Multi-level governance or co-administration? Transformation and continuity in french local government
By: REIGNER, Hélène
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ArticlePublisher: UK : Policy Press, apr. 2001Subject(s): ChinaPolicy & Politics 29, 2, p. 181-192Abstract: French government has historically been characterised by strong centralisation and an interventionist state represented by prestigious top civil servants. In this context, politicians did not have real power locally to produce or implement their own public policies.In the 1980s,important institutional reforms and ideological changes challenged this statist pattern and have set up a new balance of power between the state and local authorities. Focusing on the emergent levels - Europe, regions, agglomerations - most multi-level governance approaches suggest that state is becoming "hollow". Nevertheless, this article insists that the state is still an important actor in the French political administrative system. In cases where local government is yet to be stabilised, a model of coadministration appears to be emerging, judicially organised by the state itself, and characterised less by constitutional, hierarchical exchanges and more by negotiated arrangements between local state and elected officials
French government has historically been characterised by strong centralisation and an interventionist state represented by prestigious top civil servants. In this context, politicians did not have real power locally to produce or implement their own public policies.In the 1980s,important institutional reforms and ideological changes challenged this statist pattern and have set up a new balance of power between the state and local authorities. Focusing on the emergent levels - Europe, regions, agglomerations - most multi-level governance approaches suggest that state is becoming "hollow". Nevertheless, this article insists that the state is still an important actor in the French political administrative system. In cases where local government is yet to be stabilised, a model of coadministration appears to be emerging, judicially organised by the state itself, and characterised less by constitutional, hierarchical exchanges and more by negotiated arrangements between local state and elected officials
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