Services in Regional Development Policies: The French Case

Regional economic policy has traditionally been targeted at manufacturing industry. In most European countries, and at least until the 1980s, services, and in particular business services, were largely ignored in regional policies, which gave priority to models based on development of (and by) large manufacturing firms. It was not until the 1980s that services, whose economic role was finally beginning to be recognised, were gradually taken into account by regional and national economic actors. Thus various forms of support programmes for services, initiated by a range of different actors (central government, regional authorities, départements, municipalities, chambers of commerce and industry, etc.), proliferated in France in the 1990s. Nevertheless, this increased interest in support services, as well as the number of actors involved, certainly give rise to questions as to the possible contradictory effects on local economies. This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first, we locate policies on (business) services in the general (historical) context of local or regional development policies in France. In the second, the various policies and incentives put in place in support of services are summarised and an interpretative framework developed. The third section, finally, is given over to consideration of the contradictory or possibly cumulative effects of the incentive measures under investigation here.