Central‐Local Relations in French Energy Policy‐Making: Towards a New Pattern of Territorial Governance

Abstract

After a long period of centralization, local authorities have been taking a new place in the French energy sector. This revival began in the 1990s with the process of deregulation, which gave them new room for manoeuvre. This continued into the 2000s, when energy efficiency and climate change issues were set on the political agenda. This process led many practitioners and academic researchers to consider these two last decades as a turning point, which initiates a new model of governance, one that is far more decentralized than in the past. Here, we discuss this hypothesis and show that this recent 'activism' at local level associated with a change in State intervention has been leading to a new pattern of territorial governance in France that is not at odds with the past but rather is in continuity with it. Using the neo-institutional approach developed by James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, we focus on three main dimensions that play a 'homeostatic' role: the production structure, ideas and institutional arrangements. This leads us to develop an interpretation of ongoing changes in terms of an 'aggiornamento' of the former pattern of governance, rather than any real breakdown.

Actor perceptions of polycentricity in wind power governance

“…The transition toward a sustainable, renewable energy system is currently a major challenge for many countries (Poupeau, ). This transition process requires action on multiple levels and needs to take multiscale interactions into account (Smith, ).…”

Metropolitan and rural areas fighting for the control of electricity networks in France. A local geopolitics approach to energy transition

“…Because they are underpinned by a differentiation logic (between users, between operators, between spaces), in a context of decentralization, neoliberal reforms give rise to territorial conflicts in the regulation of the energy sector. Many rivalries have thus emerged within cities (Blanchet, 2015;Späth, Rohracher, 2015;Becker et al, 2017), between cities and states (Monstadt, 2007;Poupeau, 2014;Hannon, Bolton, 2015;Monstadt, Wolff, 2015;Rocholl, Bolton, 2016), and between cities and the rural territories surrounding them. This article has illustrated this by showing how, over the span of two decades, the control of these public electricity distribution networks in France has become a subject of major conflict between metropolitan and rural elected officials, due to the place occupied by infrastructure in the energy transition process.…”

Limits to polycentricity? Institutional layering and policy feedbacks of building energy performance requirements in Sweden

“…Therefore, it is well in line with polycentric governance perspectives (Hildingsson, 2014), but only recently, this potential has started to be explored (see Edmondson, Kern, & Rogge, 2018;F. Kern & Howlett, 2009;Lockwood, Kuzemko, Mitchell, & Hoggett, 2016;Poupeau, 2014).…”