Compte-rendu

Que se passe-t-il lorsque le cours en bourse devient la première préoccupation des dirigeants d’une entreprise ? Telle est la question à laquelle Marlène Benquet entend répondre dans Encaisser ! Plus largement, l’auteure ambitionne de mesurer les conséquences de la « financiarisation » du capitalisme sur les salariés. Issu d’une thèse soutenue en 2011, cet ouvrage propose une analyse des relations professionnelles au sein d’un grand groupe de la distribution française. (Premières lignes

La politique de l’ambiguïté juridique:Quand l’État tente de réguler les échanges entre la grande distribution et ses fournisseurs

Cet article analyse vingt ans d’intervention étatique dans les relations entre la grande distribution et ses fournisseurs en traitant simultanément la production des lois et leur mise en application. Centré sur la Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes (DGCCRF), une direction centrale du ministère de l’Économie, le récit entend restituer à la fois le travail d’élaboration des lois par l’administration et les opérations de mise en conformité des enseignes de distribution. L’administration a délibérément créé de l’incertitude juridique pour protéger les fournisseurs de la grande distribution. Ce recours à l’incertitude juridique contre des acteurs économiques réputés plus puissants est un résultat original au regard de la littérature en sociologie du droit. Toutefois, après une dizaine d’années, cette stratégie n’a plus eu le même succès. La DGCCRF a souffert de la concurrence avec d’autres acteurs publics souhaitant intervenir dans ce domaine et les grandes enseignes de la distribution sont parvenues à appliquer formellement les nouvelles règles, sans pour autant changer leurs pratiques à l’égard des fournisseurs.This paper analyses twenty years of state intervention in the business relations between french supermarket chains and their suppliers, considering both the making of the regulations and their implementation. The narrative focuses on the Ministry of Economics department responsible for economic competition and consumer protection (DGCCRF: “Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consummation et de la répression des fraudes”). The paper studies how bureaucrats drafted new laws and how supermarket chains complied with them. In order to protect suppliers, DGCCRF deliberately created legal uncertainty. The successful use of legal uncertainty against supposedly more powerful economic players is a novel case in sociolegal scholarship. Halfway through the twenty-year period, however, the effectiveness of this strategy of legal uncertainty sharply decreased. Two explanations for this decline in effectiveness are examined. First, DGCCRF faced competition from other bureaucratic bodies, which promoted different regulatory projects for the retail sector. Second, supermarket chains gradually learned how to comply with the regulations on a formal level, without altering their actual business conduct with their suppliers

À qui profite la « concurrence » ?:Modèles de concurrence et régulation de la grande distribution française (1949-1986)

L’État n’a cessé d’intervenir dans la grande distribution, ce qui a contribué à la période de trente années de croissance qu’a connues ce secteur entre 1950 et 1980. Cette intervention a souvent été justifiée au nom de la promotion de la « concurrence ». Pourtant, les modèles de concurrence suivis par l’administration ont varié au cours de la période étudiée. Le premier modèle voit dans la concurrence un moyen de moderniser les structures commerciales de la France, en la débarrassant d’un petit commerce réputé archaïque. Un second modèle, qui émerge au cours des années 1970, voit dans la concurrence un moyen de servir les intérêts du consommateur. Un troisième modèle, qui voit le jour au début des années 1980, entend défendre les fournisseurs contre des pratiques « déloyales » de la part des distributeurs. Pour défendre leurs intérêts et prendre position dans l’espace public, les grandes entreprises du marché (distributeurs et fournisseurs) ont mobilisé et contribué à façonner ces modèles de concurrence. La notion de « concurrence » apparaît ainsi comme une notion flexible, permettant de défendre des configurations marchandes différentes.The active regulation of mass retail by the French state contributed to three decades of growth between 1950 and 1980. The state justified intervention in the name of “competition”. However, over the time period covered in this article, competition models implemented by bureaucracies varied. The first model viewed competition as a means of modernizing the French retail sector, and aimed at reducing the role of small shopkeepers considered to be archaic. A second model emerged in the 1970s. It viewed competition as a means to protect the interests of the abstract figure of the consumer. A third model, that emerged in the 1980s, sought to defend suppliers against the “disloyal” practices of retailers. To defend their interests and win the support of public opinion, economic actors (both retailors and the suppliers) used these various competition models, and in doing so helped to shape and transform them. Therefore, the notion of “competition” appears to be a flexible signifier in different market configurations

