Le secteur public local entre nationalisation et décentralisation
Authors: Lorrain Dominique 
Published: October 2016

The local public sector between nationalization and decentralization.

Social science research in France has, for the most part, ignored the facilities surrounding town halls that provide them with a water-supply, sanitation, heating, cleaning, transportation, local development, housing construction. We have decided to make a study of them, for we consider it necessary to reflect on the role of these local organs in our societies as well as on their place in the hierarchy and in the processes of reproduction and transformation, taking into consideration the material bases on which their political action is founded. The article under consideration synthesizes an entire series of sectorial explorations in this field. Historical analysis shows that this sector is composed of two great moments, corresponding to the phases of capitalism in our country : 1. The 1850-1900 period, which witnessed the development of large-scale industry and the transition to a phase of intensive accumulation, From this period date all the companies still operating today in the sectors of urban water-supply, sanitation and transportation. — 2. The 1 950' s were marked by the new development of this sector. The old private groups were reinforced and diversified in response to the new markets. A whole new sector was created in the form of a mixed economy. It was supported at the outset by a big public group. For a long period of time, such groups developed autonomously with respect to the local communities.

As the crisis deepened toward the end of the sixties, this sector was powerfully reorganized with the double perspective of concentration around the largest groups and the upsurge of problems in the local communities. They intervene financially with increasing frequency, thus finding a material basis for their claim to power. And that is something new. We encounter, moreover, similarities among all the markets in the means by which they articulate the public and the private aspects. The private sector has gradually freed itself from its financial burden, separating its revenues from the concepts of risk and loss. In this crisis, we witness the emergence of a sort of capitalism without capital. A macroeconomic assessment of this local public sector in 1980 brings out its significant weight in the national economy from the viewpoint of jobs (1,5 million), of investments (greater than those of the state), and of its added value (4,5 % of the gross domestic product). These findings need to be placed in the context of ongoing political strug¬ gles. Can a decentralization program be carried out by restructuring only the state-local community tandem, leaving aside the quasi-public and private groups operating in this sector ? The town halls, moreover, intervene everywhere in the employment field, owing to the acuteness of the crisis and the plant closings. Why can't they undertake industrial and employment policies in the field of their own basic jurisdiction (the local public sector) ?

We have been struck throughout our research by the paradoxical silence concerning these questions that are, however, at the crossroads between the policy of decentralizing power-structures in the direction of the municipalities and the policy of nationalizing the big French financial and industrial groups. The results of this research provide us with some new elements for policy-making at the local level.