Shaping the 'interior frontier' : french State and local government in the decentralisation process in New Caledonia

After a brief presentation of the conceptual framework within which this analysis is situated, the first part of this text contains an historical summary of the political link between the central French State and the local administrations. In the second part, it's showed how this process of decentralisation set in motion in 1988 accentuates the 'interior frontier' which divides the Melanesian and European communities