ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the process that gave birth to the Etablissement Public dAmenagement de Saint-Etienne (EPASE) and relocates it both in the history of French urban policies and of central state interventions in Saint-Etienne. It presents evidence of strong similarities between British Urban Development Corporations and the EPASE in terms of neoliberal policy objectives and neo-managerial policy instruments. The chapter also presents challenges to the descriptive dimension of the notion of neoliberalization. The links between the neoliberal governmentality and New Public Management recipes, including privatization, public–private partnerships, lean bureaucracies, Quangos and agencification, has long been established. Neoliberalization is not only a descriptive notion depicting dynamics of social, economic and political change and contrasted historical periods. In all cases, processes of neoliberalization affecting economic transactions, political choices and social relations are considered the main explanans of social change at various scales.
