Not saying, not doing: Convergences, contingencies and causal mechanisms of state reform and decentralisation in Hollande’s France

Abstract

Are States in contemporary Europe subject to new forms of convergence under the impact of economic crisis, enhanced European steering and international monitoring? Or is the evolution of governance (national and sub-national) driven fundamentally by diverging, mainly domestic pressures? Drawing on extensive new data, the article combines analysis of the State Modernisation and Decentralisation reform programmes of the Hollande-Ayrault administration, drawing comparisons where appropriate with the previous Sarkozy regime. The limits of President Hollande's anti-Sarkozy method were demonstrated in the first 2 years; framing state reform and decentralisation in negative terms prevented the emergence of a coherent legitimising discourse. The empirical data is interpreted with reference to a comparative 'States of Convergence' framework, which is conceptualised as a heuristic device for analysing variation between places, countries and policy fields. The article concludes that the forces of hard convergence are gaining ground, as economic, epistemic and European pressures continually challenge the forces of institutional inertia.

The Influencing Factors and Development Measures of French GDP

“…In addition, the employment rate of people aged 15-64 in the same period increased by 0.2 percentage points to 66.1%, the highest point since 1980. Among them, young people aged 15-24 have benefited the greatest, with a growth of 0.9 percentage points [7].…”

Policy analysis in French local government

“…A perusal of the content of the Revue Française de Science Politique in recent years shows that any emphasis on the crucial importance of local and territorial concerns in French policy studies remains a rarity. A similar analysis of the content of the journal French Politics since 2010, which could serve as a barometer of the extent to which the French territorial model is recognised internationally, gives sparse results (one single article deals with decentralisation policy under the Hollande presidency (Cole, 2014)) but without analysing the mechanisms or other specificities of the French case; there are comparative studies integrating France in general social policy (MacDaniel, 2014) or the evolution of the welfare state (Simonet, 2014) but with no consideration of the territorial aspects of these subjects.…”

Decentralization of the French welfare state: from ‘big bang’ to ‘muddling through’

“…In view of these disappointments the French state has taken a number of steps towards even more radical territorial reforms since 2008 (see Cole, 2014). Beginning with the Balladur Commission which had suggested the dissolution of departments in mainly urbanized regions and their replacement by metropolitan regions, going on to the territorial reform law of December 2010 which enacted, inter alia, the fusion of departments and regions and the creation of metropolitan poles, and ending with 'Acte III' of the decentralization initiated by the current French government in January 2014 which stipulates a new reduction of regions, their functional upgrading and a coordinated debate on the departments' future, each of these steps sought to reduce, in particular, the departments' functional and political powers.…”