L’urbanisation russe et soviétique a été tardive et accélérée, en comparaison d’autres ensembles territoriaux ; un grand nombre de villes nouvelles ont été créées par le régime soviétique qui a promu la fonction socialiste de la ville, l’organisation rationnelle de l’espace et la gestion planifiée de l’économie. Ces particularités urbaines et les multiples événements démographiques et politiques du XXe siècle font des villes de l’espace post-soviétique un ensemble qui pose question quant à sa comparabilité et à ses ruptures. Cette thèse vise à montrer que l’on peut appliquer le concept de système de villes et les méthodes générales de la géographie urbaine pour rendre compte de l’évolution urbaine dans l’espace post-soviétique à long terme, c’est-à-dire mieux comprendre et éventuellement prédire leur évolution. Nous avons confronté plusieurs modèles statistiques avec la dynamique urbaine observée et montré que la structure macro-géographique des villes était comparable à celle d’autres systèmes de villes. On a aussi observé des trajectoires particulières liées à la dimension du territoire, ses ressources naturelles, sa dynamique démographique récente, etc. La connaissance des évolutions observées a été intégrée dans une démarche incrémentale de simulation multi-agents qui vise, à partir d’hypothèses théoriques sur les mécanismes générateurs de l’urbanisation, à reproduire des faits stylisés généraux et particuliers, le plus parcimonieusement possible. L’évaluation progressive de modèles de plus en plus complexes a abouti à la reproduction de certaines évolutions observées et mis en valeur les trajectoire plus particulières de villes qui « résistent » à la modélisation. / The Russian and Soviet urbanisation process happened late and fast, compared to other territories. Many new towns and cities were created by the Soviet regime that officially promoted discourses about the socialist function of the city, rational organisation of space and a planned management of the economy. These urban particularities and the multiple demographic and political events of the 20th century have made cities in the post-Soviet space an interesting case and raised question regarding its ruptures and comparability. This dissertation thesis aims to show that the concept of system of cities and generic methods in urban geography are useful in the study of urban evolution over the long term in this space, to eventually better understand past trends and predict future ones. We confronted several statistical models with the observed urban dynamics and concluded that the macro-geographical structure of cities in the post-Soviet space was comparable to that of other systems of cities (hierarchy of sizes, spacing, functional differentiation). We also observed specific trajectories related to the size of the territory, natural resources, the recent demographic shrinkage and the effect of particular political decisions. This knowledge about observed evolutions has been included in an incremental approach of agent-based modelling. Starting from theoretical hypotheses about generative mechanisms, we tried to generate generic and specific stylised facts, with a model as parsimonious as possible. The progressive evaluation of increasingly complex models led to the satisfactory simulation of observed urban evolution and highlighted specific trajectories that “resist” modelling.

In this study, administrative reform in the EU accession process was analysed with reference to the cases of Hungary and Turkey. The main goal of this study is to show that both objective (economy) and subjective (politics) factors are important and acceding countries to have room to manoeuvre in the context of the social-liberal framework of the EU. To this end, necessary causality between neoliberal administrative reform and EU accession, and determinism in the enlargement process, which leaves no room to manoeuvre for candidate countries, are denied. In conclusion, it is seen that since there is no public administration model, candidate countries are free to determine the content of the administrative reforms within the framework of general principles set by the EU. Moreover, it is found that the EU accession process is closely related to modernisation of the public administration system in the candidate countries and administrative reform has been overlapped and equalized to EU accession. Finally, it is understood that administrative reform with its extensive content, caused centralisation.