Blockchain Papers

Lisa Passavant-Guion

For some years (2008-2010), territorial authorities have been facing a drastic decrease in their resources. The local business tax reform in 2010 has slowed down the dynamism of tax revenues. The regional political representatives no longer have the ability to determine the tax rate. The funds allocated by the State, after having first experienced a freeze in their value, are now reduced as a consequence of successive « stability », « responsibility » and "growth" pacts introduced by different governments. In parallel, the transfers of competences at the beginning of the 2000’s (rail transport and the second act of decentralization) are causing increasingly rigid financial charges for the Regions. Our research aims to understand the causes of these transformations and to qualify the changes that are impacting regional resources. It seeks to determine if there is a growing financialisation of regional politics or if, on the contrary, there is still some local political control despite budgetary constraint. Through a comparative analysis of three Regions (Limousin, Alsace and Nord-Pas-de-Calais), and based on the observation of the reorganization that is happening within regional institutions, our thesis envisages to understand how the political / financial duo evolves in a framework of unprecedented budget constraint.

Bob Hancké

This article discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the ‘Golden Age’, large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 1980s, and the traditional state‐financed way out of the problems was no longer available, they saw in these proto‐regional production systems a chance to become more competitive. They relied on the decentralization policies of the governments in the 1980s, and used the second‐order effects of the new policies as a means to modernize their own operations. L'article examine l'adaptation des grandes entreprises françaises, notamment la régionalisation de leurs structures de production dans les années 1980. Durant ‘l'Age d'Or’, les grosses entreprises avaient réorganisé géographiquement leurs activités: la planification stratégique restait à Paris, tandis que la production réelle se décentralisait en province, principalement pour résoudre des problémes de couûts et de conflits sociaux. Lorsque ces grandes entreprises se heurtèrent à la crise de rentabilité des années 1980, alors que la solution traditionnelle de financement étatique n'existait plus, elles virent dans ces systèmes de production proto‐régionaux une chance d'améliorer leur compétitivité. Elles s'appuyèrent donc sur les politiques de décentralisation des gouvernements de l'époque, profitant des effets secondaires de ces initiatives pour moderniser leur propre fonctionnement.

Gérard Pelissionnier, Jacky Perreur

A study of the process of administrative decentralization in the period of 1950 - 1983 is the subject of the present article. The substantial part of the discussion is devoted to presentation of actions undertaken after 1981, i.e. in the course of changes brought about by presidential and parliamentary elections. As far as the period to 1931 is concerned, the authors view its organizational moves as a manifestation of deconcentration of power tendencies, rather that a genuine decentralization. Legal acts enacted after 1981 prove a real will of the legislator to carry out a decentralization process. The article discusses in detail all acts and decrees regulating a new competence division between local communities and the state, changes in executive powers in regions and departments, new functions of regions,, new role of state representatives in communities, principles of financing and control a posteriori, possibilities of communities intervention in economic and social matters. All that results in eliminating the state's tutelage on local communities in the respect of administration and financing. The period which has passed since 1981 is too short to allow drawing any far reaching conclusions. It is therefore advised to undertake an attempt at resuming that new stage of decentralization after a certain time.