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- Sprache: Englisch
The reader may be amazed when they are faced with the sheer number of territorial divisions associated with public action, and full of questions. What justifies this diversity? What are the problems that arise from these divisions? Why don't the limits of public action simply follow administrative and political subdivisions?
Territorial Division for Public Action focuses on the situation in France, proposing three different approaches. First, we consider the functions that are associated with these territorial divisions: equitable distribution of resources across the territory, administration and the management of public services. However, they are also a tool for maintaining power.
Lastly, we consider the effects these divisions have on the implementation of public action and on socio-spatial structures. These divisions reflect political projects, which embody the issues as much as the partition design itself does. The recent reform of territorial regions, alongside a gradual imposition of intercommunal links in France, has given rise to political debates at both local and national levels.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I.1. Introduction
I.2. The loss of state, paradoxically, requires a lot of administrative divisions
I.3. An abundance of territorial division
I.4. Towards a spatial turn in public action analysis?
I.5. Why in France?
I.6. Numerous divisions of French administration
I.7. The division of operational public services
I.8. Public action in practice: from division to zoning
I.9. References
PART 1: Territorial Division and the Political Project
1 France’s
Départements
and Municipalities: Fossils or Phoenixes?
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Republican equality embodied by regular territorial division
1.3. The age of decentralization: the invention of regions and intermunicipal structures
1.4. In the 2010s, continuing decentralization without eliminating any tiers
1.5. Conclusion
1.6. References
2 Intermunicipal Division: An Ambiguous Revolution
2.1. Introduction
2.2. The origin of the intermunicipal association: the inadequacies of an unbreakable municipal territorial division
2.3. Intermunicipal division: the rapid but gradual construction of a new division at local level
2.4. Impacts, stakes and debates
2.5. Conclusion
2.6. References
3 Contradictory Bets on a Greater Paris
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Bigger, more democratic?
3.3. Bigger, more coherent?
3.4. Conclusion: how the scale changes
3.5. References
4 Creating Neighborhoods for Participatory Democracy
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Neighborhoods at the National Assembly and the Senate: the grand narratives of republican territory reinterpreted
4.3. Setting up neighborhoods: elusive legality, uncertain pragmatism
4.4. Making territories: the facts of division
4.5. Conclusion
4.6. References
5 Division for Better Governance in Post-Revolution Tunisia
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Genesis and evolution of territorial divisions in Tunisia
5.3. Land communalization in post-revolution Tunisia: the legal impasse, the political agenda and the technical solution
5.4. Communalization: between past territorial heritage and future electoral implications
5.5. Conclusion
5.6. References
PART 2: Territorial Division and Access to Rights
6 The Challenges of the French Judicial Map
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Rationality, equality, technicality, profit: the multiple foundations of the French judicial map
6.3. What impact do judicial territorial divisions have on access to the courts and the delivery of justice?
6.4. Conclusion
6.5. References
7 School Sectorization, the Territorial Division of the French Republic’s Schools?
7.1. Introduction
7.2. From Jules Ferry to the
collège unique
: standardizing public secondary education and financing private schools
7.3. Opening up education and sectorization (1981–2007)
7.4. 2007–2012: pseudo-de-sectorization and its consequences
7.5. 2012–2020: Believing that sectorization is a good thing, but that current boundaries are wrong and lead to segregation
7.6. Conclusion: when the framework hides the territorial division
7.7. References
8 The Territorial Division of Social Action to Promote Cohesion and Reduce Inequalities
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Professional territorial division, unstable by nature?
8.3. From specialized administrative zoning to the territorialization of the
département
’s public action
8.4. Towards infra-
département
division?
8.5. Conclusion
8.6. References
9 France’s Territorial Frameworks for Public Health Policy
9.1. Introduction
9.2. When the territorial division of healthcare translates into state oversight
9.3. Division as a tool for redistribution
9.4. Towards multi-form territories?
9.5. Conclusion
9.6. References
PART 3: Sharing Public Action: From Territorial Division to Zoning
10 Selecting and Acting upon “Priority Neighborhoods” to Reduce Inequalities?
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Urban policy or the construction of a territorialized public problem
10.3. “Priority geography” as a tool for decentralized public action
10.4. Acting on “priority neighborhoods” to combat inequality?
10.5. Conclusion
10.6. References
11 Demarcate to Preserve: Zoning Protected Areas in France
11.1. Introduction: territorial division and nature: an oxymoron?
11.2. From naturalistic and deterministic presuppositions to the political boundaries of protected areas: an ongoing negotiation
11.3. Inside and outside: the territorial division of protected spaces or the shaping of compromise through space
11.4. Stacking territorial divisions: the temptation to overlay protected areas
11.5. Conclusion
11.6. References
12 Public Action Zoning in Rural Areas
12.1. Introduction
12.2. From public policy zoning to public action zoning
12.3. Project territories for regional development
12.4. From mobilizing stakeholders to building project territories: the ambivalence of public action zoning
12.5. Conclusion
12.6. References
13 Rural Revitalization Zones: Between Equality and Efficiency
13.1. Introduction
13.2. Logics and principles of ZRRs: an ideal of territorial equality
13.3. ZRRs between (in-)efficiency of public action, issues of attractiveness and territorial equity
13.4. Conclusion
13.5. References
List of Authors
Index
Index of Places
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1 Number of French municipalities of the population split by class siz...
Chapter 2
Table 2.1 Scopes and responsibilities of EPCIs according to their statutes on ...
