Rare is the person who has contemplated the French political system without learning that it is highly centralized. Frequent have been the denunciations of centralization and almost as abundant have been the calls for change. Rare have been the successes of such proposals. Tocqueville was the first to have made centralization the key to all France's ills, though even a theorist as different as Marx found it important enough to deplore.1 Since the 1940s, France has been experiencing another round of argument over the areal distribution of powers.2 The defeat of 1940, the Liberation, the collapse in 1958, and the shock of 1968 created uncertainty in many things, among them, the traditional structure based on departments and communes. Some change has occurred. The most visible is the creation of new political forms, especially the regions. Under the terms of the loi Frey of 1972, the regions (though inferior in legal status to departments and communes) levy taxes, spend money, select executives, meet in deliberative assemblies, and engage in other activities typical of public institutions. Other new units include communautis urbaines, syndicats a' vocation multiple, and dclkgations. In March 1977, for the first time in over 100 years, Paris elected its own mayor. Over the past three decades, a vast array of decrees have provided for numerous reforms: the harmonization of administrative districts, the formulation of regional plans, the strengthening of departmental prefects in relation to agents of other Parisian ministries, the graduation of expenditures according to their geographical scope leading to the deconcentration of decisions concerning the lower categories, the creation of regional prefectures and other regional arms of the central government (such as Confrrences Administratives Regionales [CAR], which play an important role in the allocation of