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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 ...

Compared to other post-socialist economies, the evolution of ownership forms during system change appears quite original in China. A first diversification occurred during the 1980s, with the enlargement of « non-state » (private, foreign) ownership forms ; concurrently usus and fructus rights were redistributed within unchanged legal forms of collective and state ownership. During the 1990s a wide-scale privatization process was launched both in the collective industrial sector and in the state sector. Since the 2000s, a mixed system stabilized where non-state forms predominate from a quantitative point of view, while the state sector takes the form of large business groups in the strategic sectors. The entangled character of both private and state ownership, and the connexion of these two sectors with the Party, make up the base of an original type of party-state (mixed) capitalism.

Un « tournant institutionnaliste » semble s’etre opere dans la theorie economique depuis les annees 1990. L’extension d’une nouvelle economie institutionnelle s’est accompagnee du renouveau de l’institutionnalisme originel. L’exemple des travaux sur « institutions et performances » illustre toutefois l’ambivalence de ce tournant, partiellement phagocyte par le mainstream contemporain.

avec un facteur d'impact (ACL); International audience; The paper discusses John R. Commons's original theory of institutions, where the latter are defined as going concerns and their working rules, or collective action restraining and expanding individual action. Such organizational approach of institutions makes important contributions to institutional economics in general, through its notion of a hierarchy of collective action, its threefold typology of transactions, and its holindividualist stance. Commons's genuine advances are counterbalanced by theoretical limits, which illustrate the unfinished character of his attempt to make a contribution to a 'rounded-out theory of Political economy', e.g. the ambiguous place of markets in his theory, the state understood as a model for other going concerns and, distinctly, the restricted definition of institutions as organizations. In some important respects, his theory complements or goes further than other currents of institutional economics; its weak points are sometimes the reverse side of his very contributions.

National audience; L'économie est un processus institutionnalisé : tel est le consensus qui semble s'établir depuis une quinzaine d'années. Admettre l'importance des institutions pour l'étude de l'économie représente toutefois une rupture avec le courant dominant de la pensée au XXe siècle. Ce livre retrace l'histoire des théories économiques qui composent la grande famille de l'économie institutionnelle. A partir de positions doctrinales et méthodologiques parfois opposées, elles ont toutes tenté de comprendre la nature, le rôle, l'origine et le changement des institutions et apporté une contribution majeure à la réflexion contemporaine. Parmi les grands thèmes de la pensée institutionnaliste figurent les relations entre continuité et changement, le rapport entre comportements individuels et règles sociales, l'impact des institutions sur la dynamique ou les performances de long terme des économies, la place respective du pouvoir et de l'efficacité dans les évolutions historiques.

The paper gives a critical assessment of the reaction of various trends of economics, when confronted with the diversified experience of postsocialist transformation and accompanying surprises, like the initial depression, the unexpected consequences of fast privatisation, or the unconventional policies and performance of China and Vietnam. It discusses the mainstream transition doctrine, and its gradual qualification, as well as institutionalist and evolutionary approaches of the systemic transformation problems. It concludes that this grand and painful historical experience has until now failed to substantially modify mainstream economics, even though its unfolding has strongly questioned the latter's theoretical and methodological premises.

The Soviet ideological formation of the Stalin period was closely linked with the class struggles and the economic and social transformations of that period. This article examines two major themes running through the some times contradictory ideology of Stalinism: 1) "state socialism" as a political ide ology, and 2) the "socialist mode of production" as an economic ideology. On the first theme, the reinforcement of the state was identified with the reinforce ment of socialism. The denial of social contradictions was combined with praise for the dictatorial apparatus. "Workerism" meant that certain pretended qual ities of workers (discipline, self-sacrifice) were used as a means of repression and that the existence of a "worker base" was seen as a guarantee of the party's revo lutionary character. The second section, on economic ideology, is only summar ized here. Socialism was increasingly identified with a planned economy subject to objective laws — an organized form of capitalism.