There is a gap of ten years between the Local Government Act of 1972 and the Act of 1982 dealing with ‘the rights and liberties of communes, departments and regions’, which is more usually called the ‘decentralisation act’. The style and scope of the two reforms look very different: local government in Britain was to be tidied up and simplified, whereas local government in France was to undergo radical overall reorganisation. London's concern with the efficiency and technical capability of local authorities contrasts with the declared political and ideological determination to decentralise expressed in Paris. Conversely, a profound change took place at the territorial level in England, Wales and Scotland, whereas in France the picture presented by local and regional levels of action remains practically unchanged. These contrasts are striking, but they are deceptive, since they do not really disguise the resemblances between the two systems, even if the arena of local politics is marked out in different ways, and power at the local level is unevenly distributed.

EVOLUTION: FROM CONTRASTS TO ANALOGIES

It has probably not been sufficiently recognised that the disparities, and even the contradictions, between the two local traditions have been greatly reduced by changes in social conditions, such as to produce in recent years an unusual degree of convergence between the British and French systems of local government.

Differences in the two politico-administrative traditions

History has produced in the two countries local political cultures which are firmly established and practically polar opposites.