Socialist decentralization represents the end of a very long and not very glorious history. The Revolution of 1789, to begin with, cast a long shadow over all decentralizing reform, both conceptually, by assuming an opposition between national unity and equality on the one hand and local liberty on the other, and institutionally, by consecrating local governmental structures that subsequent generations treated as inviolable. The Revolution also initiated the self-interested pattern of legislative behavior on the issue of decentralization, one in which considerations of political interest almost always took precedence over those of political principle. Although in the first century following the Revolution, such self-interested opposition to local liberty was motivated by a distrust of the general population by those in power, in the second century, it was fueled by a distrust of those in power by local officials who, by now, controlled the periphery.

How then do we explain the success of decentralizing reforms today or of those one hundred years ago? In these two instances alone, political interest combined with the politics of the moment to favor the disinterested politics represented by decentralization. In both cases and each time initiated by the left, legislation promoting local liberty has been associated with a short-term political calculation to retain power at the local level, even if it was lost at the national, as well as with a long-term electoral strategy to gain and retain the allegiance of a changing electorate.