Table 2.2 Number of EPCIs by status
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Evolution of the institutional framework for decentralization betwee...
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 Concentration of Criminal Courts since the French Revolution
Table 6.2 Justice between centralization and decentralization (after Commaille...
Table 6.3 TGI saved thanks to the intervention of French right-wing personalit...
Table 6.4 Results of the test measuring the impact of distance on court attend...
Table 6.5 Comparison of changes between 2000–2009 and 2012–2017 in the average...
Table 6.6 Variables taken into account in the categorization of French jurisdi...
Chapter 9
Table 9.1 Changes in the division of healthcare territories in French regions ...
Chapter 11
Table 11.1 Protected areas in the Iroise Sea and on the continental strip: a s...
Chapter 13
Table 13.1 Municipalities classified as ZRRs or continuing to benefit from the...
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1. Map showing 18 regions and 101 départements
Figure I.2. Map showing 1,254 Public Establishments for Intermunicipal Coopera...
Figure I.3. Map showing 34,955 municipalities
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 From two regions into one: the administrative division of Normandy ...
Figure 1.2 Diagram of the administrative pyramid as proposed in the Napoleonic...
Figure 1.3 France’s administrative hierarchy today: an increasingly complex st...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Municipality and intermunicipality: the Vienne example
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Intermunicipalities in the Paris region
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Neighborhood councils in Paris, a new political division
Figure 4.2 Arrondissements and district divisions in 2002
Figure 4.3 Redrawing of districts in the 20th arrondissement from 1995 to 2008
Figure 4.4 Area/population trade-off in territorialization
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Decentralization in Tunisia: towards a hybrid territorial structure
Figure 5.2 Tunisia’s administrative organization during the colonial period, f...
Figure 5.3 Administrative organization of Tunisia in 1956
Figure 5.4 Mismatch between communal and administrative boundaries in Greater ...
Figure 5.5 Number of communes created between 1956 and 2004
Figure 5.6 Tunisia’s governorates under the surface/density law: changes in bo...
Figure 5.7 The territorial structure of Tunisia’s regions: administrative divi...
Figure 5.8 Electoral geography of Ennahdha and Nidaa Tounes in 2014 and 2018 b...
Figure 5.9. Electoral geography of Ennahdha, Niadaa Tounes and their main comp...
Figure 5.10 Evolution of Ennahdha’s vote between 2014 and 2018 by delegation a...
Figure 5.11 Evolution of the Nidaa Tounes vote between 2014 and 2018 by delega...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Territorial division of the French court system as of September 1, ...
Figure 6.2 Extract from Le Canard Enchaîné, October 23, 2019. The extract refe...
Figure 6.3 Compliance with and deviation from the criteria established for TGI...
Figure 6.4 Abolition of Saint-Gaudens, a process of judicial desertification
Figure 6.5 The different types of French courts
Figure 6.6 Relationship between the category of TGI (on the line) and the numb...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Haute-Loire secondary school sectorization
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Social action divisions in five départements of the Paris region
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Territorial divisions of healthcare and territorialization
Figure 9.2 Overlapping territorial divisions of healthcare: a few examples fro...
Figure 9.3 Types of communes according to GPs’ priority zoning in 2012 and 201...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Priority urban renewal districts in Île-de-France
Figure 10.2 Former boundaries of the Plaine Commune’s priority neighborhoods, ...
Figure 10.3 State-community negotiations and new boundaries for priority neigh...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 Protected areas in France: main types
Figure 11.2 Boundaries and layout factors for the core zones of French Alpine ...
Figure 11.3 The heart of the Vanoise National Park from the Signal du Petit Mo...
Figure 11.4. Original map of the future Écrins National Park, drawn by J. Flor...
Figure 11.5 Relationship between core zones and tourist facilities in French A...
Figure 11.6 Boundaries erased and repainted several times above La Bérarde (1,...
Figure 11.7 Forms and spatial strategies of superimpositions
Figure 11.8 Vicious circle of overprotection
Figure 11.9 Overprotection around a French protected area: a modeling example
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 Zoning public development action in rural areas
Figure 12.2 The Arinthod rural development pilot sector in the Jura départemen...
Figure 12.3 The Pré-Bocage rural development plan in Normandy
Figure 12.4 The “targeted” priorities of the development strategies of the 247...
Figure 12.5 Chronology of the main rural development zones (Copyright: Lacquem...
Figure 12.6 The inter-knowledge network in the Local Action Groups of the Pays...
Figure 12.7 Changes in the boundaries of the Gévaudan-Lozère LAG territory und...
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1 The 456 EPCIs (Public Establishments for Intermunicipal Cooperatio...
Figure 13.2 The 11,179 municipalities classified as ZRRs in 1995
Figure 13.3 Map of the 14,074 municipalities classified as ZRRs in 2014, just ...
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
List of Authors
Index
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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SCIENCES
Geography and Demography, Field Director – Denise Pumain
The World in its Divisions: Borders and Discontinuities,Subject Head – Clarisse Didelon-Loiseau
Territorial Division for Public Action
Coordinated by
Antoine Laporte
Antonine Ribardière
First published 2025 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUKwww.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USAwww.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2025The rights of Antoine Laporte and Antonine Ribardière to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024952060
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78945-202-0
ERC code:SH7 Human Mobility, Environment, and Space SH7_1 Human, economic and social geography SH7_8 Land use and planning
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Catherine Valton (IRD/Prodig), who was responsible for the layout and harmonization of all the figures, as well as for the production of many of the maps in this book.
