The Left at Local Level

Abstract

Although France is a highly centralised country, considerable importance still attaches to the layers of government below the national level. There are three of these: regional, departmental and municipal. Regional government is the weakest. Its role is essentially advisory, principally in the area of economic development, and this is reflected in the fact that the 22 regional councils (conseils régionaux) are not directly elected but are made up of the deputies and senators of the region plus nominees from the municipal and departmental councils. The départements, of which there are 96, have rather more influence. They are required to provide some limited services — notably on roads, school buildings, and social security — and they have their own directly elected departmental councils (conseils généraux). The councils work, however, under tight central guidelines and on a limited budget. The main importance probably lies in the role they play as mediating agents between central and local interests. It is the municipal councils — which are based on France’s 36,000 communes — which have the greatest potential for directly exercising power and influence. Matters for which they have at least some responsibility include planning, housing, public transport, social welfare, and educational facilities. In practice the power municipalities actually exercise is closely related to size and in this they vary enormously; over 11,000 have less than 200 inhabitants, over 32,000 have less than 2000, whilst the larger cities have hundreds of thousands. Clearly the smaller communes have not the population, and therefore also not the resources, to provide the services expected by modern society. As a consequence they are very heavily dependent on the state and work under the close guidance of its various local representatives, in particular the prefect and his staff. In the larger towns however councils and their mayors (who are key political figures, unlike in Britain) can, and often do, provide a strong countervailing force to the national government.KeywordsRegional CouncilLocal AllianceLarge TownTown HallMunicipal ElectionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.