Vaughan Rogers

Agriculture, Water Pollution and the Regional Dimension in French Public Policy

The myth depicting agriculture as the ‘guardian of nature’ proved to be extremely tenacious in France1 and only in the late 1980s, as a result of mounting fears about water pollution caused by nitrates from intensive farming in certain regions, did the need to combat the detrimental effects of agriculture on the environment eventually come to figure significantly on the policy agenda.2 In the intervening years, the growing influence of the EC/EU in the agrienvironmental domain and the increasing emphasis placed on the concept of sustainable development following the Rio Conference of 19923 have led to the adoption of a more comprehensive approach to the relationship between agriculture and the environment, including the nitrates issue. As a result of this widening of the conceptual parameters of policy and the increase in the number of actors involved, operating at different levels of government, the agrienvironmental issue can no longer be addressed solely as a local or regional problem.4 In France however, the regional dimension has been reinforced rather than eclipsed by such developments and the link between agriculture and water pollution by nitrates in a regional context has rarely been absent from the agrienvironmental initiatives undertaken over the last decade, under intensifying pressure from the EC/EU, with its own markedly regional perspective.5 The persistence of this regional dimension in France is of course due in part to the contrast in the types of farming practised in different regions, resulting in a

Hospital investment policy in France : Pathways to efficiency and the efficiency of the pathways

OBJECTIVES This article examines the ambivalent notion of New Public Management as applied to health policy in France, by investigating the implementation of the efficiency-driven hospital investment plan, Hôpital 2012, conceived at national level, but implemented through regional hospital authorities (ARHs), with formal responsibility for selecting successful funding applications. METHODS The methodology combines qualitative and quantitative analysis, in order to highlight and explain discrepancies between goals and results. RESULTS Despite formal adherence to objective efficiency indicators, certain decisions were based on incomplete information and others on considerations out with initially established criteria. Competition from the private sector was perceived as a threat to public hospitals and the public sector emerged as a major beneficiary of the investment plan. Central ministerial intervention emphasising financial and quantitative considerations led the ARHs to focus more on individual hospital performance than on wider healthcare needs. CONCLUSIONS Data-production became almost an end in itself, threatening to undermine the objectives it sought to pursue. Nonetheless, extended deadlines entailed by ministerial intervention were appropriated as a resource by local actors, leading to ARH decisions which deviated from the official efficiency model, but resulted in increased effectiveness, taking fuller account of local conditions.

The Regionalization of Youth Training in France

This article assesses the impact of the Employment and Training Act of 1993, which enhanced the role of the regions in Youth Training policy making. The changes that have occurred are examined in terms of the concept of governance, which has often been criticized for its lack of rigour. The four previously distinct sub-sectors of Youth Training policy are analysed, revealing significant shifts in relationships within and between them, under the aegis of the regions as local authorities. The article argues that despite the imprecision of governance as a concept, it is a useful analytical tool, focusing attention on the increasingly flexible, variegated modes of competitive co-operation which are emerging in this particular policy domain.