Introduction
Antoine LAPORTE1 and Antonine RIBARDIÈRE2
1 UMR 5600 EVS, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France
2 UMR 8586 PRODIG, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, France
I.1. Introduction
Early in antiquity, even in the most primitive forms of statehood, the development of political structures was accompanied by the demarcation of land and the description of the extent of power through the definition of internal boundaries. Without going back to the prosaic foundation of Rome by Romulus tracing a furrow, drawing boundaries in space is an integral part of political action. From Clisthenes, who set up electoral districts in the city of Athens 2,600 years ago, to today’s European Union, which distributes its funds on the basis of the regional divisions of its member states, public action, administration, territorial management and the functioning of political representation systems are all linked to numerous territorial divisions.
Often, political regimes that present themselves as a break with the past reshape divisions, which sometimes constitute genuine geographical translations of an approach to society and state power. These are fundamental acts. Certain eras, for example, are quicker to set up new territorial divisions: during the French Revolution or the Napoleonic Empire in France, at the founding of the United States of America, in Turkey’s rising from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, in Nazi Germany’s establishment of a totalitarian regime. In democratic states, the constitution, maintenance and frequent revision of territorial divisions are inherent to the organization of social and political life, to the holding of elections, to the mechanisms for redistributing wealth or to the establishment of zoning for targeted policies; e.g. for a neighborhood in difficulty, for an environment to be preserved. The choice of a unitary or federal system, concentrated or decentralized, has direct consequences for the partitioning of space, and for the effects it generates. Similarly, the welfare state in Europe and North America, from the end of the 19th century onwards, could not take shape without a territorial definition of the respective responsibilities of the state, other levels of governance and the private sphere. The administrative organization of local authorities, the preservation of the environment or ensuring that citizens have equitable access to education, healthcare or justice are common examples of actions that require prior reflection on the design of specific spatial divisions or zoning.
And yet, while it is obvious that we are faced with an inescapable political operation, there is a counterargument to be made against the idea that territorial divisions, the frameworks for public action within states, are part of a classic, even outdated, administrative geography. The issues at stake are essentially technical and have little to do with the transformations taking place in today’s world. Indeed, nothing seems more outmoded than an approach to geography reduced to the systematic description of territories on sad “political” maps, juxtaposed with colored polygons. At school, geography has long since moved away from the purely descriptive caricature in which it was confined – that of a world based on a puzzle formed by states on a planisphere or by regions on the map of a state. Power relationships between levels of governance, particularly between states and local levels, are increasingly addressed exclusively by political science or law. The same applies to the study of regional development and federalism. In geography, the division of space often seems to take a back seat.
Moreover, an analysis of the grammar of spatial divisions and zoning would also be at odds with an approach that emphasizes poles, the flows that link them and interstitial spaces on the verge of marginalization. For several decades now, metropolization – the ever-increasing concentration of population, employment, economic development and decision-making centers in the world’s largest cities – has led geographers to describe the world in terms of networks, rather than simply as a patchwork of territories. It is clear that the phenomena contributing to globalization are increasingly capable of producing contemporary geographical space. Trade routes, land and air transport, and information – transfigured since the advent of extensive digital practices – are reshaping a world that is increasingly independent of territorial divisions. This approach helps to describe a space marked by the retreat of the state, or as French political scientist Bertrand Badie put it, an “end of territories” (Badie 1995). In a word, spatial divisions inspired by public organizations, for the purposes of administration, management and even territorial differentiation, would have only a weakened capacity to create discontinuities. While interstate limits – in a word, borders – constitute a genuine field of study within the discipline, the internal limits of states constitute a secondary object of study.
This book proposes precisely the opposite approach: it seems to us that it is at a time when territorial approaches are being questioned, or even shunned, that it is relevant to look again at the ways in which territorial divisions are composed, implemented and constantly modified, and how they contribute fully to the implementation, successes and failures of public policies.
I.2. The loss of state, paradoxically, requires a lot of administrative divisions
The lack of interest in territorial divisions among geographers is clearly coupled with a decline in the capacity of the State, which is the main agent in the creation and maintenance of these administrative divisions. Since the 1970s, both Europe and North America have witnessed a decline in economic growth and a gradual retreat of the state in the provision of public services. The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the structural challenges of state budgets by increasing debt. The emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s had already led governments, long before the subprime crisis in the United States, to privatize services or reduce their territorial density and, in many cases, their quality.
The State’s loss of power, or at least its questioning, is not only due to the privatization of its functions, but also to forms of delegation to other levels of public governance, notably intermediate or local. The phenomena of federalization, devolution, autonomization and decentralization, depending on the terms used in different national contexts, all point to a gradual strengthening of intermediate levels. By no longer being the sole public actor, the State contributes, in a way against its will, to reinforcement of boundaries over which it has less control. In so doing, the divisions corresponding to these intermediate or local levels are potential vehicles for disparities in the implementation of public policies, and even inequalities in access to citizens’ rights. The weakening of the State would therefore go hand in hand with an increase in territorial differentiation, and territorial divisions would constitute a privileged vector: this is the hypothesis examined in several chapters of this book – particularly those grouped together in the second part of this work, entitled “Territorial Division and Access to Rights”.
