Contenu du sommaire : Le temps des mairies

Municipal politics and municipal governnements during the French Third Republic. A new perspective on the formation of the modem state Bruno Dumons Gilles Pollet The study of French municipal political systems institutionalization during the Third Republic must be replaced in the context of Republican state socio-genesis. To understand such a process, one must take into account the intercourse between national and local levels, center and periphery. Empirical research on municipal policies is a first step towards a sociology of local public action and political spaces and the recognition of local-level peculiarities. Modernist laboratory, political machine or supporter of the status quo, municipal government lies at the heart of a larger politico-administrative system and of a state co-ordination of local interests.

Revisiting the rise of the « compromis républicain » (republican compromise) : the role of mayors'associations in the institutionnal game under the Third Republic Patrick Le Lidec This article analyses relationships between central and local government during the French Third Republic. Focused on mayors' associations, it argues that the collective strategies for both members of parliament and mayors create salient interactions that shape the generai pattern of the French republican regime, giving local liberties a pivotal role. Thus, the paper shows how parliament's power and local government autonomy strengthen each other while they weaken the executive. This institutional arrangement is one of the core dynamics of the French Third Republic.

Managing the Mandate. The 1929 Act on the extended mayoral term and the redefinition of political space in France Guillaume Marrel Renaud Payre Since the 1929 Act the mayoral term has been extended from four to six years. Although it is now forgotten, this act offers an opportunity to analyse how a new definition of local authority's power could emerge at commune level. One of the first steps towards the temporal codification of municipal power, the bill was passed at the end of a twenty-year long debate in which the program of municipal reforms met some aspects of politicians' corporate interests. The purpose was to improve municipal management, which was undergoing transformation. A longer term was introduced as a compromise between two aspects of mayoral legitimacy: responsibility and election. It created a new character to be supported by some municipal reformers: the « urban manager ». First of all, it allowed elected representatives who had to face hazardous ballots based on universal franchise to get « notable » statuses. Hence the idea was not so much to improve municipal management as to reduce risks for some politicians who had to pay attention to their electoral carreer. As very special "notables" "cumulards" (holders of several elected positions) got hold of this proposed municipal reform.. On a political point of view being supported by interest groups such as the national association of mayors (Association des Maires de France) and the parliamentary group of senateurs-maires, they managed to have the bill passed.

Roubaix City council as «The beer-drinkers' council » (1892-1902). Learning and subverting the rules of the political game Rémi Lefebvre At the end of the nineteenth century, the working-class elite was granted a role in politics at the municipal level first. At that stage, local councils tended to become instrumental as socialists tried to use them in order to subvert the rules of the political game and to increase their resources. Thus they contributed to the shaping of the municipal authority. City councils were places where socialism was put into practice, and in that view they now make a useful research topic. Based on a case study (Roubaix working-class controlled city council, 1892- 1902) this article intends to show how the socialists finally found themselves transformed by the municipal corporation they meant to transform. Indeed they contributed to alter the institution by giving it a political dimension and by promoting municipal interventionism. But at the same time they had to adapt themselves to local customs and they tended to duplicate traditional practices.

French welfare services and benefits to the unemployed in the inter-war years. Nationalisation of action plans and re-organisation of local political territories Francoise de Barros There are very few pieces of work dealing with the actual way in which welfare services and benefits to the unemployed were managed in the inter-war years. Although these services were mainly local at that time, communes took part in a centralising process by giving central government an increasing responsibility. Communes supported this evolution ail the more than they retained control over the actual managing of welfare services and benefits to the unemployed. So, they were able to make political gains by delivering those services.

The National School of Municipal Administration. A process of professionalisation of the French city managers Emmanuel Bellanger After the WWI, the need for re-organizing communes became a matter of growing concern. In cities under constant urban development and demographic growth, management of municipal affairs in a reasonably prudent manner began to decline. Time was ripe to promote ambitious municipal interventionism. In 1922, a newly created program was intended to train local government staff under the title, renamed as "National School of Municipal Administration" in 1929, was the resuit of such a political shift. Supported and structured by regulatory authority, municipalities delegated professional and practical training of their managers to this school as they searched for qualified employees. Three generations of town clerks were educated, resulting in self-promoted, long life and uniformed knowledge and professional practices.

Marketing, or the hidden motive of the economy Franck Cochoy The paper discusses the possible contribution of marketers and marketing to the functioning of the market economy. Through the gathering of the managers' various forms of know-how and the reformulation of them as a science of real markets, the deviant economists who pioneered the marketing field at the beginning of the century succeeded in building bridges between the science of markets and their practice. In the interwar period, the application of industrial taylorism to the management of markets and the junction between marketing and the New Deal helped marketing to get a hold on the economy and to clandestinely animate the game of a weakened market. Paradoxically enough, the later transformations of marketing as a positive science, as pure academism or even as a social science often hostile towards managerial interests have only but extended the categories and the tools of the discipline to other compartments of society and economy. This evolution leads us to wonder if today marketing has not become the hidden motive of our modem economy.

From Decolonization... to Decentralization. The History of « Colonial » Prefect Véronique Dimier This article deals with the way former French colonial administrators were integrated into the prefectoral corps (from the 1960s onwards). We will see how these men transfered into their new fonction their former experience and conceptions of colonial administration ; how they used these experience and conceptions to gain some legitimacy in their new corps, in a context of fierce competition with prefets educated in the Ecole nationale d'Administration. This legitimacy was especially needed but difficult to obtain, as the integration of colonial civil servants into the French home administrative services was not expected, and as a consequence ill prepared and unwelcome. However, the « esprit de corps » which former colonial administrators developped at the Colonial School made thing easier.