Of all the leading European nations, France is usually taken as the model of the unitary state. The movement of decentralisation in France has been gathering pace since the 1960s, however, with the landmark reforms of 1982–3 and 2003–4 representing staging posts in an ongoing process of incremental change. How best can we understand decentralisation in France? In this chapter, decentralisation in France is viewed through three alternative prisms – central steering, territorial capacity-building and identity construction. The first understanding of decentralisation in France is as part of a broader programme of state reform, part of a drive by central governors to divest themselves of unwanted or inflationary functions. It is an exercise in steering at a distance, a close approximation of our hypotheses 2 (regulatory mode of governance) and 7 (state capacity-building). The second understanding of decentralisation is in terms of new forms of local and regional governance practices, most closely matching our hypotheses 1 (participatory mode of governance), 3 (multi-actor coordination) and, to a lesser extent, 4 (multi-level dynamics). The third understanding of decentralisation in France refers to new forms of identity-based territorial mobilisation, in part captured by our first hypothesis (participatory mode of governance). Interlocutors repeatedly interpreted decentralisation in terms of one (or more) of these three main understandings, each of which is also embedded in different academic literatures.