Considering that the French metropolitan area makers decided not to respect the 1999’s law and its spirit, this paper intends to highlight the reasons why the French State accepted this situation so easily. First, the degrees of freedom taken by local elected actors are stressed thanks to two...

It is a long time since the problem of the lack of direct universal suffrage for the French metropolitan areas with own taxes (MAOT) has been pointed out. Nevertheless, nothing has ever been done to change this current situation, in spite of a wide agreement in favor of direct universal suffrage...

This paper intends to question the current development of metropolitan areas in France, and its induced effects. Contrary to the expected benefits (lower costs for the production of public services, scale economies), metropolitan, areas in France has entailed an increase in local taxes and tax...

Public intervention has never been neutral for the dynamics of French territories. Nevertheless, how could the fact that henceforward decisions are mostly taken at a global level be taken into account ? Facing the globalization of firms'productive and spatial strategies, how could local actors'...

This paper aims at questionning the relevance of the current use of the notion of governance in urban economics. As a starting point, the lack of an appropriate background ( due to the kind of participating actors, the way they are organized and deal with common problems), will be supposed to...

This paper aims at questioning the link between local finances and the economic dynamism of cities. This issue is based on the frequently stressed cases (by the media) of uncontrolled expenses of cities, increased level of local taxes and negative effects on local economics. This situation has...