"The Surreptitious Recentralisation of France"

Wednesday 3rd March, 5.15pm

Seminar:

"The Surreptitious Recentralisation of France: The recent law on the reorganisation of regional and local government, intentions and consequences"

Patrick Le Galès, CNRS-Centre d'études européennes-FNSP

 Patrick Le Galès is one of the acknowledged experts on French public policy, and particularly on the working of French local authorities which--contrary to the widespread impression in Britain--are more independent, politically and in terms of investment, than British local authorities are of Whitehall.  That has been even more the case since the major decentralization reforms of 1982. It is likely to be less true after the application of the current series of measures, changing the basis of local government finance, the merging of elected bodies, the redrawing of local constituencies and the powers of the prefects, the state's agents in the provinces. 

Given the intimate connections between local and national politics in France, these changes risk affecting the workings of the French state at both local and national levels and with important consequences for national as well as local politics, likely consequences not lost on the reforms' proponents.
There is no one better able to explain and analyze these measures than Patrick Le Galès.