Considering that the French metropolitan area makers decided not to respect the 1999’s law and its spirit, this paper intends to highlight the reasons why the French State accepted this situation so easily. First, the degrees of freedom taken by local elected actors are stressed thanks to two...

This paper intends to question the current development of metropolitan areas in France, and its induced effects. Contrary to the expected benefits (lower costs for the production of public services, scale economies), metropolitan, areas in France has entailed an increase in local taxes and tax...