Contenu du sommaire : Varia

When territory tackles with “system-good”: The case of the emergence of an Electric Vehicle industry in California. This article addresses the issue linking economical and territorial dynamics in the emergence of the electric vehicle (EV). It analyses the case of California from a mission on the EV sector and from further research embracing territorial and industrial economics. In that sense, emerging EV sector dynamics are analyzed over long period and in the light of the role of local governments, especially in the organization of proximities effectively combined in California. The main results are that California is the crucible of an EV sector whose emergence reflects both its force, as its physiognomy. This vigour is captured through a demographic analysis of EV producers in the United States. Furthermore, we show that the emergence of this industry is characterized by a market with opportunities enlarged by crossing traditional sectoral boundaries of energy, transport and telecommunications.

The second pillar of Common Agricultural Policy: a policy à la carte
Much more than the 1st pillar of Common Agricultural Policy, the 2nd pillar, devoted to the rural development, offers many possibilities of implementation to member states and regions. A classification of national and regional programs is realized through a statistical analysis of budgetary models 2007-2013 from second pillar's, highlighting four main logic of intervention : supporting agricultural competitiveness, supporting of all rural activities, taking account of agricultural public goods and agricultural externalities, and guaranteeing equity within the agricultural sector. A correlation analysis between the classes obtained and various socio-economics, regional and agricultural indicators allows us to better characterize them and gives us a richer understanding of each classes.

Crisis of the economic land supply in Algeria: from conflicts to informal investment. The case of the city of Annaba. With economic liberalisation, the Algerian State assigns kingly and managerial missions to guarantee and attract foreign investments in order to create wealth and employment. In this prospect, the access to land has occupied a central place in the procedural measures so to counter eventual speculator without however selling off the public land property of the State. After one decade (1990) of improvisations, the years 2000 mark a major responsibility assumption of the land supply file. An inventory of fixtures of the ZI (Industrial Parks) and ZAC (Zones of Commercial Activities) was drawn up in order to rationalise the use of the existing public land potential and to mobilize it for the private investment promotion. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the system of control of the public land supply set up to promote the private investment focussed upon the case study of Annaba, the 4th largest city in Algeria.

Conflicts related to the presence of mobile phones antennas: a reading by the economics of proximity
Since the mid-1990s the increase in the use of mobile phones in France has led mobile phone operators to put up numerous phone masts in residential areas. For a decade or so, the presence of mobile phone masts has led to a number of complaints brought before the courts explicitly revealing a conflict between opposing parties as to the joint use of an area. Following the line of thought, the reading grid offered by an environmental approach of the economy of proximity may appropriately be used to account for the existence of such conflicts as well as the absence of agreements between opposing parties. This paper aims to highlight the specificity of land-use conflicts caused by the presence of mobile phone masts. It also addresses the question of the origin of the conflicts as well as the difficulties to resolve them by using the concepts of geographical and organized proximity.

New competitive regulation and new games of proximities. The non-for-profit organizations and their territorial legitimacy in the home care services. The French home care services, organized around non-for-profit organizations, have been changed by the introduction of a new competitive regulation in 2005. Previously, these organizations were agreeing to share territories. They were benefiting from a strong territorial legitimacy, thus constituting territorial monopolies. These monopolies were based on both geographical and organized proximities, linked to the geographical constraints of such an activity and to the historical ties developed with local actors. Face to competition, their territorial legitimacy is today at stake. This article shows that non-for-profit organizations seek to establish their legitimacy by developing new proximity arrangements according to the departmental different policies and to the competitive intensity resulting from these policies. So the organized proximity is crucial in this process. It can be based on one hand on non-rivalry and non-intrusion agreements. On the other hand it can rely on rules aiming at the absorption of the weakest non-for-profit organizations.

Intermediary actors and innovation : an intersectoral comparison in the Montreal region
Research in social sciences has shown that innovation has a territorial dimension that determines the dynamics of the process and, therefore, companies may be more or less innovative depending on the characteristics of the territory in which they are embedded. The role of intermediary organizations has also been highlighted by some researchers. In this paper, we focus on three sectors, namely those of information and communications technology (ICT), aerospace and garment, and we study the roles of intermediary organizations in these sectors. We also determine their relationship with the necessary inputs to the innovation process. Building on the innovation systems approach, we identified several actors who perform intermediation functions in the innovation process and have been targeted for case studies. Our research uses a mixed methodology, that is, qualitative and quantitative. Our results show that intermediary organizations perform different functions which contributed primarily to the corporate knowledge base.