Local and regional development policy in France: Of changing conditions and forms, and enduring state centrality

Abstract

Since the end of World War II, local and regional development policies, and a politics around these policies, have been common to all advanced capitalist societies. However, how and why that is the case varies from one country to another. Amongst the reasons for contrasts between national policies of local and regional development, the following seem to be of high significance: the degree of central state regulation, the underlying reasons for interventions designed to support development, and how both central regulation and the major objectives of local and regional development policy have changed over time and across advanced capitalist countries. This paper investigates the significance of the state amidst all the other agents and conditions that have to be taken into account in understanding any politics of local and regional development and any success that the state might enjoy in that politics. This is done with respect to the case of France—an informative case given the powers usually attributed to the French state. It is argued that the French central state has remained over the post-war decades a key agent in the politics of local and regional development, a formulator as well as an implementer of local and regional development policies. This enduring central role in the contemporary knowledge-based economy era can be observed despite significant changes in the French local and regional development policies since the Trente Glorieuses era—the golden age of capitalism in France—in terms of objectives, forms and other actors' changing roles. The argument is informed by two key assumptions. First, the state should not be regarded as somehow opposed to capital; rather, capital and state enjoy considerable overlap in their objectives. Secondly, just as with capital, so with the state, there are forces beyond its control to which it must adapt.