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The Planner's Dilemma: Regional Reform in France*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Harvey G. Simmons
Affiliation:
York University

Abstract

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Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1971

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References

1 Flory, Thiébaut, Le mouvement régionaliste français (Paris, 1966), 4.Google Scholar

2 Bourjol, Maurice, Les institutions régionales (Paris, 1969), 28.Google Scholar

3 Monier, René, Région et économie régionale (Paris, 1965), 29.Google Scholar

4 La gauche et les régions (Paris, 1967), 38.

5 Ibid., 42–3. See also Hayward, J. E. S., “From Functional Regionalism to Functional Representation in France: The Battle of Brittany,” Political Studies, XVII, no. 1 (March 1969), 4875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 An exact translation of aménagement du territoire is difficult to render. In an article on the subject, authors François Perrin, Bernard Pouyet, and Guy Raffi say “the notion of aménagement du territoire is connected to regional expansion but is a concept with flexible limits and is sometimes imprecise.” The authors suggest the term “affirms the importance of voluntary geography with a view toward the harmonious development of all regions in an area taking their particular inclinations into account.” “L'aménagement du territoire en France,” Notes et Eludes Documentaires, no. 3461 (Feb. 9, 1968), 5–6. In this article the term will be used in French.

7 Hansen, Niles M., French Regional Planning (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), 75.Google Scholar

8 La région… pour quoi faire? (Paris, 1969), 143.

9 Quermonne, Jean-Louis, “Planification régionale et réforme administrative,” in Institut d'Etudes politiques de l'Université de Grenoble, Administration traditionelle et planification régional (Paris, 1964), 56–7.Google Scholar

10 Bernard Pouyet and Patrice de Monbrison-Fouchère, “La régionalisation dans le rve plan; l'expérience des tranches opératoires,” in ibid., 154.

11 Quermonne, in ibid., 89.

12 de Lanversin, Jacques, L'aménagement du territoire et la régionalisation (Paris, 1970), 128.Google Scholar

13 Monier, Région et économie régionale, 114.

14 Pouyet, Bernard, La délégation à l'aménagement du territoire et à l'action régional (Paris, 1968), 102–5.Google Scholar See also Gremion, Pierre, L'administration face au changement: la mise en place des institutions régionales: une étude sociologique (Paris, 1965), 51.Google Scholar

15 Antoine, Jacques, “La préparation du vième plan dans sa dimension régionale,” in Institut d'Etudes politiques de l'Université de Grenoble, Aménagement du territoire et développement régional (Grenoble, 1969), iii, 51.Google Scholar

16 Pierre Gremion and Jean-Pierre Worms, “La concertation régionale: innovation ou tradition?” in ibid., i, 57.

17 Cited in ibid., iii, 726.

18 Le Monde, March 26, 1968.

19 On procedure and results of the consultation, see Jean-Luc Bodiguel, “La consultation régionale,” in Institut d'Etudes politiques, Aménagement du territoire, iii, 351–70.

20 See Le Monde, March 26, 1969. For the suggestion that only one-tenth of credits would be available to the regions, see article by Mathieu, Gilbert in Le Monde, April 24, 1969.Google Scholar

21 For a critical analysis of the reform proposals, see Correspondance municipale, no. 91 (Oct. 1968), and the special number of March-April 1969, nos. 96–7.

22 For an excellent brief attack on the government's proposal, see Moulin, Club Jean, Quelle réforme? quelles régions? (Paris, 1969Google Scholar).

23 Assemblée nationale, Journal officiel, Débats parlementaires, Nov. 4, 1968, p. 3861.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., Dec. 11, 1968, p. 5324.

25 Ibid., 5330.

26 Professor Jean-Louis Quermonne has observed: “the development of a science of administration and the first conclusions of the sociology of organizations tend to show that modern procedures of management necessitate recourse to a large degree of decentralization. From that the notion of effectiveness that was linked to a centralized administration gradually lost support… it seemed that the arrival of France at the level of an industrial society implied rationally, the regionalization of the administration. If it was good for General Motors wasn't it good for the Republic?” in “Autonomie régionale et unité nationale,” in Institut d'Etudes politiques, Aménagement du territoire, ii, 4.

27 Assemblée nationale, Débats, Dec. 12, 1968, p. 5408.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., Nov. 26, 1963, pp. 7474–5.

29 See, for example, the statement of Communist senator Duclos, Jacques who observed: “The unity of the French nation is too ancient and deep for anyone to envisage a federalist type of state organization…” Sénat, Débats, Oct. 29, 1968, p. 970.Google Scholar

30 As Deputy Charbonnel, Jean put it: “What we want is not to regionalize, but rationalize…” Assemblée nationale, Débats, Dec. 12, 1968, p. 5380.Google Scholar

31 See Le Monde, July 28–9, 1968.

32 Statement of Hoffer, Marcel, Assemblée nationale, Débats, Dec. 12, 1968, p. 5415.Google Scholar

33 This was the view of V. Ansquer, a member of the National Assembly's Finance Committee, ibid., Nov. 8, 1969, p. 3509.

34 The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1964).

35 Deputy Robert Poujade quoted with approval a “planning theorist” who had written in 1961 that economic efficiency assumed the participation of producers and regional consumers since sociological and economic problems were linked. Assemblée nationale, Débats, Dec. 11, 1968, p. 5335.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., Dec. 11, 1968, p. 5338.

37 Le Monde, April 24, 1969.

38 Many people criticized the corporatist character of the proposed regional councils. See, for example, Maurice Duverger in ibid., April 16, 1969.

39 Reported in ibid., Sept. 1–2, 1968.

40 Gremion and Worms, “La concertation régionale,” 56. In another article Gremion mentions “the reinforcement of the power of technicians and financiers which is based on their capacity to predict and their mastery of new zones of uncertainty…” In Gremion, , “Résistance au changement de l'administration territoriale,” Sociologie du travail, no 3 (July-Sept. 1966), 264.Google Scholar

41 Both Gremion and Worms have been among the most critical of French analysts of regionalism. In a recent article in Esprit they said: “Basically, the latest adventure of the Administration was planning, but all empirical studies confirm it, the Administration as organizational system was not able to profit from it. Far from being renewed by planning, it progressively dominated planning blunting any possibilities for renewal there might have been, finishing by bogging the Plan down in procedure (the case is quite clear for regionalizing the Plan).” See Gremion, and Worms, , “L'état et les collectivités locales,” Esprit, no. 388 (Jan. 1970), 2036.Google Scholar

42 See the critical and revealing speech of Deputy Raymond Triboulet where he observed that most deputies not being members of the coder had almost no information on what was happening in the region, and even if they did happen to be members of the coder the draft regional plans were submitted in conditions of “exceptional obscurity” which hardly allowed them to form an idea of the choices made by the regional prefect for the region. Assemblée nationale, Débats, Nov. 3, 1970.Google Scholar

43 De Lanversin, L'aménagement du territoire et la régionalisation, 172. “Perhaps one might mention a certain attitude perceptible at the rue Martignac [seat of the Planning Commission] and which results from the fear, without doubt legitimate on the part of officials in charge of the Plan, that the national global choices will not be scrupulously respected: this view leads them to hold tightly to restrictions on the possibility of participation so as to maintain the power of decision to its maximum extent in the Parisian laboratories.”