: Local finances and Spatial (in)justice

International audienceThis contribution aims to analyze the way in which State allocations and equalization schemes are distributed to the local bloc in France (communes, intercommunalities) through the filter of John Rawls' and Iris Marion Young's concepts of spatial justice. The current shortcomings in the efficiency of the redistribution of public resources to the local bloc and the impossibility of implementing a reform of local finances, which has been constantly postponed, call for more than a technical explanation of the complexity of the methods of calculating allocations to local authorities that are currently in force: rather, it is a matter of stepping back from the moral expectations that govern the implementation of true redistributive justice in the territories. The concepts of spatial justice thus make it possible to better understand the inertia of territorial representation that governs the rules for allocating public funds to municipalities (threshold effects, obsolete center-periphery representations) and the low value currently accorded to equalization mechanisms, due to a trend toward recentralization of public action (territorial reform, reduction of own resources from local taxes). The aim is therefore to use these tools to question the weight of stereotypes of place and cognitive barriers that still prevail in the way financial solidarity between types of territories in France is apprehended: rich or poor, rural or urban, isolated or integrated, etc.Cette contribution se propose d’analyser le mode de répartition des dotations d’État et les dispositifs de péréquation en faveur du bloc communal en France au filtre des concepts de la justice spatiale. Face aux insuffisances constatées dans les modalités de redistribution des concours de l’Etat et à l’impossible mise en oeuvre d’une réforme des finances locales, le sujet mérite un questionnement de fond sur les motifs de ce blocage, capable de dépasser l’argument technique de la trop grande complexité des mécanismes à traiter. Les concepts de la justice spatiale permettent ainsi de mieux identifier les inerties de représentation des territoires et la faible valeur accordée à la justice redistributive dans les territoires. Cela questionne, plus fondamentalement, le poids des stéréotypes de lieux et des barrières cognitives qui prévalent encore dans la manière d’appréhender l’impératif de solidarité territoriale à l’échelle nationale