French to English Social Sciences History 18th century France

This is from the opening paragraph of an article about policing cities with an influx of migrants in late 18th-century France. The idea seems to be that city authorities are torn between accepting the influx of "foreigners" and trying to shut them out. (The word "ouverture" seems to have come into fashion again recently in French politics to describe a policy of recruiting opposition members or forming unlikely coalitions; it can also be used to describe immigration policy on a national scale. Here it clearly opposes "repli".) Maybe it will come to me as I plough my way through the rest of the text, but for the moment I seem to be stuck on its fundamental structuring principle. All help gratefully received.

Partagés entre l’acceptance pragmatique de l’***ouverture*** et la tentation du repli, les autorités urbaines accumulent dés la fin du XVIIe siècle et tout au long du siècle des Lumières les textes réglementaires qui réactivent des dispositions anciennes, mais parcourent aussi de plus en plus souvent les voies de l’innovation.

The term appears again a couple of paragraphs later:

L’***ouverture*** qui caractérise les sociétés urbaines peut expliquer la précocité des dispositifs réglementaires destinés à contrôler les déplacements.