Territorial administration and political control: decentralization in France
- 2005
- p.685-708.
This paper, which is based on recent field research, suggests an interfpretative model of territorial government in France. Relations between national and local authorities as well as policy-making processes suggest that the centralized state has faced a major decline of its hegemony and that decentralization reforms have induced a polycentric dynamic. Seven basic characteristics and three key properties of the model are discussed. The emerging model fits neither a new localism nor a new centralist pattern. It is the product of ongoing and incremental trade-offs between centrifugal and centripetal rationales. This complexity reflects a situation that is under the rather conservative, as well as tight, control of national politicians who hold multiple local elected mandates. - Reproduced.