When administrative reforms produce territorial differentiation. How market-oriented policies transform military brownfield reconversion in France (1989–2012)

Abstract

The article explores the territorial dimension of the reforms that remould state administrations, which is overlooked by both public sector and territorial politics literatures. It is based on a fine-grained case study of how the emergence of an administrative reform aimed at strengthening market coordination in the management and sale of public real estate in France has affected previously existing forms of military real estate management that relied on central and local political bargaining. While existing literature argues that market-oriented administrative reforms tend to side-line political regulation, this reform entails a differentiation rather than a replacement of the operating codes of the state in territories. Indeed, policy change through layering causes the consolidation of different land regimes, a planning-oriented one and a market-oriented one, that apply differentially in territories and leave the local governments with uneven rooms of manoeuvre for political negotiation.