Long range planning and regional policy

Long Range

lanning

and Regional

Policy

2. France

Nigel

and Italy -

Latecomers

to the Industrial

Urban

Scene

Despicht,

Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Sussex.

Can businessmen expect regional policy in one European country to be like regional policy in other European counis yes and tries ? The answer no. As a matter of locational incentives, all countries operate similar systems. But when it comes to the objectives of the policies, the preoccupations of governments differ considerably. So do the institutional, political and social constraints under which they have to work. In the second part of this article on long range planning and regional policy, the background to regional policy in France and Italy is examined in comparison with that in Britain. The two continental countries are now experiencing a phase of industrial urbanization similar to that experienced at the end of the nineteenth century. But it is only in superficial ways that history can be said to be repeatinq itself. Technological possibilities are now on a much grander scale than they were What is seventy years ago. even more striking is that similar social and economic events create quite dissimilar problems in different political traditions. The author is carrying out research into regional policies in the European Communities and the United Kingdom with financial support from the S,~ucr(;~il Science Research

SEPTEMBER.

!97G

A

PLAIN.

DOW’GTO-EAKTH,

Bl’SINESSMAh

might. not unreasonably. expect regional policy in France and Italy to be muchthesamesort ofthingasitisinBritain. After all, in each of the three countries, the governments go to great lengths to bribe businessmen to establish themselves in unattractive and out of the wav places. No doubt, the different national governments use different honeyed words to justify their regional economic policies. But does the tune matter if the piper pays?

A Question

of Expectations

ObviousI!, in one way there will not be ver!’ much difference. All countries are out to attract business and to develop their backward or declining regions. Superficially. their systems of incentives are similar. Furthermore. the quantifiable factors in industrial location conform to the same pattern all over Europe. What cannot be taken for granted as similar in the regional policies of different countries is the wide range of considerations and motives that lies outside the strIcti\ economic and business field. As man! businessmen know to their cost. these estraneous. ‘po!iticai’ . motives are often the determining influences in a gov’ernment’s regional polic!,. The apparentI> non-economic factors in regionai polic! should not be disnrssed More often than not. 3s ‘irrationai’. the\ are legacies from former economic pohcies that. In their day. Mere highlv rational. Or the! may be a recognition (if the constraints imposed b! the machine:! of government of the countr> as a whcie

-adopted in the past successfully to ov’ercome major challenges. It is essentral for a businessman (who wishes to benefit from a countr!‘s discriminator) atds) to understand what basic influences and constraints have been at work in that country’s regional policy over time. No one can expect to set up in a development region and then be able to cut his losses easily if thongs do not work out well. The governments who promote the development have too much at stake to be able to afford such thorough-going commercial attitudes. So it is best to know from the outset what makes a particular government’s regional policy tick the way it does. .4nd different national policies tick in ver) different ways.

Anglo-Saxon

Attitudes

A straight account of French and Italian regional policies is not possible for English speaking readers in the space of thts article. 1 will. therefore. do no more than make some highi) selective observattons by assuming an Anglo-Saxon attitude to regional pol~~v. This will enable me to suggest how things that can be taken for granted in British regional policy must be reappraised 14hen it comes to dealing wnh French and Italian repronal policies-even though the technical economics of regional development ma? sound very similar. !t will in fact be like a discussion of motoring. Cars are pretty standardized and driving IS a universal art. But one does not have to be insular to realize that the Continentals drive on tlx wrong side of the road -when. of COLIXZ. tlxq are not driving tn the middle.

75

Non-urban population

1880

-_ *. Agriculture t-t

1970

90 years

1980

10 years

3

WI

Local

=/ Settlement

Settlement

Government Reform

3ritain

Urban

LOCZtl

85%

Town and Country Planning Act 1947

Government Act 1888 0

Repc’s 1964 National Plan 1965

Employment

I Plan 1946-53 Agricultural France

0

>

Admtmstratlve

VI et VII Plans

D.A.T.A.R. 1963 V Plan 1966-70 Employment Cassa 1950

Constitution 1947 Employment

Regioni Statuto Speciale

50%

1948-63

Italy

Planning

et

Urban 85%

400/0

_._. ..

=

Reforme

Settlement

.

Agricultural

and Structure

]I

Employment

= >

Town and Country Planning and Transport Acts 1968

a

Agricultural

Regioni a Statuto Ordinario 1970

Settlement

Employment

= < 30% _._..__ r,rrurct

THE ONSET OF INDUSTRIAL URBANIZATION Anyone concerned with British regional policy takes the Industrial Revolution for granted. No such pattern of social and economic development holds for France or Italy. In Figure I, 1 have used two crude quantifications to illustrate the differences between the industrial and urban evolution of Britain, France and Italy: (a) the decline of the proportion of agriculture in total employment to about 15‘,) /br the first time and (b) the rise of the urban population to about 60”,, of the totai. These two stages of socio-economic evolution have been more or less contemporary in the three countries concerned. My two quantifications should not be pressed too far. They refet to the arbitrary areas of natlonal states as a whole and thereby mask crucially important regional discrepancies. For the moment, I am suggesting only that the stage of development for a country as a \Jlo/e is likely to indicate the moment when national policies begin to respond. The point i: that the moment of industrial urbanization arrived in Britain nearly a century earlier than it did in France-and is doing in

76

_ -.._

1.

I I’It

^_.^__

UNSt

I

__

UP

._._.._--._.

