Contenu du sommaire : L'Etat

Local Powers and Territories : An Approach to Political Spaces The principle of analysis of urban policies was, during the 1970s, mostly a function of the focalization of decisions at the center of society. The local level assumed meaning only in reaction to central initiatives. From a more anthropological approach, lineage and territorial components of political bonds can now come under analysis. However we should beware of invariance and seek elements of periodization.

Decentralization in the North of France : From the Girondins to the Jacobins (1789-1793) As administrative history proves, an obvious but not new idea is that administrative decentralization attracts the attention of France's leaders. The first such experiment came out of the Assemblies during the French Revolution. The study of how the laws setting up the departments and communes were applied in the north of France helps us understand how a decentralized administrative system functions. It also sheds light upon the various levels, within the revolutionary context, of political conflict that administrative decentralization inevitably brings about.

Rural Land Management Decisions Reflecting upon decision-making about rural land management, an experienced administrator concludes that legal codes seldom provide answers to problems. Answers call for compromises that are drawn up out of a synthesis of group interests since land use concerns those who own as well as those who work the land, those who spend leisure time on the land, and those who want to protect the environment, all of whom use a common language and formulate arguments in terms of culture and heritage within the context of long-term values. However group interests are confronted with overnight, economic as well as political, changes. Successful arbitration harmonizes individual and social values, such as to live and let live or to share pleasure and a sense of community.

The Necessary State ? Development and Interest Groups in Marais Poitevin Since 1982, the State prefers discussing management of the hydraulic system in this marshland with the communes rather than with the organizations wherein, since the 19th century, the landowners of Marais Poitevin (France) have been grouped. Since 1984, the plans for a regional nature park are suspended, having become an issue in the inevitable conflicts about development priorities. These two institutional crisis are evidence of a new relationship between the government and landowner organizations. These new, local institutional arrangements can be understood only by analyzing changes in the relationship between the social system and the thus developed ecosystem. This is not so much a crisis of representativeness as of collective management that has become unavoidable owing to the increasing privatization of social relations of production, labor and appropriation with the ecosystem. Can this new institutional means of managing resources do without a technical solution that would make it possible to avoid the collective regulations that have, till present, been imposed by the environment ?

From Bottom to Top and from Top to Bottom : Political Clans in Corsica Political clans in Corsica, once described, are shown to be both a culturally invented political dimension of a social organization and the relay of the State's power on the island. This interpretation disputes explanations that merely oppose a modern political system (the State) to local institutions inherited from another age and that restrict the analysis of how power is distributed in a modern society to the study of the national government and public authority.

The Opposition between Administration and Clergy : The Prefecture and the See in Lozère During the 19th century and at the start of the 20th, the Catholic area of Lozère department (France) was locked in a long, emotional conflict that opposed the see and clergy to the administration represented by prefects and civil servants. The administration used its services and wisely distributed favors as well as subsidies in order to influence voters whereas the clergy, ever watchful, would, as elections drew near, urge parishioners to support Catholic candidates. Freemasons and Protestant primary school teachers were denounced. After the situation had worsened following the separation of Church from State and the 1906 Inventory Act, the government's candidates repeatedly failed to win in Haute-Lozère. This longstanding opposition reveals how local society reacted to increasing administrative power.

A Mediterranean Equilibrium : Local ower between the State and Territory The territory ensures the flexibility and duration of institutional and ideological forms that are related to a transhistorical local culture. It is the source of the autonomy of local from central power. Local power is exercised through mechanisms/institutions (organizations, political dynasties) that organize, filter and control, messages that are received and diffused, that control and dose what comes from the "outside". The regionalization under way is, in this area, part of a long history.

Local Communism, the Resistance and the PCP: The Sources of Power in a Breton Commune The account of the Resistance at Sorignac during World War II ressembles in many ways a founding myth. Communist power in this commune in Brittany (France) goes back to 1945 and the legitimacy bestowed by participation in the Resistance. Small farmers, from the least privileged social classes, monopolize political power because they alone fought against the Germans. However this power is shared between local Communism, based upon the area's history, and the French Communist Party, inspired by an exogenous ideology. Local Communism seeks both to maintain control over its political future and to keep the freedom to make alliances whereas the FCP, by gradually channeling local Communism into a structure with a national reach, has tented to cut it off from its origins and to deprive it of its essence. As a result, the FCP's position in this Communist commune is eroding.

Politics at Naught What one first observes about political activities in a canton in the Morvan mountains (Burgundy, France) is the prevailing "apoliticization", but a closer examination shows the complexity of a longstanding pattern of antagonistic ideological positions, which can still be seen. The history, nature and scope of political networks are discussed. Although the commune is positively valued in autochtonous views, the ramifications of these networks reach out over the whole canton. The analysis of the political setting takes into account the relations between local authorities and the State's territorial representatives. The study of changes in this relationship reveals the origins of this apoliticization, and it can be used to specify the conditions for the development of cooperation among communes within the canton. Will such cooperation eventually reshape political networks ?

Why Obey the State ? A Latium Rural Community in the 18th and 19th Centuries What relationship did a rural Latium community maintain with the Papal States during the 18th ands 19th centuries? Dominated by the "Boattieri" congregation, the management of local politics seemed, in some ways, exempt from the legality that papal envoys repeatedly restored. Opposite the State and its zealous advocates arose the Lerne hydra of political and family relationship that governed the community.