ABSTRACT
The French state is increasingly exposed to new economic, social and cultural logics. The growing power of local and regional authorities in the public policy process is one of the most striking features of the erosion of the Jacobin myth of unity and indivisibility of the Republic. As the Republic was one and indivisible, so local-government units were long considered to be the antennae of central government. Contemporary France lies in the shrinking camp of unitary decentralised states. French regions lack the law-making powers of counterparts in Germany, Spain, Italy or the devolved governments in the UK. More than any other western European state, France retains a unitary system of government, whose elites are imbued with a belief in the wisdom and equity of central state guidance. The growing power of local and regional authorities in public-policy process is one of the most striking features of the erosion of the Jacobin myth of the unity and indivisibility of the Republic.
