‘The state can't do everything any more’: understanding the evolution of civil defence policies in France

International audienceThis article looks at how the French national authorities have recently initiated the promotion of a discourse on resilience and business continuity in the domain of civil defence through the passing of laws and decrees, the publication of white papers and a business continuity manual. This discourse expresses the will of the national authorities to reform the highly state-centred approach to French civil defence by empowering the private organisations in charge of the former public services, local governments and thepopulation itself. Beyond this discourse, however, local authorities and individuals remain, in reality, very dependent on the state’s crisis response capacities, whereas the government itself is in practice reluctant to delegate its crisis management prerogatives to private organisations. This gap between the official claims and the reality illustrates the paradoxical and ambiguous position of the state which, while facing a loss of its crisis management capacity and becoming increasingly dependent on the private sector, maintains in practice its central and dirigiste role