Territorial administration and political control. Decentralization in France

The paper is based on intensive longitudinal field research. It suggests an interpretative model of territorial governement in France. Relations between national and local authorities as well as policy-making processes suggest that the centralized state has face 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 is neither a new localism nor a new centralism pattern. It is the product of incremental and ongoing trade-offs between centrifugal and centripetal forces. This complexity reflects a situation that is under the rather conservative, as well tight, control of national politicians who hold multiple local elected mandates