I.3. An abundance of territorial division
Territorial divisions serve a variety of purposes. To provide an initial overview, we have borrowed the classification proposed by Christophe Terrier (2005). He contrasts divisions of power, knowledge and ownership1. It should be noted that this initial proposal is less a typology of divisions than a categorization of the logics involved in making simple real-world territorial divisions.
Firstly, the so-called “divisions of power” correspond to administrative entities, generally divided up under the aegis of the State. They constitute political territories, often electoral, which are also boundaries for public policy action. They form the classic administrative frameworks and are questioned in terms of the adequacy of their competency as it pertains to the tiers of actions and resources allocated via State allocations or collected through tax revenues. Their critical approach often leads to the search for a “territorial optimum”, a kind of division that is as ideal as it is unattainable. As Jean-Marc Offner writes: “The concomitant search for ‘relevant’ territories and simplified divisions – in other words, the dual ambitions of dimensional optimum and spatial coherence – appears technically unworkable and politically unfounded. We have to deal with the irreducibility of the oppositions between specialization and globality, on the one hand, and between functional and civic legitimacies, on the other” (Offner 2006, authors’ translation).
Far from the simplicity of a purely administrative division, divisions of power are complex objects, with economic, social and political dimensions that are articulated but not always superimposed.
Then, there are the “divisions of knowledge”. For Terrier, these are the divisions of “knowers”. These stem from a different form of rationality than divisions of power since they are divisions for the purpose of knowing and describing a territory. They make it possible to distinguish, according to criteria worked out a priori, between urban and rural areas, between areas in decline or in difficulty, or between the catchment area of a given locality. More broadly speaking, divisions of knowledge are those used to collect and process official statistics. The use of information for statistical and fiscal purposes is one of the oldest prerogatives of the State, and the organization of a census is based on a division of space. At the most local level, the establishment of a land register gives legitimacy and protection to private property and forms the basis for tax collection. Because they provide a framework for the production of knowledge, and thus for the potential evaluation of public policies, divisions of knowledge can slide into the realm of divisions of power and vice versa. The case of zoning used in the context of urban policy (see Chapter 10) is a textbook example of this porosity between the division of power and the division of knowledge: the boundaries of priority districts were for a time fixed, because the infra-municipal divisions used to disseminate the census, and in so doing, for the evaluation of urban policy itself, were very often based on the boundaries of priority districts. Lastly, the “divisions of ownership” refer to the logic of collective appropriation. These are often more difficult to identify a priori. They refer to the representations of individuals or distinct groups, which, when transformed into discourse, become spaces for legitimizing, circumventing or rejecting divisions, as shown by the examples of territorial divisions in education (see Chapter 7), justice (see Chapter 6) or social policy (see Chapter 8). In France, the resistance of the departmental level to successive territorial reforms, or on the contrary, the fragility of an intermunicipal division imposed by the State, can be analyzed through this lens (see Chapters 1 and 2).
While the focus of this collective publication is resolutely on the division of power, the other dimensions that may be associated with it will also feature prominently in the authors’ reflections. Eminently political, territorial divisions are first and foremost the result of a confrontation of points of view, of conflicts between actors who have as much to do with divergent uses, interests and representations. Somewhat provocatively, but without many examples to contradict it, it can be said that no division satisfies everyone. Whether they are arbitrary or the result of the application of forms of rationality, divisions are the object of controversy: through the examples developed by the authors, discussion and negotiation around the layout of territorial divisions are present in almost every chapter of this book.
Thereafter, once installed, these divisions constitute the boundaries for management, and even for the definition of public policies. The adequacy between the description of a division and its capacity to integrate the competencies assigned to it is the subject of much debate. For example, the merger of municipal entities in recent decades in Europe has been based on the idea that their modest size was an obstacle to the implementation of ambitious local projects. Meeting the challenge of transferring powers is not just a question of the size of the entity: nevertheless, the question of the resources allocated to each territorial entity is another recurring theme for the authors of this book.
I.4. Towards a spatial turn in public action analysis?
In our view, the observation of public action through division, and therefore through a territorial and spatial dimension, is relevant because it is rooted in a long-term trend in the social sciences. We are aware, however, that this point of view has not always been topical and that it is part of a particular epistemological context.
The regional approach has long been approached in French geography through the analysis of discontinuities in environments and their modes of valorization. The political dimension, when it appeared (Vallaux 1911; Vidal de la Blache 1917; Brunhes and Vallaux 1921), was confined to an approach centered on the State and the construction of the national territory. In this field, the re-emergence of the political dimension in geography, dating back to the work of Pierre George and Yves Lacoste, took several years to integrate elements of internal geopolitics into territorial divisions.
The spatial turnaround in the study of territorial divisions, though fundamentally a spatial object, is to be found more among academics who have drawn on political philosophy for elements of understanding space. A new generation has placed geographical studies within a more theoretical investigation of spatiality (Lefebvre 1968; Raffestin 1980) and has questioned the contexts in which territorial discontinuities are expressed (Haggett 1966).
