Résumé
The subject of the present chapter attempts to ‘deconstruct’ the French territorial question and demonstrate that territorial policy analysis can break free from the limitations imposed by the primarily ‘statist’ conceptual framework in which it has hitherto been viewed. In the first section of the chapter, we indicate the scale and nature of the present political and administrative territorial structures and comment also on the paucity of academic research work on this subject. In the second section, we highlight the main changes in the territorial framework of policy building, through an evolution from vertical to horizontal dialectic of powers and capacities. In the third section we discuss territorialisation, as the results of a double process. On the one hand, the role of ideas in territorial policy building; on the other hand, the dynamics of differentiation that put the French model into question. Thus, focusing on policy analysis in French local policies – in a global comparative perspective – sheds light on the huge challenge it causes for the coherence of ‘national models’. As in other countries, local policies in the French context are simultaneously influenced by globalisation and decentralisation, opening new scenes for vertical and horizontal interactions toward the provision of public goods and service.