New Directions in Decentralisation and Urban Policy in France: The Search for a Postdecentralisation State

Abstract

Decentralisation is back on the political agenda in France, associated with the Act prepared by the Ministre de Ulnterieur, Pierre Joxe. It is argued that the reform is, above all, about reorganising the State territorial services in order to match local dynamism. An attempt is made to define a new balance between local authorities and the State in order to deal with some current problems such as the university crisis and the consequences of the urban crisis.

The Modernization of the French Civil Service: Crisis, Change and Continuity

“…This prompted a new policy response in the 1990s that has taken the form of a shift in the locus of state intervention from the national to the local level. The strategy has been to strengthen the institutional capacity of the local, 'deconcentrated' state by developing contracts between central ministries and 'elected local government' as a means of promoting cross-sectoral policies in fields impacting on localities, such as urban policy, local economic development, crime prevention and culture (Duran and Theonig 1996;Le Galès 1992). There has been an important parallel trend towards the 'territorialization' of social policy, with a focus on the management of the poor and the excluded (Duran 1994;Fontaine 1996;Jobert 1991).…”