Claude Raffestin, using the masterly example of the definition of the French départements in 1789, demonstrated resolutely how territorial division was part of the social and political project it framed (1980). Depending on whether or not the division corresponds to a territory with which a society identifies, he proposes a distinction between “concrete” and “abstract” divisions, taken up by Marie-Claude Maurel in her geopolitical approach to political-administrative divisions (1984). Roger Brunet, for his part, played a major role in establishing the vocabulary used to describe the divisions of geographical space, suggesting after discussion that the term “division” should be reserved for territorial partitions (Brunet 1997a, 1997b, 2001), an option taken up by other authors, notably François Durand-Dastès, in his article “maillage” (sic “territorial division”) in the Dictionnaire de la Géographie published under the direction of Jacques Lévy and Michel Lussault (2003). More quantitative approaches explore the facets of division, which is used on a case-by-case basis to form homogeneous shapes in states where the population is obviously not evenly distributed (Bailly et al. 1999). Division thus becomes a means of thinking about discontinuity, discussing its relevance and effects, and even, in the European context, measuring the role of the nation state in a context of developing community policies (Grasland 1991; Grasland and Hamez 2005) or of maintaining over the very long-term international borders that have been erased in social and electoral behavior (von Hirschhausen 2017). The increasingly widespread use of interactive cartography, and of geographic information systems in general, has led to the emergence of a substantial body of literature on the treatment of “geometries” and how, in particular, to manage their evolution by circumventing the effects of the Modifiable Area Unit Problem (MAUP).
In the case of France, publications multiplied from the 1990s onwards, at a time when public reports were criticizing the complexity of the French territorial mille-feuille layer-cake (Auroux 1998), while new territorialities were taking shape as a result of the increased mobility of agents (Debarbieux and Vanier 2002). The general context for the creation of new territories was the development of intermunicipality and increased decentralization. Theoretical and methodological approaches were developed, such as Terrier’s (already mentioned), or methods for measuring their effects (Grasland 1997). Since then, the literature has become both sparser and more scattered (Boulineau and Didelon-Loiseau 2020).
Outside France, many European countries have been undergoing changes to their territorial divisions, predominantly since the 1990s. The United Kingdom was discussing devolution with Scotland. Germany was reunifying and had to combine very different administrative structures. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the literature in France on the question of territorial divisions shifted mainly to Central Europe, which was emerging from a centrally planned economy and was undergoing a profound reshaping of its territorial divisions, offering the study of different variations in the relationship between political projects and political-administrative divisions (Boulineau 2003; Rey and Saint-Julien 2005). In this region, the modification of territorial structures is both the result of a need for democratization, which requires a rethinking of local and regional frameworks, and the prospect of accession to the European Union. This issue has also been tackled in Turkey (Montabone 2013).
It is true that the transformations that followed the events of 1989 in Europe were particularly spectacular at the time. Berlin, the capital of a reunified Germany, is a good example of this proliferation of thinking about divisions. Between 1989, when the Wall came down, and the 2010s, the city’s internal divisions were radically reshaped. With reunification in 1990, the international border that ran through the city disappeared. Subsequently, in its eastern part, the creation of new districts changed its administrative physiognomy, before they were themselves merged in 2001, often (and this was politically conscious and deliberate) with districts formerly in West Berlin. Electoral districts were changed twice, as were postal codes. Tracking the city’s internal statistical evolution over this period is a real challenge, since, in the rare cases where it is possible, information must be retrieved longitudinally at the district level (Laporte 2016).
I.5. Why in France?
The final theme of this book is the study of a particular country. Rather than shedding light on distinct spaces, reflecting different political and territorial cultures, it was more important for us to present a variety of territorial divisions with different forms and functions, which at the same time operate within the same territory.
Of course, it would be a fascinating exercise to put into perspective the issues associated with divisions in different political and territorial systems. We would need to look at the distribution of functions between levels and the equalization of resources in federal systems, whether substantial as in Germany or Canada, or non-existent as in the United States; the processes of federalization or regionalization that characterize Belgium, Italy or Spain; and the in-depth reforms of local government systems carried out since the 1960s in the United Kingdom, Germany or in the 2000s and with a certain radicalism in Denmark.
Instead, we have chosen to focus on a specific context, allowing us to delve into the variety of divisions, in terms of functions, forms, size, historical depth and political projects. France is clearly one of many possible examples. This European country, belonging to the “Global North” and therefore rather well-to-do, may nevertheless have the particularity of concentrating a certain number of territorial issues. As a unitary state, it has a long-standing administrative structure, many of which date back to the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. Its age, its original character in relation to democracy and the imprint of a certain idea of equality, create a matrix to which many actors refer. Perhaps more than anywhere else, the term “territory” has been widely used in the political sphere over the last few decades, becoming synonymous with the region, the local area and the political scope, whose main quality is proximity to the population. In the mouths of decision-makers, it refers to all local authorities, and serves as a metaphor for a France outside the metropolitan areas, whose public policies are aimed at development and countering the fear of decline.
Territorial divisions are both numerous (Figures I.1–I.3) and criticized as costly. In a country in debt to the tune of 3,228 billion euros by mid-2024, territorial organization is becoming a lever for potential savings. Governments are constantly raising the issue of the division of the public service as they seek to achieve “economies of scale”, which often resemble “economies of status”.
On the one hand, certain territorial divisions seem to have lost their relevance, as they have been overtaken by a “network logic” and no longer correspond to the effects of identity politics. At the same time, the obsolescence of certain grids has gone hand in hand with a frenzy of network-building over the last two or three decades, in public policy sectors that are very different from one another.
I.6. Numerous divisions of French administration
Divisions are produced, imagined and discussed by countless actors in the name of two unattainable objectives: on the one hand, to reduce the profusion of divisions and enlarge territorial entities in order to achieve economies of scale; on the other hand, to seek the territorial optimum, i.e. the perfect division that strikes the right balance between scope and capacity to make decisions and implement public policy. The book therefore explores the conditions under which divisions are set up and how they are discussed. It is divided into three parts, the first dealing with political administrative frameworks, the second with the way in which public services appropriate these divisions and the third with examples of the implementation of zoning, i.e. a discontinuous division.