INUUYTKIAL

..--

__.. __-.__.

UKBANISAl

Italy now. The material symptom5 cf the 15“, ‘60 “(, period are heavy immigration from rural areas to the towns and a boom in speculative building. A short walk on the outskirts of any French or Italian city today will convince you that the 1960’s were the time when the Latin Forsytes were founding their family fortunes. Not surprisingly, the issues of local government reform and urban planning-which were urgent from the late nineteenth Century to the end of theSecond World War in Britain--are redhot political issues in France and Italy today. The pace of institutional reform and change in planning regimes is however markedly different in France and Itall from what it was in Britain. The British took about 70 years to complete the first phase and are just coming up for the second phase now. The Latlns seem to be cramming both into a single generation. This is of the greatest importance. The mathematician-philosopher. A. N. Whitehead, characterized socio-economic developmentin thenineteenthandearlytwentieth Centuries as change under the impact of steam and democracy. For the latter part of the twentieth Century. many of us imagine that Europe will change under the impact of electronics and leisure. The peculiar

ION.

situation of France and Italy seems to be that they are shaping themselves-and pretty effectively too-to meet the challenges of electronics and leisure without having had much time (Italy virtunllq none) 10 digest steam and democracy. FRANCE: L’ETAT-NATION I will begin with three unscientific bits of gossip(a) In Britain. to say “the men in Whitehall know best” is to express irradicable scepticism. In France, to say “In SIVCF, c.‘est ,orc~syue I’Arl,ninistratio,,” is to pay the railways a compliment. !b) In Britain. the industrial revolution evokes memories of euphoric national expansion and the excessive centralization on London is relatively recent. In France, the early stage of industrialization coincided with long periods of demographic decline and economic stagnation while the excessive centralization on Paris has been going on for centuries. Cc) In Britain, the ‘region’ is an administrative concept. It only becomes exciting when it means home rule’ for the non-English. In France, ‘la Region’ symbolizes deep political feelingsgoing back to

LONG

RANGE

PLANNING

the French revolution. It was because of LII abortive r~gioi~ai reform that Grncral De Gaulle \vcnt. L’Administration

Francaise

If LOU asked a British civil servant ho\+ long he and hi5 colleagues had been beha\ ~ng as the!, did. he would probabl! talk about changes ddring the last 5 to IO yar\. HLJMould regard ~OLI as aicademi; if !ou mznrt,)ned the paucit! of central mlnlstrlc‘\ hel‘orr the ~orthcore-Tr~\~~l!~~l

lc)l4-1);

“Since

Some

war

or tht

Report of 18.56. I!. houe\er. hotI put the same question to ;I member of the French Admlnistratlon. he \\auld prohabi\, not hesitate to rep]>. ~;~plron’~.

mlyht

s3\

:

-‘Since C‘o!brrl’Y Conslderlng the moder;,it\ of’ the latest creations of the French ,~dniinistratlol?-ths Commlssariat General au Plan and the DATAR-this sense of immutable tradition is curious. But it is a well attested phenomenon. Writlnp in the middle of the nineteenth Century about the French Administration of the middle of the nineteenth Century. the greatsociolo_pist De Tocquelilie said that he felt as if he were

Key

:

describing his contemporaries. Many of II\ uould ire1 roda!, that he u’;ib describing our brlliiant and charm~nr friends In the French Administration or the twentieth Centur!, An explanatton of this unique conlbination of longe\,it\ and \ rtallty piles a valuable Insl&t into the French scene. (a) The first questmn is: wh!- did the French Administration e\er come into beincat ail ?-As FlgureZshows. France Fn the eighteenth Century wasat least three times the size ofan\ other European state-a relationship that can be compared in twentieth Century term5 to the relationship of- the United States of America to a medium-sized European country. The point is not just si:c of populations. It i5 size of populatmn loider ii siflgle govcrtirlletlt iuristiic~tim. The rulers ofeighteenthCentur> France were in fact faced with a unique historical challenge-how to unify the da! to da? administration of a vast baroque empire that had coalesced during the middle ages

and the renaissance. The> SJCceeded brilliant]! b) creating a type of centralized adminrstration t-hat had never existed in Europe hefore -and which Napoleon was later able to perfect. (b) The second question is: why did the Administration survive unchanged when the world around it was changing rapidI>, especialI! after the debacle of the France-Prussian war’? In the politIcally ditficult period of the Third Repubiic (1870’5 -1940’s) the former type of administration continued to be a recognized source of national stabillt). Furthermore. unlike Brltaln during this period. France was not subdect tc the universal pressure of Industrial urbanization which might have forced immediate reforms. .4fter the Second World War, however. France entered an unprecedented period of demographic and economic expansion, including the onset of industrial urbanization. This resulted in the reassertion of the old

Population

iron Curtain

FIGURE 2. LA DE-FRANCISATION

SEPTEMBER, 1970

DE L’OCCIDENT.

77

Administration not its demise. The best explanation of this was suggested by Andrew Shonfield in 111s “Modern Capiraiism”. The economic conditions of rhe post-war period, calling for state intervention in the economy, can be said to favour the traditions of baroque despotism more than the tradition of liberal iaisser-faire. During the last few years. the French Administration has been the subject of some controversy. Its achievements in planning have evoked hero-worship (especially abroad) but at home the echoes of De Tocqueviiie‘s view of the Administration as fundamentally an undemocratic sap to the citizen‘s initiative have become deafening. This latter discontent may point to future changes. But the moral for this article’s tale of contemporary regional policy remains simple. In France, regionai policy, like any other policy, can only be an emanation of the Administration. It is first to the nature of the Administration-not to the nature of the ‘objective’ problems-that one must look to understand what has been going on. The answer is: “La Regionaiization du Plan”. La Regionalization du Plan Planning France in one way or another hasalways been thefunctionoftheAdministration and there were attempts at overall national planning in the pre-war days (“les plans d’outiiiage”) and under the Vichy regime. The Commissariat General au Plan created by Jean Monnet in i945!46 is at once a typification of the French Administration and a radical innovation. It is an omnipresent backroom, designed to gaivanise and coordinate the whole of the French public sector working within the Administration away from public scrutiny. But it is not a hierarchical structure. It relies on persuading, not commanding. its colleagues in the Ministries which have the specific statutory mandates. The immediate purpose of the first Plan (1946-53) was to overcome the previous 40 years of economic stagnation and to drag France by rhe scrutr of the neck into the forefront of industrial Europe. As a result, half of France’s total gross capital formation during that period was publicly financed investment mainly in the priority sectors of the Plan. But the first Plan was sectorai not regional in inspiration. The UN Economic Commission for Europe drew attention to this weakness in its 1954 Annual Report: “It would seem that the main emphasis of the present policies is on the negative aim of avoiding further concentration of industry in and around Paris. The policies do not appear to be part of an

