REGIONAL CONVERSION UNDER CONDITIONS OF DEFENSE INDUSTRY CENTRALIZATION: THE FRENCH CASE

French defense-industrial and defense-technological policies have been important factors in regional economic development. The process of downward adjustment begun in the late 1990s will have major effects on defense-dependent regions. However, conversion has only been given a minor role. The study of two quite different defense-dependent regions, Brittany and Paris, indicates that the strong, vested idiosyncratic interests of large sections of the defense industry, combined with an overly high concentration of political, economic, and social activities at the national level, are the major obstacles to a significant regional conversion policy. In the late 1990s, the French arms industry faced dramatic challenges to its current configuration, initially set up a few years after General de Gaulle came to power in 1958. For four decades, high-tech military projects have been presented as the spearhead of French technology policy, and the defense industry as a major con-tributor to economic welfare, including regional economic development. This military-driven technology policy has carried huge costs, with as much as one-third of all industrial research and development (R&D) expenditure allocated to military R&D. The dramatic changes in both the geopolitical setting and in the domesti