French Territorial Administration and Changes in Public Management

Abstract

The French territorial architecture is quite original for several reasons. Its levels are numerous, indeed, we can identify five of them: the central power (or State)¹, the régions, the départements, the inter-community structures and the town – or village – councils. But none of them can exert a tutelary power on the others. Thus, the constitutional law guarantees the principle of the free administration of territorial authorities. However, in order to make cooperation clearer, the 2004 law of decentralization has introduced the principle of a coordinator, most of the time defined by the term leader, a position which can be acknowledged by contract to one of the communities by all the other actors in some projects.