The title of this book is Governing and Governance in France. If modern day France can be geographically located in a precise manner, there is no easy agreement about the concepts of governing, government or governance. Some basic definitions assist conceptual and empirical clarity. For French political scientist Leca (1996) governing ‘is a matter of taking decisions, resolving conflicts, producing public goods, coordinating private behaviour, regulating markets, organising elections, distributing resources, determining spending’. Governing is the core business of government, which claims to speak with an authoritative voice and to embody a superior legitimacy to other interests or forces in society. For Le Galès (2002: 17) government ‘refers to structures, actors, processes and outputs’, while governance ‘relates to all the institutions, networks, directives, regulations, norms, political and social usages, public and private actors that contribute to the stability of a society…’. In this basic framework, governance represents new forms of coordination – or of governing – that go beyond the traditional confines of government. But what is government and how does it exemplify itself in the ‘strong state’ of France?

Governing as government

In the definition given by Le Galès, the four key features of government were identified as structures, actors, processes and outputs. Though there are semantic difficulties with these terms, a credible definition of government must integrate an understanding of each of them. We would add a fifth variable: namely institutions, a central component that provides meaning between structures and actors.