The Korea Local Administration Review

The purpose of this study is to analyze the port decentralization in France, which was implemented through several legal reforms earlier than South Korea. The semantic network anlaysis was conducted with the French port law to analyze the process of French port decentralization: law of August 13, 2004 , the law of 4 July 2008, the Act of 7 August 2015. The word such as local governments, decisions, agreements, transfer of authority, residence, management, maintenance, development, ownership, decentralization and legal use were analyzed as key words in the port decentralization. The policy implications based on the results were three points : investigating the transfer of authority, promoting port decentralization through regional cooperation and legislative reform. It is necessary to make continuous efforts to secure innovation and competitiveness by developing the ports regions and reflecting regional characteristics on port management in further port decentralization discussion.