Quand l’armée s’en va ! Analyse empirique de la cohérence de l’accompagnement des territoires par le ministère des Armées

At the intersection between the evaluation of public policies and regional economics, this article assesses thanks to an original database the coherence of the support policy of the French ministry of defense during the major territorial restructuring that occurred in France since the 2000s. Based on data collected at the district level, an econometric analysis links the demographic, economic and political situation of the communities affected by restructuring with the financial compensations they received from the Ministry. The analysis questions the spatial planning logics within the ministry of Defense's rationalization policy. The results show that the socio-economic situation of communities is fairly well integrated into the overall strategy of the public planner. This, allows to feed the debate about the relevance and the effectiveness of this kind of policy when it is undertaken by an actor, whose primary function is not to do spatial planning but to prepare and organize the Defense of the country.