The five contributions in the first part take stock of the reshaping of the administrative map. As eminently concrete divisions and frameworks for the democratic game, administrative divisions form the basis for the implementation of public action. While the first four chapters focus on the French context, the fifth offers an insight into the future of a territorial division set in place by colonization, as per the case of Tunisia, which has been profoundly revised in the wake of the Arab Spring.
This section opens with Antoine Laporte’s contribution, devoted to the old communal and departmental divisions, still essential landmarks in the French political and administrative landscape. By the end of the 19th century, increasing urbanization was calling into question the finesse of communal boundaries, now overwhelmed by urban sprawl and unable to reflect the geography of towns. But it was the decentralization movement of the early 1980s that really transformed the French territorial system, with the imposition of two new administrative levels: the regions, at supra-departmental level, and the Public Establishments of Intermunicipal Cooperation (Etablissements Publics de Coopration Intercommunale, EPCIs), at the supramunicipal level, which gradually became widespread. Decentralization accelerated in the early 2010s. By the early 2020s, municipalities and départements were still present, albeit in a more fragile form. Municipalities are called upon to merge to meet the challenges of metropolization, while the departmental level has been weakened by decentralization that has not always been accompanied by the necessary resources. The reconfigurations highlighted in this chapter can be found in many others.
Guillaume Vergnaud and Antoine Laporte continue this reflection by looking back at the genesis of the intermunicipal cooperation, a “silent revolution” that nonetheless played a decisive role in the French territorial system. The conditions under which it was set up clearly illustrate the stakes between local interests and State incentives (or even injunctions), both in the establishment of boundaries and in the implementation of public policies. The generalization of this division reshuffles the deck in terms of the conditions under which public policies are exercised and contributes to local levels of government that are still difficult for citizens to handle.
Next, Xavier Desjardins focuses on a very specific intermunicipality, that of the Métropole du Grand Paris (MGP). The stakes associated with this perimeter, and also the blockages that result in particular from the maintenance of an intermediary intermunicipal level between the municipalities and arrondissements and the MGP, illustrate in a remarkable way the political stakes associated with intermunicipal issues. In concrete terms, resources and competencies remain essentially associated with this intermediary intermunicipal level, and not with the MGP. In fact, the objectives of solidarity and development on a metropolitan scale come up against competition between territories and the metropolitan logic of accumulation. Certainly, some forms of steering exist at the metropolitan level, but they are more associated with the management of rail networks or the State’s structuring investments in the capital region, than with the new boundary of the metropolitan area.
Anne-Lise Humain-Lamoure’s chapter explores another high point in the production of political divisions: that of neighborhood councils, which since 2002 have provided a framework for residents’ participation in the definition of local projects, mainly in the field of spatial planning. Debates are considered at two levels. At the parliamentary level, when the law was being debated, the arguments put forward for and against this new “territorial division” clearly reflect the political dimension associated with the territorial organization of democratic life. Among the issues is the defense of autonomy at the municipal level, threatened this time from below. At the local level, the example of the Ile-de-France region bears witness to the pragmatism shown by elected representatives in the final design of the new territorial division, combining different division logics – without the choices made clearly reflecting political positions. In the end, the new division remained relatively stable and the associated issues were contained, as per the image of those raised by the participatory processes in general.
Finally, Maher Ben Rebah takes us on a detour via Tunisia, where he investigates the democratic issues associated with administrative division. Here again, the issue is less technical than it might seem: territorial inequalities were at the heart of the challenge to the hyper-centralized state during the 2010 revolution. A central element of the post-revolution decentralization process was the revision of the country’s entire territorial organization, right down to the design of the divisions themselves. In terms of the municipal divisions, the first level of local government and elected citizen representation had previously been reserved for urban areas only. The “municipalization” of the entire national territory was thus an essential step in the decentralization process. Using methods derived from spatial analysis, the author highlights the criteria used to draw up the new divisions, in particular the various forms of trade-off between density and surface area, as well as the weight of the legacy of pre-existing administrative divisions. Using the cities of Tunis and Kasserine as examples, he shows how the maintenance or, on the contrary, the reworking of existing communal boundaries affects the local roots of political parties and, in so doing, the re-composition of the political landscape at local and national level.
I.7. The division of operational public services
The second part of this work examines four abstract divisions, largely unknown to the general public, within which access to fundamental rights is organized: justice, education, social assistance and health. Far from being immutable, these territorial divisions are subject to recurrent revision, justified by arguments combining rationalization and modernization. However, it would be wrong to reduce the reworking of scopes and the broader redrawing of boundaries to budgetary concerns alone. It is not just a question of making savings, but also of transforming the way public services are accessed. These issues are all the more pertinent given that the divisions, through the pragmatisms they provide for, are the primary tools on which equal access to rights is based.
Etienne Cahu begins with the judicial map, a revolutionary legacy in tension between territorial equality and budgetary rationalism. Using available data, the author seeks to shift the theoretical debate to identify the concrete effects of the layout and size of the division on citizens’ access to the courts, on the one hand, and on local judicial practices, on the other hand. His findings are unequivocal. The performance indicators used to justify the latest reforms conceal not only political maneuvering associated with changes to the judicial map, but also, and above all, the profound inequalities caused by the overloading of the most important courts. While the latest changes to the judicial map do not appear to have hampered citizens’ access to the court system, courts are nevertheless overwhelmed by the number of complaints and, as a result, are adapting their practices, in a survival strategy that breaks national equality of treatment.
