L'intercommunalité, créature de l'état analyse socio-historique de la coopération intercommunale. le cas du bassin chambérien

Literature on municipal cooperation tends to oppose, in accordance with centre/periphery distinction, the urge for reform by the central State and the capacities of resistance of local governments, thus concluding that there has been a loss of power of the French State over the latter. This article contributes to rethink the political role of central State in intermunicipal institutions. Based on a long-term study of the French agglomeration of Chambéry, it focuses on the social and political effects of institutions. In particular, it analyses how State representatives originally played a key role in institutional design, giving local cooperation a decisive and sustainable orientation. In such a perspective, municipal cooperation appears to be a c'reature of the State' which, while escaping its initial purposes, works as a particularly effective mechanism of political integration.