Regional mergers: same wine, new bottle?
Life sometimes offers compensations that are as unlikely as they are 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, in 2015, at 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, buses bring hundreds of people there—not tourists, but civil servants and elected officials who have come to get to know their counterparts and partners in the former region with which they have just merged. Restaurants are constantly full, and conference centers (or whatever serves as such in these places that were once far removed from the centers of decision-making) are seeing unprecedented booking rates.
But life can also be disappointing. For elected officials and staff in Mende, Figeac, or Tarbes must now leave the night before to attend a meeting that, taking place 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 multiple appointments into a single trip and discovered the benefits (as well as the limitations and frustrations) of video conferencing and carpooling.
In fact, regional mergers are also—as the elected officials who spearheaded and are implementing them like to proclaim—a matter of people. They involve relocations, challenging work routines, and devising new policies tailored to a territory twice as large. Changing one’s frame of reference means undermining one’s networks and legitimacy. Merging, therefore, also means inventing a new way of doing politics, often in a difficult context, as demonstrated in a collective work that we coordinated.
Is the region the weak link in public policy?
Yet nothing foreshadowed such complexity. Regarding regionalization in France, researchers had instead assumed that the regional level was inherently weak. Furthermore, since the regions’ main policies are developed in partnership with the central government, one might have expected a high degree of uniformity among them.
Take Occitanie, for example. It was created through the merger of two regions that were thought to be all the more similar because they were both in the south, had long been dominated by the Socialist Party, suffered from higher unemployment than the national average, but were at the forefront of cultural policies and investment in research.
However, this apparent similarity does not hold up to closer scrutiny. Languedoc-Roussillon had developed the performing arts and introduced one-euro train (and bus) fares and free computers for all schoolchildren, while Midi-Pyrénées focused on promoting cultural heritage and made all financial aid means-tested.
In terms of research, Languedoc-Roussillon has strong expertise 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 just how much the regions—which we thought were imitative—actually differed from one another and even developed policies that were sometimes diametrically opposed.
In the case of culture, for example, developing a policy based primarily on sectors (and its regional agencies responsible for the performing arts, film, and publishing) or primarily on regions (and its “regional” cultural contracts and projects) is obviously completely contradictory, as we demonstrate in our chapter on culture.
On the one hand, the decisive factor is the project’s location. On the other, it is its role within a particular sector. In the field of education, whether to provide computers to everyone regardless of income or to do so based on household income is a political choice.
Differences beyond the regional councils
The second finding, perhaps even more intriguing, is that regional differences are not limited to regional councils.
Since late 2015, the government’s official line has been as follows: while the “political” regions will take some time to merge, the government’s regional offices will do so as of January1, 2016, without missing a beat.
In reality, five years later, the merger has still not been fully implemented. The structures of the former Midi-Pyrénées and Languedoc-Roussillon regional administrations continue to coexist within a state regional policy that is far from being harmonized.
Take, for example, the “Educational Success” initiative, designed to combat academic failure and dropout rates. The two regional education offices (which remain separate) have developed distinct versions of the program, as the student populations in each former region differ.
The former Languedoc-Roussillon region faces significant challenges, evident in its low enrollment rates, a more limited vocational training support system, and less pronounced educational expectations among parents. Not only do these systems remain distinct, but their coordination at the level of the new region is entirely superficial. In a way, it’s still “every man for himself,” as if Occitanie didn’t exist.
The regional nature of the state—which means that it applies different policies and organizational principles from one region to another—has made the merger even more complex, and all the more interesting to study.
There is, of course, a logical reason for merging regions that are complementary rather than similar, but the political cultures themselves appeared to be quite different.
Noticeable differences in political cultures
In every area, the people of Midi-Pyrénées played the role of model students, eager to establish clear criteria and multi-year plans, even at the risk of sometimes appearing rigid, while the people of Languedoc prided themselves on a political artistry and theatricality that they likened—not without a touch of vanity—to the commedia dell’arte.
We are familiar, for example, with the art of political provocation practiced by former President Georges Frêche, which led to a lasting rift with his own party before his death in office in late 2010. In contrast, Martin Malvy, his counterpart in Midi-Pyrénées, was among the influential Socialists in Parliament, within the party, and in the representative bodies of local governments.
This manifested itself in distinct policies, routines, and behavioral norms that were not limited to stereotypes (such as the “cassoulet” radicalism of Midi-Pyrénées) or to picturesque cultural differences. Thus, the Midi-Pyrénées region’s preference for funding territorial contracts embodies this penchant for stable compromises between levels of governance. 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 were its results? Does it confirm the observations often made about mergers—those fleeting moments when unlikely reforms suddenly (and briefly) become possible? Three observations stand out.
Logical consequences of harmonization
The first is, of course, the lack of economies of scale, despite projections made by André Vallini, the minister in charge of the reform in 2015, who stated that the merger would result in savings of approximately 10 billion euros.
However, the resulting cost overruns are not so much due to mismanagement as to the logical consequences of harmonization: the standardization of staff compensation; the widespread adoption of certain policies considered beneficial to everyone, but previously implemented in only one of the former regions; and investments (shuttle services, videoconferencing equipment, and the maintenance or creation of new sites) directly linked to this merger.
The Court of Auditors estimates that harmonizing the salaries and allowances of civil servants will cost an additional 50 million euros.
In a way, the merger of regions is similar to Sacha Guitry’s definition of marriage: trying to solve together problems that one wouldn’t have had alone.
The second point is the sheer amount of work involved in carrying out such an operation. This intensity stems in part from the fact that it is not merely a matter of organizational issues. The merger of a local government brings with it a host of challenges that are well known to merger specialists: human resources management through numerous meetings between counterparts, while attempting to minimize job duplication as much as possible; addressing structural nostalgia for the old order to gradually make the new one acceptable, and so on.
But there are others, more specific to the merger of political bodies: accepting the leadership of a “leader from outside,” and justifying a shift in approach that, by setting off a chain reaction, jeopardizes the position of elected officials. Behind the operational aspects of public policy lies the issue of political consent, which is always a delicate matter to handle.
Added to these challenges is a significant one in Occitanie: in December 2015, the same majority—a coalition led by the Socialist Party—that had governed the two former regions won the election. There is no question of invoking a change in political leadership to resolve the issue. The legacy of the two former regions must be embraced.
A truly effective merger
The bottom line 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 start of a new term, regional policies everywhere are still heavily influenced by compromises between the two or three former regions that have been merged. It took a full term for a radically new policy to emerge. And the early stages of the campaign for the regional elections on June 20 and 27, 2021, show this: we must still reckon with the sensitivities and attachments tied to the former regions.
Thus, the fact that all the currently known lead 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 giving the regions the European dimension that President Hollande had promised.
A region’s European significance is not merely geographical. It is, above all, political, and a matter of powers and autonomy. Occitanie is larger than neighboring Catalonia. Yet its new budget amounts to only 10% of that of its Spanish neighbor, which truly counts on the European stage.
We will undoubtedly need to revisit these issues at some point if we want the blending of grape varieties to produce a fine wine, rather than simply a larger quantity of a beverage that is essentially the same.
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 the Study and Research on Research , Organization, and Power), University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.