A DETHRONED KING? THE LIMITS OF STATE INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER IN FRANCE
| Date | 01 June 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12057 |
| Author | CLAIRE DUPUY,JULIE POLLARD |
| Published date | 01 June 2014 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12057
A DETHRONED KING? THE LIMITS OF STATE
INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER IN FRANCE
CLAIRE DUPUY AND JULIE POLLARD
Since the 1980s in Western Europe, centralized states’ control over subnational territories has been
deeply affected by processes of Europeanization and regionalization. These changes have raised the
issue of state territorial restructuring in a particular fashion: what capacity have formerly centralized
states retained to steer and control subnational territories? The article draws on Mann’s concept
of infrastructural power, which refers to the state’s capacity to exercise control and implement
political decisions over the national territory. The article applies the two main operationalizations
of the concept, namely the capability of the state to exercise control and the weight of the state
in the subnational territories. Empirically, the article focuses on the French state in two policy
sectors (education and housing). Although France is a most likely case, this article challenges this
expectation, and shows the limits of the French state’s infrastructural power over the subnational
territories since the late 1980s.
INTRODUCTION
Since the 1980s in Western Europe, centralized states’ control over subnational territories
has been deeply affected by processes of decentralization, quasi-federalization, and
federalization, as well as by European integration. In the United Kingdom, France, Spain,
Belgium, and Italy, all formerly centralized states, these changes have raised the issue
of state territorial restructuring (Ansell and Di Palma 2004; Bartolini 2005; Leibfried and
Z¨
urn 2005) in a particular fashion: what capacity have formerly centralized states retained
to steer and control subnational territories?
This article tackles this issue by focusing on the French state. In France, since the
early 1980s, the ‘ongoing march’ of decentralization has led to an overall reconfiguration
of powers between the central state and the regional and local authorities (Le Gal`
es
2008a). Although the legal attributions of French regions and local authorities are rather
limited in comparison to most of their European counterparts, they have intervened
substantially beyond the legal framework. One outcome of decentralization processes is
that diverse forms of territorial governance are now part of the description of governance
and governing in contemporary France (Cole 2008).
There are two main reasons why France is a particularly interesting case through to
examine the central state’s power over its subnational territories. First, from the French
Revolution until now, the republican state and its policies have been tightly associated
with the idea of territorial equity (Ozouf 1988; Beaud 1999). This coupling is still very
strong in today’s political discourse and representations. The central state has continued
to present itself as the sole institution in charge of and able to secure ‘territorial equality’.
Behind this discourse, there are specific ways of formulating and implementing state
policies at the subnational level (Cole 2008; Le Gal`
es 2008b; Cole 2011b).
Second, looking at the post-decentralization laws period, recent studies emphasize
the persistence of central state power and show that the centre–periphery model1has
been upset since the 1980s. Institutional, electoral, and economic factors, as well as
Claire Dupuy is at ISPOLE, Universit´
e Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Julie Pollard is at IEPI,
University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 2, 2014 (359–374)
©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
360 CLAIRE DUPUY AND JULIE POLLARD
factors related to the policy capacity of subnational governments and types of territorial
governance have challenged the model (M´
eny 1987; Epstein 2005; Cole 2008; Le Gal`
es
2008a; Aust and Crespy 2009; Pinson 2010; Cole 2011a; Aust and Cret 2012). Still, emphasis
is put on the state’s (new) policy instruments and administrative arrangements, and on
their impact in terms of state power at the subnational level. The ‘steering at a distance’
argument is a clear instance of this type of analysis (Epstein 2005; Cole 2008). Alistair Cole
considers that the decentralization process in France may be understood as an attempt by
the central state to steer at a distance, that is, to strictly define and regulate public services
that are delivered by subnational governments (Cole 2008).
In addressing the issue of contemporary French central state power, this article takes
a different stand. The article argues that state power in subnational territories is to be
assessed through the way the state uses its resources, and not directly on the basis of its
resources alone. In this respect, it shows that the power of the French state is significantly
limited. Theoretically, the article draws on Michael Mann’s (1984, 1986) approach to
state power. Specifically, in Mann’s terms, the foundation of the state rests upon two
types of power: despotic power and infrastructural power. The former is a ‘power over’,
related to the military, and has declined throughout the twentieth century. In contrast,
infrastructural power is a ‘power to’ (King and Le Gal`
es 2011), and has developed strongly
since the Second World War in France as in other Western democracies (Skorowneck
2009).
In this article, the focus is thereby on infrastructural power, that is, on ‘the capacity of
the state actually to penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions
throughout the realms’ (Mann 1986, p. 113). Mann’s approach displays two main features
(Soifer and Vom Hau 2008): the fact that power is relational, and thus, that it rests upon
the organizational intermingling of state and non-state actors; and the fact that power has
an inherent spatial dimension.2
This notion of state infrastructural power has been operationalized in quite contradictory
ways (cf. Soifer and Vom Hau 2008). The two main operationalizations3make it possible
to test an approach based on existing state resources in subnational territories against an
approach based on the effective use of state resources, that is, the approach this article
supports. Indeed, one operationalization emphasizes the capability of the state to exercise
control, and thereby considers infrastructural power to be a dispositional attribute, based
on the resources at the state’s disposal. In this approach, we expect that the more resources
the central state has at its disposal, the stronger its infrastructural power will be.
In contrast, another operationalization looks at the weight of the state in the subnational
territories. It focuses on actual interventions, that is, on the resources the central state
actually deploys (Soifer 2008), and on the degree of state penetration into groups and
individuals across subnational territories. In this approach, we expect state infrastructural
power to be contingent on the way the state uses its resources. We point to two
complementary dimensions of the way in which a state makes use of its resources. The
first dimension is the coordination dimension, and refers to the state’s ability to coordinate
and impact non-state actors in the subnational territories. The second dimension is the
knowledge dimension: it refers to the state’s knowledge of non-state actors’ activities
when implementing state policies, that is, to the resources it deploys to acquire data on
what other actors do. We expect the weight of the state to be higher when the central state
is able to coordinate and impact territorial and sectoral actors, and when it knows what
non-state actors are doing in terms of implementing state-related policies.
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 2, 2014 (359–374)
©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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