France's governors face key challenges in an age of state transformation and changing patterns of state–society relations. This book has embraced a critical version of the governance paradigm. Governance is best understood as a middle-range concept, rather than an overarching meta-narrative such as power or domination. Governance imposes a model on a complex reality. It identifies objects that are ontologically plural, and hence finds it difficult to identify precise dependent variables. Any framework for analysis must accommodate the contingent nature of governance itself, as well as its application to specific cases. This final chapter offers a series of concluding judgments about France's version of governance. Though the processes described throughout this book add up to very substantive change, there are countervailing and contradictory forces at play. The theme of governance is better at explaining change than continuity, but even change does not occur on a tabula rasa. It is processed, at least in part, by existing political institutions. It is interpreted by reference to sets of ingrained ideas and referential frames. It must brave the reaction of established interests. If the metaphor of governing as governance is central to the argument, governing can also take the form of resisting change. The second half of the book has presented much evidence of institutions, interests and ideas resisting the pressures for change that have been labelled collectively as governance.