Vol. 18, No. 1

Contents: New Approaches to Compensation for Teachers, by Michael Kiser, Fred B. Lifton, and Tracy Billows Recent Developments, by the Student Editorial Board Further References, compiled by Margaret A. Chaplanhttps://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/iperr/1066/thumbnail.jp

Bureaucrats or Ideologues? EU Merger Control as Market‐Centred Integration

Since 1989, no major European merger has been able to go through without EU approval. The introduction of a centralized merger control procedure was another increase in the powers of the Commission’s Directorate‐General for Competition (DG COMP). While some see it playing a neo‐mercantilist role in a positive European integration, others underline its neoliberal ideological roots. Through our analysis of all merger decisions made between 1990 and 2016 (6,161 cases), we instead find evidence for market‐centred negative integration: DG COMP is particularly harsh towards coordinated market economies and targets sectors that have high levels of state intervention, thus thwarting the rise of ‘European champions’. Our interviews with merger experts and the decision citation data further suggest that this market‐centred logic of enforcement is not necessarily driven by ideology, but by the silent logic of bureaucratic autonomy. We thus contribute to the debate on the EU as a supranational force of economic liberalization.Introduction I Conceptual Framework II Data and Variables III Results IV Discussion: The Autonomy of DG COMB Conclusion Supporting Information References Interview

Vol. 18, No. 1

Contents: New Approaches to Compensation for Teachers, by Michael Kiser, Fred B. Lifton, and Tracy Billows Recent Developments, by the Student Editorial Board Further References, compiled by Margaret A. Chaplanhttps://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/iperr/1066/thumbnail.jp

Régulation des marchés et pouvoir des transformateurs : une approche mésosociologique

Cet article explore la transition de la filière laitière en France, depuis l’intervention publique dans les années 1960 jusqu’à sa libéralisation dans les années 2000. À travers l’étude de deux coopératives locales, il montre comment la fin des quotas et la dérégulation ont modifié les rapports de force entre producteurs et transformateurs, favorisant une intensification de la production dans certains cas et une différenciation dans d’autres. Ces changements illustrent l’impact des politiques agricoles sur les pratiques locales et la structure du march

Social Class

Discussion of class structure in fifth-century Athens, historical constitution of theater audiences, and the changes in the comic representation of class antagonism from Aristophanes to Menander

Feature Weighted Models (FWM) to address lineage dependency in drug-resistance prediction from Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome sequences

Background: Tuberculosis is caused by members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) and is the second leading infectious killer after COVID-19. The evolution of drug-resistance poses a threat to successful treatment and disease eradication. Whole genome sequencing combined with statistical and machine learning approaches is being increasingly adopted to predict drug-resistance and characterise underlying mutations. However, these approaches may not generalise well in clinical practice due to confounding from the clonal population structure of the MTBC.Methods: To investigate how population structure affects machine learning prediction, we compare the performance between random forest (RF) models applied to a global dataset comprised of 18,396 isolates (lineages 1-7; “global”) and a subset containing isolates from two major lineages of the MTBC (lineages 2 and 4; n=10,464; “lineage-specific” (separate) or “combined”). To reduce lineage-dependency in the models we derived weights from a phylogenetic tree using Fitch’s parsimony which are used as a probability for splitting nodes in the RF. Performance of feature weighted RF models were compared to unweighted models and a traditional feature selection approach using area under the ROC curve (AUC-ROC), sensitivity, specificity and F1 score. The importance of features driving performance was measured by Gini importance and most frequent interactions in the model.Results: All RF models achieved moderate-high performance (AUC-ROC range: 0.60-0.98). First-line drugs had higher performance than second-line drugs, but performance varied depending on the drug-resistant phenotype and lineages in the dataset. Lineage-specific models generally had higher sensitivity than global models which may be underpinned by strain specific drug-resistance mutations or sampling effects. Feature weighted RF models had comparable performance to the unweighted models and the application of feature weights and traditional feature selection approaches reduced lineage-dependency in the model. Conclusion: We show that predictive performance differs between lineages and global predictions may not generalise well across all lineages. The application of feature weights mitigated confounding from population structure, but in some cases reduced the importance of strain specific drug-resistance mutations and increased confounding from co-occurring phenotypes. This signifies the importance of addressing confounding in machine learning prediction whilst considering the complex genetic interactions underlying drug-resistance in tuberculosis