The merger of regions: new bottle, same wine?
Life sometimes offers compensation that is as unlikely as it is unexpected. The residents of Gruissan, Lézignan-Corbières, and Narbonne can attest to this. After spending half a century on the outskirts of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, they suddenly found themselves teleported in 2015 to the center of the new Occitanie region, the result of the merger between Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées.
Emmanuel Négrier, University of Montpellier and Vincent Simoulin, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
Every week, hundreds of buses bring not tourists, but civil servants and elected officials who have come to get to know their counterparts and partners from the former region with which they have just merged. Restaurants are constantly full, and conference rooms (or whatever serves as such in these places that were once far removed from decision-making centers) are experiencing unprecedented booking rates.
But life is also disappointing. Because elected officials and civil servants from Mende, Figeac, and Tarbes now have to leave the night before to attend a meeting that, held on the other side of the region, is now more than a five-hour drive away.
They were already at the edge of a large region, Languedoc-Roussillon or Midi-Pyrénées, and now they find themselves at one of the borders of a vast region, Occitanie.
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, they had learned to combine several appointments into a single trip and discovered the benefits (but also the limitations and frustrations) of videoconferencing and carpooling.
In fact, regional mergers are also, as the elected officials who initiated and implemented them like to proclaim, a matter of men and women. They involve relocation, challenging work routines, and devising new policies adapted to a territory twice as large. Changing one's frame of reference weakens one's networks and legitimacy. Merging therefore also means inventing a new way of doing politics, often in a difficult context, as shown in a collective work that we coordinated.
Is the region the weak link in public action?
However, there was no indication that it would be so complex. When it came to regionalization in France, researchers tended to focus on the intrinsic weakness of the regional level. Furthermore, as the main policies of the regions were developed in partnership with the state, it was reasonable to expect a high degree of homogeneity between them.
Take Occitanie, for example. It is the result of the merger of two regions that were thought to be all the more similar because they were both southern, long dominated by the Socialist Party, more affected by unemployment than the national average, but at the forefront in terms of cultural policies and investment in research.
However, this apparent similarity does not stand up to closer scrutiny. Languedoc-Roussillon had developed the performing arts and introduced the one-euro train (and bus) ticket and free computers for all schoolchildren, while Midi-Pyrénées promoted heritage and made all financial assistance means-tested.
In terms of research, Languedoc-Roussillon has strong specializations in biology and health, while Midi-Pyrénées has focused more on aeronautics and space.
The first result of this merger is paradoxical, to say the least: it shows us how much the regions, which we thought were similar, actually differed from one another and even developed policies that were sometimes very opposed.
In the case of culture, for example, developing a policy based primarily on sectors (and its regional agencies responsible for performing arts, cinema, and books) or primarily on territories (and its "territorial" cultural contracts and projects) is obviously completely contradictory, as we show in our chapter on culture.
On the one hand, the decisive factor is the location of the project. On the other hand, it is its place in a sector of activity. In education, rolling out computers for all regardless of income or doing so according to household means is a political choice.
Differences beyond regional councils
The second finding, perhaps even more intriguing, is that the differences between regions do not only concern regional councils.
Since late 2015, the government's position has been as follows: it will take some time for the "political" regions to merge, but the regional government departments will do so on January1, 2016, without delay.
In reality, five years later, the merger has still not been fully implemented. The systems of the former Midi-Pyrénées and Languedoc-Roussillon regional administrations coexist within a regional policy that is far from harmonized.
Take, for example, the "Educational Success" program, designed to combat school failure and dropout rates. The two school districts (which remain separate) have developed different versions of the program, as the school populations in each former region are different.
The former Languedoc-Roussillon region faces serious difficulties, as evidenced by its low school enrollment rates, a more limited network of vocational training support, and less obvious educational expectations among parents. Not only do these systems remain different, but their coordination across the new region is entirely superficial. In a way, it is still a case of "every man for himself," as if Occitanie did not exist.
The regional contingency of the state, which means that it applies different policies and organizational principles from one territory to another, has made the merger even more complex, and all the more interesting to study.
There is, of course, a logic to merging regions that are complementary rather than similar, but the political cultures themselves appeared dissimilar.
