ABSTRACT
France is well known for two characteristics: an enduring self representation as a 'peasant society', even though farmers had become a minority in national and rural society before the last war; and the strength of a micro-local tradition of territorial administration originating in the Revolution, which resists even if decentralisation from the beginning of the 1980s has increased 'intercommunalité'. These peculiar features are highly influential politically and help to shape the character of rural restructuring in France. A decrease in agricultural power has generated a reaction to maintain the realisation at the national and EU level of the dangers of rural 'desertification'. A rural renewal by positive net migration and the 'ruralisation of industry' has seen the development of new local leaders tending to counterbalance urban political power. Rural and urban representations and controversies have played a considerable role in the resulting redistribution of power in rural France, as they have more specifically in French and EU development policies.
