La proximité revendiquée et désirée : les apports d'une enquête lancée par des élus locaux

This article is based on the data from a survey conducted in ?Côtes d?Armor? about the proximity of services. It aims to enrich the scientific debate on the concept of proximity and to investigate the use of proximity in the political field. Proximity as it is claimed by the politicians and desired by the citizens is not only a matter of physical distance: proximity has different meanings. The first part of this paper reflects the scientific debates about the concept of proximity and the usual ideas about proximity in public action, before measuring the demand for proximity of services by the respondents involved in the study. In a second part, we propose a model of analysis of the desire for proximity. We use this model for the analysis of the results of the survey. It appears that the demand for proximity differs from a type of service to another and does not only depend on the level of use of these services. The results also show the unequal importance of factors such as the socio-economic position, age, sex, the type of city of residence, on the variability of the desire for proximity.