78

Zone 1 : Zones

FIGURE

industrial

2 and

Zone

4

Zone

5

:

3. REGIONAL

3

:

Aid

for

No

aids

Grants Various

Incentives

Transfer

ECONOMIC

integrated scheme to solbe the problem of the under-developed regions of France as a whole. The essential thing however is to work out a major development plan for the vast backward region of western France.” The deliberate decentralization of industry did not in fact start in France until 1955 when the government was empowered to provide discriminatory aids similar to those used for the British development areas. The scale of these aids and the areas which benefit from them have been progressively amplified until today the regional economic policy map of France looks like Figure 3. Everyone gets something-except Paris and Lyons! To promote the new poiicy of decentraiization, the traditional units of French terrltoriai government-the 90 Departments created in the 1790’s_were grouped into 22 (later 2 1) ‘circormriptions tl’action regionale’ in order to produce ‘programnes d’action regionale’. These programmes were conceived as the geographical dimension of the national economic and social plan. For the Fourth Plan (1962-65) onwards, each circonscription was en-

DISCRIMINATION

IN

FRANCE.

dowed with a tranche operatoire (‘operational slice’) of the national plan to implement its regional plan. The significance of a ‘regional operational slice’ depends of course on the sort of total Plan that is being decentralized. While the Plan is primarily concerned with public sector investment and strictly economic matters, political argument can be restricted to squabbles about quantum. But once the Plan is clearly attempting to promote social as well as economic development, political argument shifts onto issues of quality. it IS at this point that people start gettmg really !lot under the collar. Widening the scope of the Plan in this way is precisely what the Administration have been doing during the Fifth Republic (from 1958). in contrast to the typically ‘administrative’ procedures for preparing the first four Plans, the Fifth Plan (1966-70) was prepared by the presentation to Parliament of a Report on the ‘Grades Options t/u V Plan’-an attempt to secure conscious political directives as to which of a choice of possible objectives for the future of France should guide executive planning. it was

LONG

RANGE

PLANNING

at this stage that the ‘~,g~o/~a/i~arior~ LIU I’INH became publicly and inextricabl) rnvolved in the complex of aspirations that. in Europe today, are labelled ‘regional policy’.

After the war. the French Administration (Ministry of Construction) had tried to introduce ‘A~tlcrrage~>7er7fciu Ter-riroire’ on the model of British town and country planning. This was not initially successful for two reasons(a) For the first IO years, the agricultural and urban situation was not such as to create the requisite sense of urgency. The symptoms of the onset of industrial urbanization were not sufficiently obvious until the late 1950’s. (b) Unlike the British central government which could rely on large and efficient local planning authorities, the French Administration had ~alahies-onI> no ‘it7ret~io~~urr1trs 38,000 Communes virtually none of which was equipped for modern physical planning. The central Administration had to take this J”b on itself. This second point marks a fundamental weakness of the French machinery of government. The polarization of economic-social to central government and environmental-social to local government which characterizes the British. German and Dutch scenes is not institutionally possible in France. Polarization and coordination have to go on insitlc the central Administration alone. As a French banker put it. I’Anietiapemenr du Tfvriroirc w2.s separate from the Plan because Mr. Claudius Petit thought of it before Mr. Jean Monnet and the) lived in different

du Territoire The two-fold task of regional planning In modern Europe was summarized by Mr. .4nthony Crosland, M.P. (former& Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning) speaking from the Opposition benches on 10th July last. The first task, he indicated, concerned employment. It entailed giving the whole of a national territory the same chances of becure and well paid Mark and the same social and economic opportunities as existed in its more prosperous areas. In context of the French Plan. this could be said to have been the primary objective of the first phase of regionalization. The second task. according to Mr. Crosiand. concerned physical planning. This entailed coping with the increase in population. of motor trafic and the insatiable demand for space between now and the Millennium while preserving a decent environment. It was the introduction of this mandate which transformed French planning In the early 1960’s. In French. it is called ‘A777~~7ugr777o7t c/u Terriroire’ but. as Mr. Claudius Petit, the French Minister responsible for it, pointed out in 1961du Territoire es1 et7 ” !‘Amermgemeuf rcklirc I‘atiienagemetir de Iioll’c sociklk.” L’Amenagement

Pre (National)

-

1815

1814

I

France

REP

Monarchy/

-

1944

France

II REP

in EMP~ q REP

I EMP

Paris streets. The result was that. after 1957, Messieurs Quai de Passy were producing ‘Pkzr7sd‘Amenagement Regionai’ for the whole of France while Messieurs Rue Martignac were producing ‘Progranmes d’Action Regionale’ for the whole of France. A Deere: of 1959 amalgamated them into a single set of ‘Phr7s Regiommx de Drveloppet77et7f Eronomiyue et Social et d’Amenapen?ent du Territoire’ but the real problem of a substantive conflict of jurisdiction within the Administration remained-there cannot be two overall co-ordinators. Instead of seeking overlord solutions. as was attempted by the British government 1964-69, the French reverted to the model of the Commissariat au Plan. A new planning backroom called the ” Delegoriot7 a l’Aniellugemeu/ du Territoire er Actioti Regionale” (DATAR) was created in 1963. It is a sort of twin to the Commissariat au Plan and is responsible for the physical and regional implementation of the Plan within the overall guidelines decided in the Plan. Like the Commissariat, it has only a small staff of handpicked Charges de Mission and is attached to the Prime Minister’s office. With the internal coherence of the centre assured in this way. the Administration was able to introduce reforms at the regional level. After an experiment in 1963/64 with ‘Prefers-Coordinateurs’ in two circonscriptions, a system of ‘Prefers de Region‘ was generalized in 1964. This meant that one Prefet within the circon-

