Francuskie metropolie jako przykład "władzy nieukończonej" : wstęp do analizy kształtowania się metropolitalnych tożsamości politycznych we Francji

Abstract

The author makes an attempt at explaining the process of shaping of political identity of metropolitan areas that are regarded as a sign of “new territorialities”, emerging due to globalization as well as metropolization of modern states. Also, the author emphasizes that following by democratic institutions (and thus political identity and subjectivity) the reforms of territorial structure sanctioning new areas of shaping social reality plays an important role in proper functioning of the democratic country. Modern France, as well as territorial reforms undertaken in 2010—2014, constitutes the area of analyses and inquiries. Using a constructivist concept of political identity, the author advances a thesis that citizens’ political identity is the aftermath of the emergence of political market — a space for debate, competition and rivalry, whose settlement comes with the political power. The emergence of autonomic public space in metropolitan areas must therefore be the result of the political power being located on this level. Since the “power of the metropolis” in France still remains incomplete, the metropolitan identity is at an early state of development. Nonetheless, the reform effected in 2014 by the MAPTAM act, as well as the transformation of the Metropolis of Lyon into a fully-fledged unit of territorial government prove that the empowerment of major urban and metropolitan areas has already become a constant vector of transformations within the French system of territorial organization, which will be accompanied with new territorial political identities in the future.