1 The word tutelle was legally replaced by contrôle administratif in the Constitution of 1946, but is still universally employed.
2 Crozier, M., The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (London: Tavistock, 1965); La Société Bloquée, (Paris: Seuil, 1970).
3 Kesselman, M., ‘Overinstitutionalization and Political Constraint: the Case of France’, Comparative Politics, III (1970/1971), 21–44. See also his book The Ambiguous Consensus (New York: Knopf, 1967). Kesselman acknowledges his debt to the seminal article of Worms, J-p., ‘Le Préfet et ses notables’, Sociologie du Travail, VII (1966), 249–76.
4 Their service titles, Ponts et Chaussées and Génie Rural, are still the best known, though they now appear as divisions of the Ministry of Equipment and the Ministry of Agriculture respectively.
5 M. Kesselman, ‘Overinstitutionalization’.
6 Hayward, Jack and Wright, Vincent, ‘The 37,708 Microcosms of an Indivisible Republic’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXIV (1971), 284–311, provide an early analysis of the election results. The anti-GauIlist Association des Maires is the most powerful body in the capital representing local authorities, and government attempts to divert support from it have had little success.
7 UN Publication ST/TAO/M/19, Decentralization for National and Local Development. The French however employ no blanket term. For them decentralisation normally means devolution.
8 Georges Vedel, in a review of Les Citoyens au Pouvoir (Le Monde, 5 April 1968), recalls that it was an old gambit of the Second Empire government to equivocate, for its own advantage, between deconcentration and devolution.
9 ‘Le grand dessein de la société francaise, aujourd'hui et dans les annees qui viennent, c'est la décentralisation. Ce que nous voulons c'est ramener les competences et les décisions aussi pres que possible des hommes qu'elles concernent.’ Speech to Mouvement National des Elus Locaux, 11 December 1970.
10 Savigny, J. De, L'Etat contre les Communes? (Paris: Seuil, 1971). Specifically, the writer proposes a three-tier structure, with executive power concentrated in the middle tier — above the commune and below the Department.
11 Syndicat Intercommunal à Vocation Unique (SIVU).
12 Syndicat Intercommunal à Vocation Multiple (SIVM).
13 Detton, H. and Hourticq, J., L'Administration régionale et locale de la France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 115. The district closely resembles a SIVM in its structure and financing. Until 1971 the legal term was district urbain, but there was nothing in the law to guarantee the urban character of such a grouping.
14 Marcellin, M., Minister of the Interior, addressing presidents of the conseils généraux at Paris, 4 02 1971.
15 Notably in the Fouchet Bill, which was dropped after the Paris disturbances of 1968.
16 Schmitt, C., ‘Le Regroupement des communes en France’, Revue Juridique et Politique Indépendance et Coopération, XXII (1968), 739–56.
17 Only fifty communes in all were freed from the requirement to submit their budgets for approval — M. Marcellin, 4 February 1971.
18 See Book IV of the Code Municipal. Ultimately these moves in the direction of a career service may strengthen the communes; but there is no doubt that the immediate effect was centralizing.
19 Sudreau, P., ‘Le Chemin de croix des elus locaux’, Le Monde, 13 and 14 10 1970.
20 Homont, A., ‘ La Gestion municipale et les libertés communales’, Actualités Juridiques (03 1971), 139–46.
21 Club Jean Moulin (Paris: Seuil, 1968).
22 The period is counted from the opening of the Autumn meeting of each conseil général, which by law falls between 1 September 1971 and 15 January 1972.
23 The ‘qualified majority’ is constituted by either half the communes of the area in question provided that they contain two-thirds of the total population; or two-thirds of the communes in the area, provided that they contain half of the population.
24 However the Conseil d'Etat had, until 1970, the power to create a district.
25 In the two articles in Le Monde.
26 M. Marcellin, 4 February 1971.
