Political and economic powers and practices
Responsible: Régine PERRON
Structural topic: The “political and economic powers and practices” area analyses the evolution of forms of governmentality, by replacing them in the long term, focusing on studies of political and economic discourse and governmental practices, and comparing different European, Asian and American cultural areas.
Objectives: Contemporary societies face political, economic and technological challenges which have been clearly identified: a crisis of representation and new forms of political participation; political polarisation and the rise of populism; transformations of capitalism, strengthening of the logic of competition and internationalisation of economies; rising economic and social inequalities; recomposition of the role of States and new forms of national, regional, multilateral and/or transnational governance; digitisation and dematerialisation of the economy as well as of politics. These challenges question the future of liberal democracy, which seemed to have won the ideological battle at the end of the Cold War, and that of the continuity of the trade globalisation process, which then appeared irreversible.
The researchers in this area are historians, sociologists, experts in cultural areas and international relations and experts in the production and dissemination of ideas and practices. The historical approach brings to light the origins of the tensions and conflicts that characterise our contemporary societies. It encourages a long-term view of the economic, political and social controversies that galvanise them, and emphasises the dynamics by which the practice of power is regularly reconfigured. The comparative perspective is not only useful to contextualise the social, cultural and economic origins of political conflicts, but also to put into perspective the transnational factors of the same kind that influence the current transformations of (multi-level) models of governance.
Méthodology: putting texts into their social, cultural and historical perspective, analysis of economic and political representations, work on individual, institutional and corporate archives, interviews, prosopography, statistics, quantitative analysis of speeches and networks (in association with the IDHN).