1945 Libre

m

REP

P REP

Vichy

I Conseil

d’Etat --I-

Ministeres

-

Institutions

1970

-

-

-

-

-

au Plan

Prefets (Regions Economiques)

D.A.T.A.R.

Commissariat

-C

]

1946

1963 Prefets

Circonscriptions d’action regionale 1956

de

region

C.O.D.E.R.

Departements (Local)

_I

Communes

-

-

N

*

(Plans

(Economic)

-

, II

d’outillage)

L

O

(Physical)

1970

et

(Investissements E

SEPTEMBER,

agricole

!

0

FIGURE

]

Protections

P

Regimes

-

Ip et Y

et m

Plans

Plans

A

Planning

-

4. THE

N

i I I

I) 1

industrielle

Decentralisation Industrielle 1956 Orientation Agricole 1961 Amenagement

ferroviaire

et d’infrastructures)

Plans

EMERGENCE

des

OF

REGIONAL

Villes

1919

POLICY

Reconstruction

IN

du Territoirs

d’Equipement

Amenagement Urbanisme

Tranches Operatoires

0.R.E.A.M Plans Directeurs 1957

Loi Foncierf 7 967

FRANCE

79

scription became responstble for coordinating all the state agencies involved m the regional plan. There was, however, an important innovation. In each region. a ‘Commission de Developpement Economique Regtonal’ (CODER) consisting of nominated local politicians and representatives of economic and social interests was established to advise the Prefet de Region on t!le formulation and management of the regional plan. With this apparatus. superficially similar to that ot the British regional economic planning councils and boards, the French Administration went forward to the regionalization of the Fifth Plan (1966-70). But the political significance of the two systems was quite different. A reform of Her Majesty‘s Government’s planning machinery cannot be expected to set anyone’s river on fire if he does not want it to. British local authorities are administratively strong and autonomous and the reinforcement of Whitehall’s presence in the provinces through the appointment of a regional planning council of government nominees presented little threat to the position either of elected local politicians or of the political parties below the national level. In France however, the collectivites locales are in a weak position. The Departments have only the central government’s representative-the Prefetas their equivalent to county clerk. while the same Prefet exerciies ‘tutorship’ (la tutelle) over all the acts and omissions of the Communes. Furthermore, the strength of French politicians lies in their local roots in the Communes and the political parties are very loosely organized (if at all) below the national level. The combination of democratically elected politicians with appointed government nominees in an advisory body to a new sort of powerful Civil Servant could constitute a menacing innovation. Finally, the images of planning in Britain and France are not the same. French national economic planning is known to be a serious business. The political reaction to this latest measure in the regionalization of the Plan was violent. It amounted to a demand for the end of the dominance of Paris and for a beginning of really effective participation by the rest of the country in the decisions about its future. It was as if the French had decided that the chorus of the Marseillaise should not be changed to: “Aux Armes! Administres! Formez vos dossiers!” Paris

et le Desert

Francaise

This vivid phrase used by J. F. Gravier in his book at the end of the war, summarizes a situation described more prosily by the Economic Commission for Europe-

80

..

it is common experience. valid for countries other than France, that an administrative centre also becomes the financial centre and attracts business and industry France has been a highly centralized state since the times of the -lircien Rr,virne but. as long as agriculture was the dominating activity, this could not result in marked economic centralization. But in the critical decades oi the industrial revolution, the magnetic effect of the political and administrative centre became a decisive factor in industrial location. As a whole, railway construction preceded rather than followed the growth of industry and. whereas the railway system in other countries took the shape of a network. in France it became a cobweb with Paris in the centre. This acted of course as a further invitation to industry to settle in Paris rather than elsewhere the effects of the concentration of industry around Paris were all the more serious because the size of the total population remained unchanged so that emigration to Paris (N.B. well over 33 million between 1870 and 1940) had as its counterpart a net decline of population in the provinces .” Economic decentralization from Paris was one of the objectives of the Plan from the outset and the incentives available to industry which set up in the backward areas were reinforced by a negative control over industrial location and expansion in the Paris basin. But, even when this combination of incentives and deterrent were more positively concentrated on provincial ‘growth poles’ from the later 1950’s onwards, it became evident that the magnetic attraction of Paris was not simply economic but still derived its strength from social, political and cultural prestige which had been present in the preindustrial capital. What was needed in effect was the counter-attraction of great cities in the provinces which could offer comparable amenities and opportunities. In the 1960’s, the policy of decentralization was reshaped to concentrate upon socalled ‘.Metropoles CEquilibre’. In 1966 new agencies for the planning of some of these key metropolitan areas-the “DREAM’S” (Organisation &Etude d’i-lire created by the were Metropolitain) DATAR and the Ministry of Equipment. The most recent of their “city-regional” plans to be approved is that for the new polycentric metropolis of St. Etienne -Lyons-Grenoble (June 1970). But did all this amount to more than a new version of the all-pervading paternalism of the central Parisian administration going about its long established business of planning the French for the good of the

