French Jacobinism Reinvented?
How Recent Policy Restructuring Has Affected Délégués Régionaux à la Recherche et à la Technologie

Abstract : This article analyzes the restructuring of relations between the French state and its territory and how that restructuring impacts on the state bureaucratic apparatus. Our empirical study was of a "deconcentrated" service of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research called the Délégation Régionale à la Recherche et à la Technologie or DRRT, staffed by representatives of the state at the regional level (called "delegates") whose task is to help steer research and technology policies. Though the state is making increasing use of local governments and regional-level proposals and structures to steer public policy in this area, it is doing so by withdrawing from its deconcentrated services. The only maneuvering room left to those services is in handling European Union grants; they no longer mediate between the central state, administrative staff and local academics.