Paris, Capital of France

Paris is the capital of France, and as such is the seat of France's national government.

For the executive, the two chief officers each have their own official residences, which also serve as their offices. President of the Republic resides at the Elysée Palace in the VIIIe arrondissement, while the Prime Minister's seat is at the Hôtel Matignon in the VIIe arrondissement. Government ministries are located in various parts of the city - many are located in the VIIe, near the Matignon.

The two houses of the French Parliament are also located on the Left Bank. The upper house, the Senate, meets in the Palais du Luxembourg in the VIe arrondissement, while the more important lower house, the Assemblée Nationale, meets in the Palais Bourbon in the VIIe. The President of the Senate, the second highest public official in France after the President of the Republic, resides in the "Petit Luxembourg", a smaller palace annex to the Palais du Luxembourg.

France's highest courts are located in Paris. The Court of Cassation, the highest court in the judicial order, which tries most criminal and civil cases, is located in the Palais de Justice on the Ile de la Cité, while the Conseil d'État, which provides legal advice to the executive and acts as the highest court in the administrative order, judging litigation against public bodies, is located in the Palais Royal in the Ier.

The Constitutional Council, which is an advisory body which is the ultimate authority on the constitutionality of laws and government decrees, also meets in the Palais Royal.

Paris has been a commune (municipality) since 1834 (and also briefly between 1790 and 1795). At the 1790 division of France into communes in the beginning of the French Revolution, and again in 1834, Paris was a city only half its modern size, but in 1860 it annexed bordering communes, some entirely, to create the new administrative map of twenty municipal arrondissement's the city still has today. These municipal subdivisions describe a clockwise spiral outward from its most central Ier arrondissement.

Paris as a commune from 1790 became the préfecture (capital) of the Seine department which encompassed the city of Paris proper and a number of neighboring communes, but this department was split in 1968 into four smaller ones: the city of Paris proper became a department distinct from suburban communes and retained the Seine department 's "75" number (originating from the Seine department's position in France's alphabetical list of departments), while the three new Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne departments were attributed the numbers 92, 93 and 94 respectively. The result of this division is that today Paris's limits as a department are exactly those of its limits as a commune, a situation unique in France.

( The arrondissement's of Paris )

Each of Paris's 20 arrondissement's has a directly-elected council (conseil d' arrondissement), which in turn elects an arrondissement mayor. A selection of members from each arrondissement council form the Council of Paris (conseil de Paris), which in turn elects the mayor of Paris.

Before the French Revolution, the city of Paris was ruled by a merchant-elected municipality whose head was the provost of the merchants. It was also ruled by the lieutenant general of police, appointed directly by the king, whose competence extended far beyond city police, being also in charge of food supply, market regulations, or street cleanliness.

Both offices were abolished at the start of the French Revolution when the office of mayor of Paris was created. The municipality of Paris became one of the most revolutionary forces of France, and so in July 1794 during the Thermidorian Reaction the office of mayor of Paris was abolished. Throughout the 19th and most of the 20th century, the central State, wary of the revolutionary moods of Paris, administered the city directly through the State-appointed préfet of the Seine department, in charge of general affairs in the city of Paris and its suburbs, and the State-appointed Prefect of Police, in charge of police in the same Seine department The city of Paris even legally ceased to exist between 1795 and 1834: disbanded in 1795, the municipality was restored only in 1834, although the recreated municipal council was headed by the préfet of the Seine, and not by a mayor. Save for a few brief occasions, it was not until 1977 that the office of mayor was recreated and Paris could again rule itself freely, although the State-appointed office of Prefect of Police has survived until today.

Although Paris has a double role as commune and department, it has a unique council to governing both; the Council of Paris, presided by the Mayor of Paris, meets either as a municipal council (conseil municipal) or as a departmental council (conseil general) depending on the issue to be debated.

Paris' modern administrative organization still retains some traces of its Seine department jurisdiction. The Préfécture de Police (also directing Paris' fire brigades), for example, has still a jurisdiction extending to Paris' petite couronne of bordering three departments for some operations such as fire protection or rescue operations, and is still directed by France's national government. Paris has no municipal police force, although it does have its own brigade of traffic wardens.

From 1961, as part of a nation-wide administrative effort to consolidate regional economies, Paris as a department became the capital of the new District of the Paris Region, transformed into the Île-de-France region in 1976, encompassing the Paris department and its seven closest departments The regional council members are chosen by direct elections (since 1986). The prefect of the Paris department (known as the prefect of the Seine department before 1968) is also prefect of the Île-de-France region, although the office lost a lot of its powers with the creation of the office of mayor of Paris in 1977.

( The eight departments of the Île-de-France region )

Few of the above changes have taken into account Paris's existence as an agglomeration. Unlike in most of France's major urban areas such as Lille and Lyon, there is no intercommunal entity in the Paris urban area, no intercommunal council treating the problems of the region's dense urban core as a whole; Paris's alienation of its suburbs is indeed a problem today, and considered by many to be the main causes of civil unrest such as suburban riots in 2005. A direct result of these unfortunate events were propositions for a more efficient metropolitan structure to cover the city of Paris and some of the suburbs, ranging from a socialist idea of a loose "metropolitan conference" (conference métropolitaine) to the right-wing idea of a more integrated Grand Paris ("Greater Paris").

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