French-in spite of the Frznch ‘! ELident!? many people felt that it did not. The 1960’s witnessed an unprecedented outburst of ‘regionalist’ sentiment which. in addition to predictable features such ;i\ Breton and Basque ethnic solidaritv. went as far as asserting that the whole oi’southern France was a distinct cultural rntityOccitame-which had been brutally colonized by the Parisian Kings in the past. The alarming feature of this emotional explosion was that it seemed to occur in a dimension of the French polity-the ‘regional’ or ‘provincial’-which had been devoid of administrative and political structures since the Anciet7 Regime! La Reforme

Regionale

It would not be unfair to describe the proposal for constitutional reform that eventually ted to the resignation of General De Gaulle as an attempt to provide a political and administrative structure for the missing dimension in the French system. The constitutional amendment which was the subject of the Referendum of 27th April, 1969 made three main proposals : (a) There should be a new ‘collectiritL;’ called the Region with its own deliberative council and executive. Formally, the unwieldy pattern of 33,000 Communes and ‘30 Departements was left untouched. (b) The regional council should consist of elected politicians and nominated representatives of economic and social interests while the executive should be a ‘super-Prejtir who, like would represent existing Prefets, both the central government and the region. This seemed to constitutionalize the CODER and the Preset de Region. (c) The Senate (the Upper House of the national Parliament) should be reconstituted on the pattern of the regional councils. This meant that it would cease to represent the traditional political forces of provincial France. This proposal obviously caused great confusion. First, it was difficult for most because of its people to understand technicality. Secondly, such devolution oT power from Paris as there was, seemed to be at the expense of the existing bastions of provincial political power i.e. the elected Departemental Councillors and elected Maires de Commune. In particu!ar the proposed reform of the Senate substituted a large dose of government nomination for the existing system of indirect election by Departemental and Communal politicians. The proposed Gaullist ‘democratic Economique et sociaie’

LONG

RANGE

PLANNING

seemed in fact to be attacking the very basis of traditional French democracy at the same time as its traditional national unity. As a result, the Referendum seemed to call forth a spontaneous alliance of those who thought that any devolution of power from the central Administration would weaken France and those who considered that the proposed reform was bogus, thinly disguising a shift of power primarily of benefit to the central Administration. When the excitement of the Presidential election following the resignation of De Gaulle had died down, the new French government discreetly made it plain that the rejection of one pattern of regional reform did not mean that there would be no regional reform at all. But it would be carried out cautiously through the normal legislative processes. Experiments, similar to those which preceded the creation of the Prefers de Region and the CODER’s in 1964, would be made. But the parliamentary election of Jean-Jacques ServanSchreiber (author of “The American Challenge”) in June 1970 on an aggressively regionalist platform seems to have reinforced the caution. President Pompidou has publicly expressed his hostility to words ending in ‘-ation’ and has indicated that more sober measures to strengthen the traditional Departements and Communes are the better priority. Despite the playing down of regionalist melodrama, the problem facing France remains intractable. In British terms, it is almost like asking a country to sandwich the local government reform of 1888 with the Redcliffe-Maud Commission’s proposals and to swallow the lot in one gulp. ITALY-A REGIONAL STATE? The 1947 Constitution which established the Italian Republic was inspired by the vision of a democratic and pluralistic society that would supersede the centralized authoritarianism of the Monarchy and Fascism. To realize this, the Constitution provided, inter alit, for the new Republic to be divided into ‘Regions’, each endowed with considerable legislative and administrative autonomy. The Italian ‘region’ thus started life as a cornerstone of the new order-a symbol of liberated initiative. The trouble was that, apart from the socalled Regions of Special Statute, the regional provisions of the Constitution were not implemented for over 20 yearsnot until the regions of ordinary statute were first elected in June 1970. But times had changed by then. It had become necessary to justify the institution of the ‘Regions’ in ways that would scarcely have occurred to the makers of the 1947 Constitution. The story is a complicated one.

SEPTEMBER,

1970

The Merzogiorno Talk of regional policy in Italy makes mostpeople think of the development of the Mezzogiorno. But the Mezzogiorno is not a ‘region’. It is an amalgam of many regions covering the whole of southern Italy and the Islands with their 18 million inhabitants (38 per cent of Italians). It is a problem of national lopsidedness. The trauma of the first years of the new Republic was vividly described by the comparison of modern Italy to a “Federation of Belgium and Bulgaria’. In 1952, statistics for the ‘industrial triangle’ (Predmont-Liguria-Lombardy) showed that the average annual income was 271,000 Lire. that the proportion of the population ‘below the poverty line’ was 2.8% and that the illiteracy rate for children between 10 and 15 years old was The corresponding statistics for 1%. the ‘Heel and Toe’ (Apulia-Basilicata-

Calabria) was 77,000 Lire average income, 27 per cent below the poverty line and 23.3 per cent illiteracy. All that the South was up in was mouths to feed, with a crude birthrate of 2.5 per cent compared with l-3 per centin the North. The Italian Government’s response was to create in 1950 the famous Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. The Cassa’s Programme Despite its name, the Cussa is not a bank. It is a state agency with fuil managerial autonomy which, under the direction of a Committee of Ministers for the South, draws up integrated development plans for the Mezzogiorno area (see Figure 5) and supplies the money to implement them to operational organizations and credit institutions. Through the Cussa, it was possible to attain a degree of co-ordination of policies, of flexibility in planning and of efficiency of expenditure that would have been inconceivable through the

YANO TORINO .

