This issue of Futuribles is appearing at the height of the French local election campaign, which will end with citizens in almost 35,000 municipalities selecting their mayors. As the country’s lowest administrative rung, the commune is part of what some observers call France’s ‘territorial layer-cake’, in reference to the proliferation of levels of public decision-making that tends to complicate how constituents conduct their dealings with the authorities. Since the beginnings of decentralization in the 1980s, the subject of the division of competences between the state and local government (and indeed the demarcation of local government boundaries) has come back regularly onto the agenda, with successive legislation and reforms. Clearly, however, no consensus has been achieved.
In the context of the French prime minister’s announcement this autumn of ‘a new decentralization initiative’, Yannick Blanc reviews more than 40 years of government decentralization and the proposals made more recently for improving its operation and intelligibility. On the question of how French territory should be organized, he argues for making an inventory of the relevant needs and resources, these themselves linked to the ecological crisis, demographic or economic changes etc. And he calls for a clarification of what is to be expected of institutions, also taking emerging or future needs into account (the economy, health, education, food policy, social policy etc.). Lastly, in a society functioning in an increasingly systemic way, Blanc contends that the focus should perhaps no longer be on a reform of decentralization but on encouraging a different way of conceiving government action by pooling staff and resources within a framework of ‘action communities’. A practical, common-sense approach that might perhaps be examined before new legislation is enacted?
The article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
