Levelling Up and Territorial Cohesion: The Places that Now Matter? French and British Regional Policy and Institutions since 2017

Abstract

Western European societies, affected by globalisation, deindustrialisation and European integration, have seen growing regional inequalities. Managing these economic, social and political tensions between prosperous and lagging areas has become a major challenge for policy-makers, increasingly interested in territorialised, or regional, policies. This is particularly true of France and the United Kingdom in the late 2010s, where political changes challenged prevalent understandings of the problem of regional inequalities. Cohésion des territoires was introduced in 2017 by newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron while levelling up, announced in 2019, became Boris Johnson’s political mantra. This thesis defines regional policy as policies implemented by a central government at a sub-national geographical scale with the aim of tackling regional inequalities. French and British regional policies have rarely been compared. British comparative policy literature has focused on Anglophone countries while French academics compare continental initiatives. However, unlike those, France and the United Kingdom are characterised by a concentration of political, economic and cultural activities and elites in their respective capitals. Although both countries are centralised, their governance systems are organised differently. Their territorial constitutions have led to different policy instruments and centre-local relations. However, levelling up and cohésion des territoires show superficial similarities. Both introduce new policy languages, claim to empower local places and focus on left-behind or peripheral places. This thesis examines the reasons for this a priori policy convergence and the drivers of these simultaneous changes. However, the analysis of these regional policy agendas qualifies the idea that these represent new approaches to regional policy-making and shows that important differences remain. This thesis covers Emmanuel Macron’s first presidency (2017-22) and Boris Johnson’s premiership (2019-22). While levelling up concerned the whole UK, the asymmetrical nature of British devolution means England is the nation most directly affected by Westminster’s centralised policies. This thesis thus focuses on comparing the objectives, institutions, tools and geography of regional policy in France and England. This analysis is further developed in three case studies on towns, industrial and transport policies. This research project relies on qualitative methods: analysis of government documents, discourse and regional policy tools. Semi-structured elite interviews with civil servants, politicians, consultants and academics were also conducted in both countries. Drawing on historical institutionalist accounts of policy change, this thesis will assume that policy objectives and tools are constrained by institutions — i.e., rules and practices that govern policy-making and centre-local relations. However, short-term political and electoral motives significantly drove these agendas. This thesis concludes that recent political events (general elections, Brexit and the Gilets Jaunes) helped frame these countries’ regional problems as intra-regional issues. This led to important changes to French regional policy governance, instruments and territorial focus. However, institutions constrained levelling up’s ambitions. Although policy-makers had criticised England’s centralised, short-term, fragmented and unstable regional policy, proposals reproduced these flaws.