TY  - JOUR
A1  - Köppen, Paul
T1  - A Possible Peace? The Interwar Franco-German Relationship in Historiographical Perspective
JF  - Ricerche di Storia Politica
N2  - This essay aims at discussing the new literature on Franco-German relations during the period 1918-1930. It highlights how many works now question the idea that the Treaty of Versailles and the European order that ensued inevitably wore within themselves the seeds of a new war. On the contrary, by examining in particular the detente efforts of the Twenties, the most recent historiography often emphasizes how the inevitability of the authoritarian turn of Twenties and Thirties, which led to the Second World War, has often been exaggerated by historians and that different paths could have been undertaken.
KW  - France
KW  - Germany
KW  - Treaty of Versailles
KW  - First World War
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1412/82730
SN  - 1120-9526
VL  - 19
SP  - 47
EP  - 58
PB  - Società editrice il Mulino
CY  - Bologna
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kuhlmann, Sabine
A1  - Reiter, Renate
T1  - Decentralization of the French welfare state: from 'big bang' to 'muddling through'
JF  - International Review of Administrative Sciences
N2  - This article analyses the decentralization of the French welfare state focusing on the transfer of the Revenu minimum d’insertion (RMI) welfare benefit to the departments in 2003 and 2004. We map and explain the effects of the reform on the system and performance of the subnational provision of welfare tasks. To evaluate the impact of decentralization on the RMI-related action of the departments, we carry out a qualitative document analysis and use data from two case studies. The RMI decentralization offers an exemplary insight into the incremental implementation of French decentralization. We find many unintended effects in terms of the performance and outcome of the subnational welfare provision. This is traced back to the combining of institutional and policy reforms and the inadequate translation of high political expectations into an inadequate action programme both resulting in excessive demands on the local actors.

Points for practitioners

The decentralization of public tasks is associated with high expectations in terms of the effects on the performance of public services and public governance on the subnational levels. For an in-depth measure the range of administrative performance and political systems effects should be taken into account. We propose a five-dimensional scheme allowing for the determination of decentralization effects on the resource input to and the operative output of subnational public services, on the horizontal coordination between subnational task holders and the affected non-public stakeholders, on the vertical intergovernmental coordination, and on the democratic accountability of subnational authorities.
KW  - decentralization
KW  - France
KW  - incremental reform
KW  - welfare state
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/0.1177/0020852315583194
SN  - 0020-8523
SN  - 1461-7226
VL  - 82
IS  - 2
SP  - 255
EP  - 272
PB  - Sage
CY  - London
ER  -