@

FIGURE

5. THE

AREA

OF THE

CASSA

PER

“Nuclei” of Industrialisation

IL MEZZOGIORNO.

normal state bureaucracy. Its annual expenditure was roughly equivalent to 1 per cent of Italy’s national income and its interventions were called ‘extraordinary’ meaning that they were over and above the normal development programmes of the individual state ministries. Nowadays, the Cuss4 is linked with the industrialization of the South but this is an over-simplification. The first 10 year programme was conceived almost entirely in terms of agricultural improvement-the traditional ‘bonifica’ and the peasants’ dream of land reform. At the time, there were overwhelming political and practical reasons for this. Initially, industrialization was restricted to processing linked to agricultural production but the Cussu’s mandate was subsequently widened piecemeal to include other categories of industry. This ‘pre-industrial’ programme failed to bridge the gap between North and South. Statistics for 1961 showed that(a) Average annual incomes in the South had only just reached the 1954 level of the North, while incomes in the North had virtually doubled in the same period. The relative gap was in fact widening; and that (b) illiteracy in the ‘Heel and Toe’ was still up to 20 per cent. The absolute gap in culture persisted. This failure was not admitted until the late 1950’s. When it was admitted, it had a crucial effect on Italian national planning As regards the as I indicate below. activity of the C4ss4 itself, a series of laws between 1957 and 1965 switched the whole emphasis of its strategy to industrialization, extended the C4ssa’s life until 1980 and substantially increased its resources. (See Figure 6.) Working people in the South recall the dramatic improvement of their lot as beginning with the industrialization of the 1960’s. The official view, as expressed in the Ministry of the Budgets preliminary report on the second national programme (1971-75) is that, by the end ofthe 1960’s. the tendency for the gap between North and South to widen had been halted and even reversed in some sectors. The same report firmly rejected any relaxation of the effort to develop the South by saying that it was not only a political and social rather than economic task but that it also constituted the most favourable opportunity for the growth of the national economy as a whole. Thoughts like these were expressed about central Scotland and North East England by Mr. Edward Heath, M.P. in 1963. In the Italian context of 1970, they seem to mark the transition of the Mezzogiorno problem from ad hoc emergency

82

1. General

1950-66

(b) Ferries etc.

I

895 (20-25%)

420

(20-25%)

1540 (45-50%)

260

(a 15%)

47 (< 2%)

150

(> 10%)

Infrastructure

(a) Bonifica etc. (b) Industrial Estates (c)

1966-70

Infrastructure

(a) Roads, Water supply

2. Special

Budget

Expenditure

Item

Tourism and Other

162

50

645

650

3. Incentives (a) Industrial (b) Agriculture (c) Tourism and Other

in millions

The

Overall

National

3440 over 17 years

1722 over 5 years

(i.e. 200 pa.)

(i.e. 340 p.a.)

of $ U. S.)

FIGURE 6. THE ACTIVITIES

number one to Top Priority national plan.

50

I

Totals

(Figures

142

150

OF THE CASSA

in an overall

Plan

Many Italians are convinced that their system is like the French. It is sufficient for this article to note that Italy never possessed anything like the French State ‘Administration’. It is therefore difficult to imagine how the Italian national programme can really be like the French ‘Plan’. In the first place, Italy had no tradition of state planning from pre-war days. The Fascists had been almost an anti-event in planning if their Mezzogiorno policy is taken as the example(a) Rather than persevere with ‘bonifica integrale’ (for example, Mussolini’s much vaunted draining of the Pontine Marshes), they tried to turn the South into the granary of Italy -with a disastrous aftermath of soil erosion; and (b) the problem of underemployment was solved by the simple expedient of forbidding peasants to leave their native village in search of work without a police permit. But the Fascists left one important

PER IL MEZZOGIORNO.

legacy for later industrial planning-by accident. In the 1930’s slump, a state agency-IRI (Istituto per I4 Ricostruzione Industrialej-was established to take over bankrupt industrial enterprises and to rehabilitate them for re-sale to private capital. The latter never happened and IRI with its motley empire of steel, engineering, shipbuilding, telephones etc. was .one of the few public organisations left intact at the end of the war. It played a fundamental role in the reconstruction and so, despite its Fascist origins, it was tolerated, then accepted-until in the 1950’s it led the way in the transformation of Italian economic policy. The first overall plan (1948-52) was little more than a shopping list for Marshall Aid-understandably so in view of Italy’s tremendous war damage, dislocation and unemployment. In contrast the second plan (‘lo schema Vunoni’ so named after the Minister, Ezio Vanoni, who launched it in 1954) tried to go beyond the partial policies of reconstruction and Mezzogiorno big push. It sought to promote an integrated economic growth by concentrating public intervention on certain ‘propulsive’ sectors over a 10 year period (195564). The key sectors chosen were not

LONG

RANGE

PLANNING

what economists to-day would call the main ‘growth sectors’ and in practice, the Vanoni plan was not institutionalized. When it came to be assessed in the late 1950’s the scene had changed. During the 1950’s ltaly acquired her industrial base. In large measure, this was the work of the great state ‘Enti’, in particular of IRI and ENI which between them provided Italy with the modern steel industry and access to cheap primary energy that enabled her successfully to join the European Communities. In so doing, the Enti also acted as pace-setter both for private industry and also for the state administration in such vital fields as the modernization of the road and communications systems. This process was associated with certain dominant personalities-Enrico Mattei the Chairman of ENI and Pasquale Saraceno the IRI Director (and brother-in-law of Ezio Vanoni) who subsequently became known as the ‘eminence grise’ of Italian economic policy. The result was that, by the later 1950’s Italian industry was ready to seize the opportunities of new technologies and a national policy of industrialization had become a practical possibility. What is more, public enterprise was geared to lead the way. The will to exploit this new capacity was created by the manifest failure of ‘preindustrial’ policies to solve the problem of the Mezzogiorno. A law of 1957 initiated the real industrialization of the South and contained the important provision that 40 per cent of all public sector investment (including 60 per cent of all new plant) should be located in the South. The industrialization plan was based on the principle of specially designated industrial growth areas that would be eligible for new incentives from the Cussa. The reshaping of the overall national plan was a slower business. An initial proposal for integrating the economies of the North and South was rejected in 1962 as being little more than an extrapolation of existing trends. Pasquale Saraceno was then asked to draw up a 5 year plan that would tackle the structural imbalances of the country in earnest. Saraceno’s proposals formed the basis of the first national economic programme (the Pieraccimi plan 1966-70) which, together with law extending the life of the Cassa were adopted in 1965. A new Interministerial Committee for Economic Programming (CIPE)-to which the Committee of Ministers for the South was to report-was set up to co-ordinate the activities of all public authorities and to integrate them with the investment programmes of the Enti. To implement this, the national programme was to be

