François-Xavier Dudouet

The Euro Zone Corporate Elite at the Cliff Edge (2005–2008): A New Approach of Transnational Interlocking

The paper examines the degree of interlocking directorships across the major Eurozone economies. It uses the major stock market indices in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium to identify the top of the corporate elite in each country. For the period of 2005–2008, it studies transnational links between European companies. The paper draws attention to a number of features of these interlocks. Firstly transnational interlocks remain relatively low but secondly they do vary considerably. An important issue here is the degree of bilateral integration which is occurring between some countries within the Eurozone, for example France and Belgium, and the degree to which other countries, most notably, Italy are increasingly disconnected, whilst the two most powerful economies, France and Germany, are very weakly connected. This variability reflects a series of structural divides between big business in the Eurozone that makes it difficult for this corporate elites to be cohesive at the European level.

European Business Leaders. A Focus on the Upper Layers of the European Field Power

In Euro-Clash, Neil Fligstein (2008) states that the constitution of a transnational capitalist class in Europe is not manifest, even though recent decades have been marked by the structuring of vast European markets. Following the insights of Hall and Soskice (2001), he stresses that globalized economic activities are compatible with a strong national anchorage with regard to ownership, governance or employment relations. In other words, increased trade and financial, market and economic integration does not automatically translate into social integration. Fligstein’s assumptions are all the more important as they break with a long-standing research tradition postulating the formation of a transnational capitalist class (Hymer, 1979) and conceptualize Europeanization as not only a mechanical byproduct of economic relations, but as a more complex social process.

XML content warehousing: Improving sociological studies of mailing lists and web data

Gestion de données XML — Amélioration des études sociologiques des listes d’emails et des données sur le Web : Dans cet article, nous présentons les lignes directrices d’une approche basée sur le XML pour l’étude sociologique des données Web tels que l’analyse des listes de diffusion ou bases de données disponibles en ligne. L’utilisation d’un entrepôt XML est une solution flexible pour le stockage et le traitement de ce type de données. Nous proposons une solution éprouvée et montrons des applications possibles avec notre étude de profils d’experts impliqués dans le travail de normalisation au W3C. Nous illustrons l’utilisation de bases de données sociologiques semi-structurées en présentant notre schéma XML pour le stockage de listes de diffusion. Un schéma XML permet de nombreuses adjonctions ou croisements de sources de données, sans modifier les données déjà stockées, tout en permettant de possibles évolutions structurelles. Nous montrons également que l’existence de données cachées implique une complexité accrue pour les utilisateurs SQL traditionnels. Le stockage par XML permet l’entreposage exhaustif et l’utilisation de requêtes récursives qui ne sont pas dépendantes du schéma de stockage initial. Nous présentons enfin la possibilité d’exporter les données stockées vers des logiciels avancés couramment utilisés par les sociologues. In this paper, we present the guidelines for an XML-based approach for the sociological study of Web data such as the analysis of mailing lists or databases available online. The use of an XML warehouse is a flexible solution for storing and processing this kind of data. We propose an implemented solution and show possible applications with our case study of profiles of experts involved in W3C standard-setting activity. We illustrate the sociological use of semi-structured databases by presenting our XML Schema for mailing-list warehousing. An XML Schema allows many adjunctions or crossings of data sources, without modifying existing data sets, while allowing possible structural evolution. We also show that the existence of hidden data implies increased complexity for traditional SQL users. XML content warehousing allows altogether exhaustive warehousing and recursive queries through contents, with far less dependence on the initial storage. We finally present the possibility of exporting the data stored in the warehouse to commonly-used advanced software devoted to sociological analysis.

WebStand, une plateforme de gestion de données web pour applications sociologiques

WebStand is a multidisciplinary ANR project that started in 2006, involving database computer scientists and sociologists specializing in the study of the standardization of new technologies. Its main results are a platform the enables the social analysis of people posting on mailing lists. We illustrate our results by applying it to the W3C public mailing lists, discussion groups on specific technical issues, in the context of XQuery.

New Web Standards in the Making: Transnational Private Governance and Beyond

Our paper presents empirical results of a study on the bargaining process of web XML standards in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) arenas. Processing the 8 main mailing lists, constituted of more than 21000 mails, has led us to analyze the standardmaking process through the bargaining habits and networks of actors who take part in it. It often appears that institutions interacting the most with others directly take part in the writing of final texts, and that firms often intend (and manage !) to play a leading role in this work. In the field of internet, “networked governance refers to a growing body of research on the interconnectedness of essentially sovereign units, which examines how those interconnections facilitate or inhibit the functioning of the overall system.” (Lazer, 2007). It supposes that State actors play a big role in the construction of rules and standards, though they have to cooperate with many other actors through networked organizations. On the contrary, transnational private governance refers to “the ability of non-state actors to cooperate across borders in order to establish rules and standards of behaviour accepted as legitimate by agents not involved in their definition. Non-state actors not only formulate norms, but often also have a key role in their enforcement. Accordingly, the current privatization of rule-making and enforcement goes much further than traditional lobbying in allowing private actors an active role in regulation itself” (Graz, Nolke, 2007). In this pattern, governance is based on interconnections and interdependences which are mostly made of nonsovereign units, and public regulation by agencies or so on is reduced to a strict minimum. In our case study, the whole process from the W3C common work to the ISO struggle illustrates the ambiguity of transnational private governance: on the one hand, competition between firms is only made possible by cooperative work. On the other hand, such a relation shows its limits when firms try to convert web standards into software standards which could become quasi-monopolistic on the mass-consuming software market in the future. Unsurprisingly, the end of ‘coopetition’ is marked by conflicts and harsh industrial competition, which impose arbitrations and may reveal the need for public regulation such as ISO. This generates both inflexions in transnational private governance and deep transformations in the traditional interagency pattern of standardization.