Jean-Christophe François continues with another division at the heart of the principal of republican equality: school sectors. He traces the gradual emergence of partition as a means of assigning pupils to schools according to their place of residence. In so doing, the school map embraces the social division of residential space, and the author demonstrates how it amplifies it, making schools one of the primary drivers of socio-spatial segregation in urban areas – even though the school map is paradoxically set up as a tool to promote social diversity. Focusing on middle schools, this chapter looks at the avoidance strategies of families who, in their desire to offer their children the best possible opportunities, are contributing to an increase in inequalities between schools, as well as the political choices that have successively made this “drama of the republican school” possible.
Antonine Ribardière then turns to a more discreet, but nonetheless essential, division for access to rights: that of departmental social policy, within which the work of social workers is organized. The author delves into the engineering of these divisions by examining the successive reforms implemented in five départements in the Paris region. The instability of these divisions is partly due to their technical dimension and to the need for départements to adapt pragmatically to socio-demographic changes. In contrast, the reforms signal the transition from administrative zoning to a tool for territorializing the département’s public action. This can also be seen in team management – the latter sometimes revealing divergent conceptions of the very notion of public service between départements. The recent decision by the départements to align their social policy divisions with the intermunicipal map seems to be laying the foundations for stabilizing the territorial division. Paradoxically, it is the intermunicipal level that is consolidating the departmental level – even though the two levels are often presented as competing.
Finally, Catherine Mangeney, Emmanuel Eliot, Véronique Lucas-Gabrielli, Guillaume Chevillard and Magali Coldefy have joined forces to reconstruct the historical breadth of French healthcare networks. Rarely has a network been the bearer of so many contradictory injunctions: as a framework for centralized planning, or at least a conveyor belt for national policies and guidelines, but also the formalization at local level of inter-personal and inter-establishment synergies; as a tool for cost control, but also for reducing inequalities in healthcare provision between different regions; as a division adapted to the specific features of different medical specialties (maternity, psychiatry, gerontology), but also as a framework for organizing cooperation between professionals, establishments and outpatient medicine. The redrawing of boundaries, name changes and redefinition of missions at different levels of organization have reached their limits, and the authors conclude that the effectiveness of a health care network that remains highly opaque is still far from clear.
I.8. Public action in practice: from division to zoning
The third part deals with somewhat unusual territorial divisions, which do not aim to cover the entire territory, but rather to implement “positive territorial discrimination”. It opens with the question of the zoning used to implement urban policy, which since the late 1970s has targeted large-scale social housing estates, most of which are located on the outskirts of metropolitan areas.
Violette Arnoulet and Christine Lelévrier recall the controversies associated with such a territorial approach to social issues: is the aim to improve the situation of residents, or to reduce concentrations of poverty, in line with a social diversity objective? As the objectives and means of urban policy have been successively reformulated, the experimental approach of the early days has become institutionalized without becoming fully established. The authors’ critical presentation of the construction of “priority neighborhoods” as a category of public action provides an opportunity to delve into the engineering of these divisions, at a historic site of urban policy in Seine-Saint-Denis. Negotiations between local councilors and State representatives to draw up new boundaries in 2013–2014 highlight not only the highly centralized nature of this hyper-local policy, but also the lack of stability in the positioning of the intermunicipal level. Finally, 50 years after the first experiments, the question of working-class suburbia remains unanswered. Despite the debates associated with a territorialized approach to urban policy, the authors underline one of the reasons for its longevity: the budgetary costs of a “de-territorialized” approach, which would necessarily involve a strengthening of social policies.
We change scale with Lionel Laslaz’s chapter, which presents the extraordinary variety of territorial divisions for the protection of nature. He shows the extent to which the design of different zoning schemes, which cover the territory of several municipalities, reflects a social and political dimension, as much as the identification of the biological wealth of certain territories. The example of the Alpine parks is a particularly good illustration of the tug-of-war between the objective of protection and that of economic development and tourism: ski resorts are at the heart of the negotiations described by the author, giving us a glimpse of yet another way in which zoning is created. The final object is complex, at once abstract (boundaries are not necessarily legible on the ground) and concrete (markings and other boundaries remind us that certain uses are prohibited), all the more so when it is made up of several nested zonings, corresponding to decreasing levels of protection from the center to the periphery. In addition to the lack of legibility, this over-protection can lead to saturation effects on the part of local actors, hindering their commitment to protection objectives.
Pascal Chevalier and Guillaume Lacquement then immerse us in the zoning of public action in rural areas. Once again, the division approach proves fruitful. The authors’ retrospective approach highlights the changing forms of public intervention, from the first five-year plans in the post-war period, when zoning was used to modernize agriculture, to the contractual policies that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing more on economic diversification and local development, and which were consolidated in the late 1980s within the European framework. Territory division as project planning is now essential, the boundaries of which, but above all the content, are likely to evolve according to the actors who support and invest in it. The implementation of public action relies heavily on local dynamics and territorial governance practices, which vary from place to place.
