Jérôme Sgard

Delegation without Borders: On individual rights, constitutions and the global order

Political and economic rights are envisaged as the outcome of an ongoing bargain between citizens and their rulers. Over the long run, this constitutive process shapes the development of both the economy and the state. Globalization, however, corresponds to a period where both the market and civil society extend far beyond the borders of the initial political compact. Hence, citizens may not only ask that cross-border transactions be made easier; they may also challenge the institutional cohesion and integrity of the classical, Westphalian state, i.e., its legal and judicial order, and its bureaucratic capabilities. We are proposing a schematic description of how this political process may gradually exit the national perimeter and deliver four possible models of international or global governance, depending upon the potential structuring of coalitions between the potential winners of the globalization both in the elite and in society, and the losers; national games being ultimately arbitrated by the international competition among elites, but also by the possible formation of global coalitions of citizens and merchants.

Why Are Modern Bureaucracies Special? State Support to Private Firms in Early-Eighteenth Century France

We ask to what extent early modern bureaucracies could work as policy tools, and take the case of a small French agency, the Bureau du Commerce, which allocated rights and rents to private entrepreneurs via a mix of hierarchical decision-making and peer-based collegial deliberation. This set-up reflected an attempt to maximize information and expertise, but also allowed for the recognition of existing private rights and social interests. We show that the decisions rendered on nearly all applications submitted over a period of twenty years are consistent with an objective of impersonal, rational and informed decision-making process. The final judgment of the key participants (for or against each demand), and the qualitative arguments they brought forward during the procedure, are robust predictors of eventual decisions. This result suggests that progress towards impersonal governance did not derive only from broad realignments within the elites: early modern bureaucracies were more innovative than often assumed and they could follow principles of impersonality, consistency and open access. However, this situation held true only as long as major rent-seeking interests that structured the social and political order were not affected by these early policies.

Mercantilism and Bureaucratic Modernization in Early Eighteenth-Century France

French mercantilism is generally associated with absolutist policy-making subject to capture by rent-seeking interests. This article investigates how the Bureau du Commerce, a small state agency in charge of commerce and the supply side, handed out rents and privileges to private entrepreneurs. We coded how the Bureau investigated and decided all 267 voluntary submissions received between 1724 and 1744. It is shown that the Bureau’s formal, rule-based decision-making process could actually differentiate between alternate policy aims and target them consistently over time, with more or less powerful sets of rents. From this, a hierarchy of revealed policy preferences is derived. First comes technical innovation and diffusion, then local economic development; import substitution is only in the third position, followed by consumers’ welfare. Lastly, and in contrast to a long line of authors, it is shown that the production of luxury goods was not a significant or valued objective.

Contractual Knowledge: One Hundred Years of Legal Experimentation in Global Markets

Contractual Knowledge: One Hundred Years of Legal Experimentation in Global Markets, edited by Gregoire Mallard and Jerome Sgard, extends the scholarship of law and globalization in two important directions. First, it provides a unique genealogy of global economic governance by explaining the transition from English law to one where global exchanges are primarily governed by international, multilateral, and finally, transnational legal orders. Second, rather than focusing on macro-political organizations, like the League of Nations or the International Monetary Fund, the book examines elements of contracts, including how and by whom they were designed and exactly who (experts, courts, arbitrators, and international organizations) interpreted, upheld, and established the legal validity of these contracts. By exploring such micro-level aspects of market exchanges, this collection unveils the contractual knowledge that led to the globalization of markets over the last century.This paper aims to provide a historical insight into past experiences of conditional lending in sovereign debt contracts.1 It shows that the history of conditional external lending first emerged in early nineteenth century financial markets.

Deux FMI, ou pas de FMI ?

Depuis plusieurs annees, le FMI est considere en crise, a cause d’une structure de pouvoir illegitime. En realite, son pouvoir a diminue apres les echecs des interventions durant les annees 1990. Les pays emergents se sont alors desengages, cherchant des formes d’auto-assurance et les acteurs prives de la finance internationale ont adopte une strategie d’evitement. Avec la globalisation financiere, les pays emergents se sont dotes de regles du jeu et de regulateurs publics et les grandes banques centrales ont appris a se coordonner. Une architecture des marches s’est ainsi construite en dehors d’une demarche multilaterale. Le FMI est donc aujourd’hui en stand-by, face a deux evolutions possibles : il peut devenir soit un outil de surveillance renforcee, incapable de peser sur les politiques nationales, soit une structure censitaire, dotee de moyens d’actions puissants.

Le principal, l'agent et l'évaluateur : comment expliquer l'échec du FMI en Argentine ?

Principal, Agent and Evaluator: Explaining the IMF’s Failure in Argentina In 2004 the Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF published a report on this institution’s interventions in Argentina between 1991 and 2001. This document provides all the elements for a sociological analysis of an institutional failure. Three main relationships proved dysfunctional: the realist interaction between the Fund and the Argentine authorities, the hierarchical link between management and staff, and the principal/ agent relation with the G7 governments, whose representatives within the Fund should have made sure that operating rules were respected.