In recent years, decentralization has become extremely popular as a means of governmental reform, with national governments around the world seeking to devolve more power and responsibility to local governments in efforts to encourage greater political participation and democracy and to increase administrative efficiency and costs. In this, France has been no exception. But the way in which the Socialists in power from 1981 to 1986 went about decentralization was exceptional indeed. Instead of the usual piecemeal reforms leading to gradual change, the Socialists “revolutionized” center-periphery relations by redefining the role of the state in the periphery and giving extensive new powers to territorial units of government through a series of laws that by 1986 encompassed over forty laws and close to three hundred decrees.

Most scholars of French politics and administration were taken completely by surprise by the Socialists' decentralizing reforms. And understandably so. Since the French Revolution, the legislative history had been one of endless parliamentary debates and countless failed initiatives. The only lasting, major decentralizing reform of the local governmental system was already close to a century old, having been passed at the beginning of the Third Republic. Although it had ended the century-old pattern of recurring centralization begun with the French Revolution, it had restricted itself to making the mayor an elected official and the executive power in the communes, or municipalities.