2009). Thus, if erosion of cultivated soils increases in response to changes in agricultural practices, such as herbicie use (glyphosate), soils will be converting from sinks into sources of pesticides (Sabatier et al., 2014). To test this hypothesis, in the context of intensive glyphosate application, we applied a retrospective observation based on the analysis of marine sediment cores in order to monitor long-term CLD transfer from watersheds thanks to a multiproxies appraoch. At both sites, we observed a synchronous increase in CLD + CLO and erosional fluxes when glyphosate was first widely applied to banana fields at the end of the 1990s (Figure 3). The application of glyphosate, which disrupts grass development, has a strong effect on soil erosion as previous demonstrated in vineyard (Sabatier et al., 2014).

Putting all our observations together, we argue that the widespread use of a nonspecific systemic herbicide (glyphosate) since the late 1990s' could be responsible of an unprecedented rise in soil erosion and downstream of a major release of remnant CLD pesticides that were trapped in banana field soils since their ban in the late 1990s' (Figure 3).

In this study, we highlight that new agricultural practices may induce complex interactions in the CZ dynamic converting soils from sinks into sources of formerly used pesticides. This happened in FWI where CLD was probably resurrected by glyphosate-induced soil erosion (Figure 4). The retrospective observation applied here allowed us to reconstruct long-term CZ trajectories under human effort, hence proving its strength in providing novel and complementary information to modern-day CZ observatories.

Short-lived radionuclides on watershed samples show that the banana and sugarcane plantations provide a significant supply of sediment to river systems on these islands through erosion.

Cores have been dated thanks to short-lived radionuclides (Figure 2) and show a synchronous drastic change in accumulation rate in 1999 with an increase of 4 (GAL) and 10 fold (GUA) attribuated to terrigenous inputs through erosion thanks to sedimentological and geochemical data (Figure 3).

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1 : (a) Map of the Caribbean arc with the two French islands. (b, c) Maps of Guadeloupe and Martinique showing the risk of soil contamination by CLD; (d, e) Localization of the studied watershed (dark gray) with types of crops. Two sampled marine sediment cores are indicated by black dots. Pérou and Galion river watersheds (d, e) were also sampled.

  Ref.:Bruel & Sabatier 2020, J. Environ. Radioact. 225, 106449 ; Cabidoche et al., 2009, Environ. Pollut. 157, 1697-1705 ; Sabatier et al., 2014, PNAS 111, 15647-15652

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2 : Chronology for the GUA17-01 (a) and GAL17-04 (b) cores with the Fe/Ca, 210Pbxs activity, instantaneous event-corrected 210Pbxs activity and age model with uncertainties (gray area) realized with the serac R package (Bruel and Sabatier 2020). Dotted lines extending from the black lines indicate age model extrapolation. On the right part of this figure ages and names correspond to historical hurricanes.

Figure 4 :

 4 Figure 4 : CZ dynamics and responses in FWI in relation to past (CLD) and modern (Glyphosate) agricultural practices

Figure 3 :

 3 Figure 3 : Guadeloupe (a) and Martinique (b): Erosion proxies with Fe/Ca and terrigenous fluxes compared to a pesticides fluxes (logarithmic scale) of sum of glyphosate and AMPA and the sum of CLD and CLO. The horizontal dotted line corresponds to the large erosion increases.

: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, EDYTEM, 73000 Chambéry, France; *Contact : pierre.sabatier@univ-smb.fr

: Cirad, UPR HortSys, Le Lamentin, Martinique F-97285, France; HortSys, Geco, Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, Montpellier

34398, France 3 : Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (CEA/CNRS/UVSQ), Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France 4 : HortSys, Geco, Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, Montpellier 34398, France; Cirad, UPR GECO, Capesterre-Belle-Eau, Guadeloupe F-97130, France Published : Sabatier et al., 2021, Env. Sci. & Tech. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c05207

Inter-Disciplinary Research Facility on Human-Environment Interac ons -ANR-11-LABX-0010 6-8 September 2021-Toulouse (France) rd 1