Trajectories and driving factors of local government reforms in Paris: A ‘deviant case’ of institutional development?

Abstract

The article attempts to analyse the institutional development in one of continental Europe's capital cities: Paris. The author seeks to scrutinise the driving forces that have influenced institution-building and local government reform in Paris during the last century and to identify ‘critical junctures’ on the capital city's institutional path. Looking at institution-building in Paris as the dependent variable the article takes a primarily institutionalist approach in seeking to explore the relevant factors which account for and explain institutional change in the municipality of Paris (‘what shapes institutions?’). In order to reveal the peculiarities of the ‘Parisian case’ the French capital city is put into a comparative perspective with London and Berlin. Proceeding from this ‘most dissimilar cases’ design the author pursues the question of whether and to what extent institutional developments have been convergent and/or divergent in European capital cities.