ABSTRACT
The precipitous regionalization of France in the last 20 years, a ‘revolution tranquille’ in the words of historian Jean-Pierre Rioux, has prompted considerable debate within the broader context of political decentralization. Territorially, the French regions represent two very distinct sets of political institution, the twin pillars of French administrative and political structure. The French regions emerged, in the mid-1950s, as administrative units born of the post-war period of French growth and superimposed upon a cultural and territorial structure that, in certain cases, goes back many centuries. That process of superimposition was, and to a large extent remains, very uneven. Few of the French administrative regions can be said to correspond closely to genuine ethnic identities. The formal definition of the regions was made during a critical period of French economic modernization, which has to a large degree characterized their subsequent evolution and crucially influenced their role with respect to environmental policy-making.
