The prevailing view of urban government in France is strongly influenced by a number of assumptions about the impact of administrative centralization on local political processes. This paper examines these assumptions and provides some empirical evidence on urban policy-making which challenges the utility of administrative models of urban government. A different approach to the study of urban political processes is then proposed, based on the results of a larger body of research conducted by the author and on the work of a number of students of organizational behavior in France.
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