Paris and the Provinces: The Politics of Local Government Reform in France

Conflict over the mechanisms that link local life to the national government is by no means limited to France. This book closely examines comparable events in Italy and analyses the factors that differentiate the strength of ‘ethnically’ based challenges to central authority in Britain, Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Canada, from the relative weakness of such challenges in France, Italy and Germany. By evaluating the territorial distribution between the capital and the countryside as both an influence on and an object of policy, Paris and the Provinces contributes significantly to understanding the connections between party politics and policy formation and will be of interest to students of political science, government, and public policy.