SEPTEMBER,

1970

‘articulated regionally’ through the collaboration of the Regions of Special Statute and of regional planning committees in the regions of ordinary statute that had not then been elected. Economic Miracle and Social Success Like so many things that European governments do, the Pieraccini Plan tagged along after the events it was designed to direct. By 1965, the Italian economic miracle had already taken place. The picture of Italy in the 20 years after the war is that of a society transforming and enriching itself with great vigour but with little political direction. Those that had the chances took them. And the State itself through its Enti, behaved in much the When the first national same way. programme eventually came, the activities of the constitutional organs responsible for national co-ordination-the political government, the judiciary and the state bureaucracy-were already felt to be maladjusted to social realities. People spoke of the ‘gulf between State and society’ (&mm fro stat0 e civilkz). The maladjustment was felt in both of Mr. Anthony Crosland. M.P.‘s two problems of regional development(4 As economic polic_v,the 1966-70 programme was splendid-on paper In practice the State could not guarantee to perform what the law prescribed for its organs. Sometimes this was administrative failure: the central ministries were too unwieldy, the local authorities too bankrupt or the Enti too attached to limited functional ends. Sometimes it was political failure: shortlived governments or compromises between conflicting political patronages that brushed aside the principles of planning. (b) As regards physical planning, it seemed that the whole system was out of date. The maladjustment was dramatically epitomized in the 1966 decision of the Constitutional Court on the principle of public control over the use of land. The ruling was in effect that ownership of land included the right to build on that land-so that, in theory. a landowner became entitled to immediate compensation whenever a public development plan provided for any restriction on his right to build, even if the restriction were only part of a long term strategy for urban development. This gave Italian town planning about as much bite as British planning had before 1909.

In effect, the success in creating a new institution-the national programme-to impose some political control over the hitherto spontaneous development of the Italian economy and society crystallised the anxieties about the adequacy of the general regimes and institutions to perform the new function of guidance effectively. Who, in fact, could make the laws and decisions for continuous national pianning and who would carry out the plans in practice? The Imperfect Two Party System Traditionally, major political decisions are made in democracies by elected governments. But there are certain unique features of the Italian scene that have caused a governmental crisis every time a fundamental and controversial issue of national planning arises. A good label for these is the ‘imperfect two-party system’-after the vivid title of a book by Giorgio Galli. In very crude terms: (4 There is only one Party that can form a government-the Christian Democrats (DC) with 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the national vote. But this is not so much a Party as an anti-communist fusion of half-a-dozen ideologically different factions (‘Correnti’). (b) The ‘Left’ opposition is split between the Socialists (themselves split between PSI and PSU) and the Communists (PCI). Despite a constant 25 per cent of the national vote, the Communists are not a feasible nucleus for an alternative government while their attitude to the Constitution remains ambivalent. (cl Absolute majorities in Parliament are achieved by coalitions between the DC and either the NonCommunist Left or the Right. But major issues-such as divorce, local government reform, land-use planning-split the DC into conflcting factions and the government can be brought down by the PC1 voting with one side of the DC against the other. An explanation of this situation would be little short of a social history of Italy since the unification in 1860. It is generally agreed that the present day political parties are perpetuating the emotional responses of two so-called ‘sub-cultures’the one Catholic, the other Socialistwhich formed themselves in opposition to the new ‘bourgeois’ state whose ideals they rejected. But the absence of a real countervailing power in the Civil Service is of equal importance. In the French Third and Fourth Republics. political impasses like this were counterbalanced by the power of the civil service. This has

a3

not been the case in Italy. In 1860. the authoritarian but undeniably honest Piedmontese bureaucracy-unlike the French Imperial Administration-was not able to cope with the problems of administering the whole of Italy. A more compliant national civil service was moulded under the nineteenth Century liberal governments and this was able to survive the Fascist regime but only at the price of reinforcing its bureaucratic malpractices. After the war, the post of Minister for the Reform of the Bureaucracy was created but. because of frequent government resignations, there have been new incumbents almost every year. And it takes more than a year to make an impact on an entrenched bureaucracy. The response of government to the unprecedented expansion of Italian society since the war was, as we have seen, to place even greater reliance on purpose-built Enti-not only the Cassa, IRI and ENI but on a host of others as well. Efficient though Enti may be for specific functions, they cannot by their very nature be a substitute for an effective State administration, or undertake the task of structural reform for the country as a whole. That requires enduring political purposes and stable polyvalent state institutions. Against this background, hopes in the 1960’s have once more fastened on the ‘Regions’-as a remedy for national unity!