Palpable differences in political cultures
In all areas, the Midi-Pyrénéens were model students, keen to establish explicit criteria and multi-year programs, sometimes at the risk of appearing rigid, while the Languedociens boasted of a political art and dramatization that they likened, not without a certain coquetry, to the commedia dell'arte.
We are familiar, for example, with the art of political provocation practiced by former president Georges Frêche, which caused lasting friction with his own party before his death in office at the end of 2010. In contrast, Martin Malvy, his counterpart in Midi-Pyrénées, was one of the influential socialists in Parliament, in the party, and in the representative bodies of local authorities.
This was reflected in specific policies, routines, and behavioral norms that were not limited to stereotypes (the "cassoulet" radicalism of Midi-Pyrénées) or picturesque cultural differences. Thus, the Midi-Pyrénées region's penchant for financing territorial contracts embodies this taste for stable compromises between levels of action. On the other hand, the marked preference for sectoral agencies in the former Languedoc-Roussillon region reflects a desire to exert influence at different levels without getting lost in interdependencies.
So how did this unexpected merger unfold? What results did it produce? Does it confirm the observations often made about mergers, those unstable moments when unlikely reforms suddenly (and briefly) become possible? Three observations stand out.
Logical consequences of harmonization
The first is obviously the lack of economies of scale, despite projections made by André Vallini, the minister in charge of reform in 2015, who indicated that the merger would result in savings of around €10 billion.
However, the additional costs incurred are not so much attributable to management abuses as to the logical consequences of harmonization: harmonization of employee remuneration; the generalization of certain policies considered beneficial to everyone, but active in only one of the former regions; and investments (transport shuttles, videoconferencing equipment, maintenance or creation of new sites) directly related to this merger.
The Court of Auditors estimates the cost of harmonizing the salaries and allowances of civil servants at approximately €50 million extra.
In a way, the merger of regions is similar to Sacha Guitry's definition of marriage: trying to solve problems together that you wouldn't have had on your own.
The second observation is the intensity of the work required to carry out such an operation. This intensity is partly due to the fact that it is not just a matter of organizational issues. It adds to the merger of a community challenges that are well known to merger specialists: human resources management through numerous meetings between counterparts, attempting to limit duplicate positions as much as possible; taking into account the structural nostalgia for the old order in order to gradually make the new one acceptable, etc.
But there are others that are more specific to the merging of political bodies: acceptance of domination by a "leader from elsewhere," justification of a change in model that, by setting off a powder keg, compromises the situation of elected officials. Behind the operational functions of public policy lies the issue of political consent, which is always delicate to handle.
In addition to these constraints, there is another significant one in Occitanie: in December 2015, the same majority—a coalition led by the Socialist Party—that governed the two former regions won the election. There was no question of bringing in a new political administration to make decisions. The legacy of the two former regions must be accepted.
A truly effective merger
The final observation is that despite these difficulties—which were numerous and sometimes unexpected—the merger did indeed take place. It took much longer than expected to become a reality.
Admittedly, at the dawn of a new term of office, regional policies everywhere are still heavily influenced by compromises between the two or three former regions that have merged. It took a whole term of office to see the emergence of a radically new policy. And the first steps in the campaign for the regional elections on June 20 and 27, 2021, show that we still have to reckon with the sensitivities and attachments linked to the former regions.
Thus, the fact that all the currently known candidates for the elections in Occitanie are from the Midi-Pyrénées region is particularly emphasized... in the eastern part of the region.
Finally, the merger is far from offering the regions the European dimension that President Hollande had promised.
A region's European capacity is not just geographical. It is above all political, and a matter of skills and autonomy. Occitanie is larger than neighboring Catalonia. But its new budget is only 10% of that of its Spanish neighbor, which really counts on a European scale.
No doubt we will have to revisit these issues one day if we want the blend of grape varieties to produce a great wine, rather than simply a larger volume of a substantially identical beverage.
Emmanuel Négrier, CNRS Research Director in Political Science at CEPEL, University of Montpellier, University of Montpellier and Vincent Simoulin, sociologist, Director of CERTOP (Center for Study and Research , Organization, and Power), University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.