This section closes with a detailed review of the official literature and debates surrounding the “rural revitalization zones”, the counterpart to the priority zoning of urban policy. Christophe Quéva shows how the contours of this zoning system, which specifically targets rural areas in difficulty, have been shaped by the reorganization of the French territorial system: in the early 2000s, as part of the government’s drive to encourage the development of intermunicipal cooperation, membership of an EPCI became a necessary condition for benefiting from the tax exemptions contained in the scheme. As a result, the number of municipalities concerned increased considerably, undermining the derogatory nature of the zoning and hence its legitimacy. At the same time, it is territorial equity itself that is gradually being called into question: this ideal, at the origin of the scheme, is tending to be replaced in public debates by the objective of reinforcing the attractiveness of territories – or at least, tending towards territorial equity. The semantic shift is not insignificant, in the sense that competitiveness between territories, or at least the existence of inequalities between territories, is now assumed.
To make it easier to understand the subject covered in the various chapters, a full-page map appears in each of the contributions, showing the division(s) in question and their scale of definition and, where appropriate, introducing landmarks or key figures to help understand the text. Catherine Valton was responsible for most of the production of these comparable maps, to whom we would like to express our warmest thanks.
Figure I.1.Map showing 18 regions and 101 départements
(see https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2008466)
Figure I.2.Map showing 1,254 Public Establishments for Intermunicipal Cooperation (Établissements publics de coopération intercommunale, EPCIs)
(see https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2008466)
Figure I.3.Map showing 34,955 municipalities
(see https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2008466)
I.9. References
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Note
1.
Christophe Terrier attributes the term “division of ownership” (
maillages d’avoir
) to senior civil servant Jean-Marie Delarue.
PART 1Territorial Division and the Political Project
1France’s Départements and Municipalities: Fossils or Phoenixes?
Antoine LAPORTE
UMR 5600 EVS, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France
1.1. Introduction
France’s administrative system has undergone profound changes in just a few decades. Designed for the most part in the Napoleonic era, it is made up of a large number of municipalities, followed by a hierarchy of territories, often of homogeneous size, which fit into one another: arrondissements, départements and then, from the 1950s onwards, the regions. The territorial reform voted in 2015, aimed at merging certain regions, as shown by the example of Normandy (Figure 1.1), is accompanied by profound transformations of the administrative system such as the development of the intermunicipality, i.e. the merging of municipalities.
For several decades now, France’s administrative divisions have been undergoing profound changes in their territorial boundaries and legal jurisdictions. This process is taking place against a backdrop of devolution of powers from the State to lower levels, as has been the case in many European countries since the 1970s and 1980s. It would undoubtedly be an exaggeration to consider the proliferation of decentralization laws as a radical and unprecedented breakthrough in the two centuries of history of territorial structures in France. However, the reorganization of regions, the development of intermunicipalities, the merging of municipalities into “new municipalities”, the emergence of metropolitan areas and the decline of former capital cities give the impression of unprecedented changes in French territorial divisions between 1980 and 2010.
Figure 1.1From two regions into one: the administrative division of Normandy before and after the 2015 territorial reform
(sources: Geofla 2013; Insee 2020)
The texts proposed for the so-called “decentralization” reforms, always initiated by the State, overturn structures that are evolving in a unitary State with a traditionally highly centralized organization. The frenzy to create new subdivisions at the national level, the debate on mergers and the creation of additional administrative levels have gone hand in hand with a dilution of competences, more complex relations between local actors and increasingly limited resources for all levels. These movements stem from a sincere desire to promote local autonomy, as well as from hopes of substantial savings in a context of enduring public finance crisis. The French territorial structure is described as “mille-feuilles” layer-cakes that are ever more complex, bureaucratic and costly.
As a result of these reforms, the département and municipality, whose structures were inherited from the French Revolution, are seeing their powers and even their very existence called into question. They are said to have become narrow, outdated and incompatible with the way territories function today. The 101 départements are the traditional intermediary level between the local level and the State, the framework for prefectural administration and the boundary of many public services. The municipality, a basic territorial entity that has long been unbreakable, is the most local level, where democracy is exercised over the smallest population.
At the same time, the regions and intermunicipal groupings that came into being only a few decades ago are gaining in importance. The wider catchment areas they encompass seem more in tune with contemporary spatial practices, marked by urban sprawl and the lengthening of everyday distances.
The aim of this chapter is to describe the background to the genesis, development and, in some cases, decline of France’s administrative levels, in the light of the decentralization laws that have followed one another since the Defferre Acts of 1982–1983. In particular, it looks at the evolution of such long-standing levels as départements and municipalities, against a backdrop of redefined State missions and competition between administrative levels. The design of a territorial division reveals political contexts that are inevitably linked to the needs of a particular era. In this case, the evolution of French administrative divisions shows the shift from a situation in which the State saw territorial divisions and the institutions that embodied them as a tool for controlling local autonomy, to a situation in which the State saw its administration as a costly apparatus that was ill-suited to a population that was increasingly unevenly distributed across the territory.
The philosophy behind the division of the French départements and municipalities at the time of the French Revolution, and then their stability over two centuries, illustrate the workings of a highly centralized State, concentrating decision-making capacities.
We then look back at the new situation that began to emerge in the 1980s, with the development of competencies on new perimeters: the regions and intermunicipal structures.
Finally, the 2010s present a particular period of accelerating reforms and progressive complexity of the administrative apparatus.
1.2. Republican equality embodied by regular territorial division
France’s administrative structure is based on the principles of territorial division implemented at the time of the French Revolution, which are the matrix of today’s territorial organization.