The Regions-Special and Ordinary As the mstitution‘for easing the transition -

Pre (National)

from petty states to national unity, regions had been deliberately rejected in the 1860’s in favour of provinces supervised by centrally appointed Prefects on the French model. As a result, the region became a symbol of repressed autonomy. It developed ideologically as such, uncontaminated by any awkward practical experience, until it was adopted in the 1947 Constitution. At that time it was conceived in traditional political terms not as an instrument of socioeconomic planning. The regions of Special Statute had really preceded the Constitution. Autonomy had been given to Sicily and Sardinia to prevent secession (there was wild talk about Sicily becoming the 51st State of the U.S.A.) and to the Val d’Aosta and Tyrol (Alto-Adige) to reconcile the French and German speaking minorities. The Fifth Region, Friuli-Venezia Giulia was not created until 1963 after the solution of the Trieste problem. Neither politically or as planning instruments were these regions very encouraging experiences. The regional capital of Sicily was often regarded as the seat of the Mafia. In particular, the rigorous environmental planning in Alto-Adige was originally a measure to keep out land hungry Italians while the Sardinian ‘plan or rebirth’ remained in the report stage until 1962. The positive contribution of the Special Regions seemed in fact to be part and parcel of the general move to planning in the 1960’s. The Regions of Ordinary Statute were

Small States _--Statuto Albertino (Piemonte) 1848 Administrations of Piemonte

Institutions

(Local)

(Economic)

Planning Regimes

Two

1861

1860

Scicilies

I \

National

Ministries

Tuscany etc. Comuni (Piemonte)l 1843

Provincie

-

-

The

Italian

1947 Constitution

-

Customs

Special Industrial Promotion

Special

Legislation

I 1

-

I EMERGENCE

Legge

OF REGIONAL

Statute _

=

=I

I---Ten-year for Southern

Plan Italy

I Reconstruction 7

Hydro-electric development and Bonifica integrale

-

Con;:r$onal

-

I

(Autarchy)

Industrial

-C

1970

’ (Podesta)

Union

Republic

1948-63

I-

-

1970

Minister for the Reform of the Burocracy

-

-

I

Separatism

7. THE

-

Statute -

Urbanistica

1947

Italy

’ Prefetti

Bonifica

I

(Fascism)

Papal States

FIGURE

a4

of

--

I

I 1

(Physical)

1946

-

Kingdom

I

not in 1947 favoured by the popular front parties (PCI and Socialists) who were loath to dilute the power of central government just before they expected to be elected to power. When they were not elected the Left became enthusiastic regionaiists while the DC dragged its feet. The prospect of three Communist regional governments in the ‘red zone’ of Tuscany, Umbria and Emilia-Romagna was particularly uncongenial. The implementation of the regional provisions of the Constitution was not seriously undertaken until the Centre-Left coalition of 1963. It took from then until 1970 to pass the various procedural and financial laws to permit regional elections to be held. But the fundamental laws that define what the Regions are actually supposed to do have not yet been presented even though the regional governments have been elected(a) The distribution of powers between central, regional, provincial and local governments is still undefined. Will the Regions bring about a devolution of power? Or will they be just a new fourth level of bureaucracy? (b) The extent to which the Regions will be permitted in practice to legislate in the matters assigned to them in the 1947 Constitution in particular in urban planning and vocational training is still undefined. Will the Regions be an effective instrument of ‘regionally articulated planning’? Or will they be rendered

I I

Land Reform

f

Urbanistica 1942

POLICY

and Employment

’

x

1 st National Economic Programme 1965

Policy of lndustrialisatron and Autostrade Programmes 1956/57 I

Legge

!-

Ponte

z=J g ,; E ‘G m g h

1967

-

IN

ITALY.

LONG RANGE PLANNING

CENTRE

LEFT PARTIES

DC - Democrazia

Cristiana

PSC -Pat-tit0

Socialista

Unit0

PSI -

Socialista

ltalianc

Partito

International boundaries

Ordinary Reeions

Statute of

,

Srmcisl

PRI - Partito Republican0 Italian0

v

I

._.-

PCIADRIATIC

Partito Italian0

RIGHT

-

WING

Italian0

Movimento

Sociale

31 seats O”t of a total of 60 seats won by Cantra-Left Parties

SEA

SEA

FIGURE 8. THE REGIONS obsolete before they can start to function by the onset of industrial urbanization expected by 1980? In the immediate future, the ball lies as usual with the political parties. The results of the June 1970 regional elections (see Figure 8) seemed to express support for middle-of-the-way government. Bur regional government, like national government. will require coalitions. In particular, the Communists in red zone Umbria and cannot form administrations Tuscany except in alliance with the PSI which. at the national level, is in coalition with the DC. The PSI assert their right to enter difierent coalitions at local or regional level from those at national level-a proposition rejected by the PSU and some of the DC. This issue together with

1970

Liberale

Key to Results of Elections for Regions of Ordinary Statute

0

IONIAN

SEPTEMBER,

PARTIES

“Stella 0 Corona” (Monarchist Party)

SEA

MSI -

MEDITERRANEAN

Communista

Partito Socialista Italian0 di Unita Prolataria

PLI - Pattito

0

_ --.__

SEA PSIUP-

TYRRHENIAN

-

OF ORDINARY

STATUTE.

divorce, strike action, taxation, education and other woes familiar to all European governments, lies behind the persistent governmental crisis of this summer. But, by then, the wives and families were already leaving for the seaside.. . H

BOOK

(b) Italy: the publications of Svimez, Via Porta Pinciana, 6, Rome, Italy, in particular their collection of selected essays on the Mezzogiomo, 1967. The publications of II Mulino, Bologna especially, ‘II Bipartifisby Giorgio Galli, give mo Imperfetto’, stimulating insights into Italian political and social development.

LIST

Books and articles on French and Italian regional matters are measured in libraries. Any standard British or American work on the French Plan or the Mezzogiorn will give a list of the main works in English. For native wisdom, I recommend: (a) France: the publications of the lnstitut d’Etudes Politiques, LJniversitC de Grenoble. Grenoble, France, in particular their annual volume, ‘Amenagement du Territove et DevehDement Reoional’. oublished bv Docume&tion Francaise; ‘a’nd

05