L’intercommunalité en France comme objet de recherche. Entre évaluation des dispositifs et analyses des processus d’institutionnalisation

Abstract

In France, the commonwealth of municipalities, that is the possibility for municipalities to gather in a new institution, without meaning its extinction, is a relatively old option. Nevertheless, apart from jurists, few researchers from other disciplines have been interested in the subject. It is from the end of the nineties (1990), after the important amendments carried out when geographers, economists and sociologists started to consider it as a subject of study. But political scientists have specially been who have contributed with a new vision of «commonwealth». This article tries to show, concisely, the main tendencies of their researches in France; in order to conclude that although they have been relatively active, so far they have been restricted to their own discipline.

Keywords

• municipalities
• commonwealth of municipalities
• local governments
• territorial power