Agnès Labrousse

Institutions and ‘Science’: The Contest about Pluralism in Economics in France

ABSTRACT For a long time, France was a country in which various approaches to economics coexisted. This pluralism began to dwindle in the mid-1990s. Since then, France has witnessed the increasing and now overwhelming domination of mainstream economics. This article, drawing on a study of the evolution of the recruitment of professors of economics in France, documents the situation and links the observed trends to the changing institutions governing the discipline (a centralized system evolving under the influence of international norms and instruments). It is demonstrated that far from being fair and neutral devices, the rules and instruments governing economics—notably the ranking lists of economic journals—incorporate specific worldviews strongly biasing the assessment of research toward the mainstream. This article documents the tentative use of ‘voice and exit’ by the French Association of Political Economy to reform the economics discipline. Furthermore, it discusses the arguments proclaimed by Jean Tirole to prevent the French Ministry of Higher Education from creating a new university section called ‘Economy and Society’ to reinstate pluralism: they fall back on a monistic view of science that is questioned notably by developments—both factual and conceptual—in science studies and epistemology.

Produire en économie de pénurie: L’industrie pharmaceutique est-allemande entre régulation pénurique et contraintes sanitaires (1949-1989)

Cet article met en evidence l’influence de la « regulation penurique » sur l’organisation de la production et du travail dans l’industrie pharmaceutique est-allemande de 1949 a 1989. En introduisant des elements de comparaison Est-Ouest, il precise le diagnostic d’une industrie atteinte de maniere chronique par un syndrome et un mode de regulation penuriques. Il s’agit cependant d’un modele productif penurique specifique au secteur pharmaceutique ou des penuries chroniques et multiformes debouchent sur un taylorisme contrarie avec des formes particulieres de flexibilite du travail, ou une industrie contrainte par les ressources doit simultanement faire face a des incertitudes sur la demande. L’economie de la penurie conduit a de multiples ajustements en matiere de fabrication et de formulation des produits pharmaceutiques. Les acteurs vont jouer sur les intrants, sur les formes, les quantites et les procedes de fabrication, ce qui compromet parfois la chaine de la qualite. Des compromis originaux entre les exigences de securite sanitaire et les contraintes de la production planifiee se font alors jour.

Regulation Theory and Post-Socialist Transformation

The Regulation approach, developed for two decades by a group of French scholars, can be defined as an institutional and evolutionary research programme focused on economic change in a historical, theoretical and comparative perspective. The main works have been devoted to capitalist economies, but in the 1980s a number of contributions addressed the problem of socialist systems. During the 1990s, in common with all economic and social theories, the Regulation approach has faced the challenge of understanding the unprecedented experience of post-socialist transformation. Its contributions in this field have shown interesting parallels with other theories or schools of thought that go beyond the traditional orthodoxy/heterodoxy split. Post-socialist transformation is a process of major discontinuous institutional and systemic change, to some extent similar to the historical precedents of war, revolution or major social crises. But it represents a radical new phenomenon, analysis of which should revitalize current theories of economic systems and of the evolution of capitalism.

The Evolution of Ordoliberalism in the Light of the Ordo Yearbook: A Bibliometric Analysis

It is well known from the history and sociology of science that the rise of new schools and the institutionalization of disciplines, research areas and specialties are normally associated with the launching of learned journals (Weingart 1974 pp. 30–32; Hagemann 1991). Such journals serve as important forums for elaborating an approach and help maintain the “corporate identity” of a new school. Setting up a new journal also represents a way of overcoming resistance within the established academic community and of spreading the new gospel. Cases which highlight this important role of journals in the development of schools of thought abound. Among the most prominent are Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (Bourdieu school), L’Annee sociologique (Durkheim school) (Besnard 1979; Karady 1979), Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Bielefeld school of social science history) (Raphael 2000) and Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung (Frankfurt school of critical theory). In some cases, including Annales, Public Choice or Tel Quel, the labels by which schools are known even coincide with the journal titles.