Policy analysis in French local government

Abstract

This chapter attempts to ‘deconstruct’ the French territorial question and demonstrate that territorial policy analysis can break free from the limitations imposed by this primarily ‘statist’ conceptual framework. The first part introduces the scale and nature of current political and administrative territorial structures, and discusses the paucity of academic research work on this subject. The second part analyses changes in the territorial framework of policy building, through an evolution from vertical to horizontal dialectic of powers and capacities. The third part focuses on territorialisation as the result of a double process: the evolving role of ideas in territorial policy building and dynamics of differentiation. In the conclusion, it argues that the joint influence of professionalization, pluralisation and differentiation prefigures an original political/policy model of democracy between institutionalisms and culturalisms.