The Ongoing March of Decentralisation within the Post-Jacobin State
Abstract
The unification of French society by political elites took many centuries. Despite the continuous efforts of the Jacobin elites, the Code civil, the single currency, the accord between Church and State, wars, the influence of trade unions, parties and the Church, not to mention railways, municipalities and schools, unification remained elusive. Local and regional diversity in France only really became blurred in the 1960s, with the advent of a large welfare state, industrialisation and urbanisation, mass consumption and television. Modernists of the 1960s regarded the preservation of regional peculiarities as an archaic pursuit of traditions on the verge of extinction. The political nationalisation of local elections and the modernisation of the Fifth Republic were perceived as the continuation of State-led modernisation and direction of French society.