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Regions, wedged between the state and local authorities, have competencies allowing them to provide coordination and impetus. However, the 2010 law, which sets up the department-region pairing, trivializes the regional level by presenting it as just another management level alongside the others, implicitly questioning the region’s capacity to coordinate public policy within its territory. And yet it is the very advent of conseillers territoriaux, officials simultaneously elected to the department and regional administrations, that prevents regions from fulfilling their intermediary-level responsibility of ensuring coordination. In response, regions advocate true regionalization and are prepared to defend their specific nature on the ground