Contenu du sommaire

Governing by Governance: New Forms of Political Control over Morocco's Economic Elites In Morocco, the central government uses the technique of business governance to control economic elites. This article draws upon network analysis and semi-directive interviews to study the interlocking directorates of companies listed on the Casablanca stock exchange. This method shows that the structure of Moroccan capitalism is characterized by significant centralization and the rising power of groups that rely upon a strategy of financialization. It also reveals that the central government now relies on control over two institutional investors that supply advice and financial resources to the country's economic elites. ■

The Construction of European Legitimacy: The Actors of the European Employers' Union since 1952 This article examines the manner in which definitions of the role of a European employers' organization and the actors responsible for setting it in motion have evolved. It considers the various, coexistent forms for legitimating action within the European employers' federation since 1952. While the fact that the latter represented heterogeneous interests no longer requires demonstration, the evolution of the actors involved in its operation has yet to be studied. The historical approach reveals that some representatives of national member-organizations, who long held a central position, gradually came to be challenged by European professionals of employers' representation employed by the European federation. Far from succeeding one another, these forms for legitimating action coexisted within the organization. Interviews and the consultation of archives allow one to historicize the various forms taken by the action of national representatives within the European employers' federation. In so doing, the article casts light on the evolving manner in which the national and European levels came to be interwoven. ■

How to (re) Invent “the Enemy”? The Discourse of Turkish Political Elites regarding the Syrian Conflict When the Arab Spring broke upon Syria in 2011, Turkish political elites found themselves facing the following dilemma: either continue pursuing the country's “profitable” relationship with an “oppressor” or support the Syrian uprising at the risk of losing a crucial source of diplomatic support in the Middle East. It was the second option that was chosen. In order to bring about this radical change and demonize the Syrian regime in the aim of overturning it, Turkish political elites developed a discourse based on four types of argumentative strategy: humanitarian, normative, security-based and religious/historic. First and foremost, this discourse sought to justify rapidly breaking with the Syrian regime in Turkish public opinion; it next sought to present the fight against the regime as legitimate and necessary at the national and international levels. By deconstructing these discursive processes, this article seeks to understand, not just the strategic considerations of Turkish decision-makers, but also the ideological aspect of Turkish foreign policy. ■

Global International Relations as Alternative to the American Mainstream: The Case of International Relations in France Where do French internationalists stand within the global discipline? This article demonstrates that international relations in France are not independent of, isolated from or peripheral to global trends. Data from the 2014 TRIP survey reveals that, while the discipline in France is distinguished from and even, in some respects, conflicts with the American mainstream, it nevertheless contributes in its way to Global International Relations (GIR). Based on linguistic, theoretical, methodological, epistemological and institutional dynamics differing from those that dominate the discipline in the United States, GIR is at once global and possesses significant local and/ or national foundations. In both theoretical and epistemological terms, French international relations is linked to this pluralist alternative by virtue of the concepts and disciplinary practices characteristic of French internationalists. By showing that the internationalists of the North can also, in their way, contribute to GIR, this article gives the notion new depth. ■

Europe's Policeman or Leader? The Place of Morocco in the Regulative Dispositif of Euro-Mediterranean Migration Efforts to regulate international migration have resulted in a global architecture that seeks to incorporate states of origin and transit. As a country of origin, transit and destination, Morocco occupies a particular place in this architecture. Adopting a Foucauldian governmentality approach, the present article considers the latter as a dispositif meant to align state perception and action. Such an approach allows one to conceptualize the regulation of Euro-Mediterranean migration, not as a simple externalization of the demands of the European Union towards a third country, but rather as a neoliberal governmentality. This is reflected in a dispositif of the conduct of conduct, the cartography of which reveals a political rationality and governmental technologies that aim to transform states of origin and transit into responsible, self-disciplining partners. Studying this dispostif, however, also reveals that it is unstable and traversed by its partners' reluctance and counter-conducts. ■

“Holding Its Own”: French Policy and the Challenge of the Syrian Crisis (2011-2015) For French diplomacy, managing the Syrian crisis consisted in “holding its own”. This expression refers both to an ambition – to impose one's reading of a country on which one possesses expertise – and to the demand that one's role be recognized. This article seeks to understand the construction of French foreign policy and, in particular, its continuities and contradictions. It begins by examining the background of the 2011-2015 diplomatic sequence. France's involvement in the Arab uprisings stood in contradiction with a long tradition of cooperating with the Syrian regime. The first months of the Syrian revolution were therefore marked by contradictory initiatives on the part of the French government. In May 2011, it revised its policy. France became a supporter of the Syrian opposition, assisted in its development and encouraged its recognition on the international scene. However, faced with the growing pressure of the fight against terrorism, this policy soon ran out of steam, ultimately giving way to a discourse that solely condemned the regime of Bachar al-Assad. French policy found itself isolated in the midst of its allies and called into question on the domestic scene. Arbitration between divergent analyses did not successfully result in a coherent policy and the Russian military intervention in September 2015 completed France's marginalization in this policy area. ■

Cross-Border Dynamics and Globalized Salafism: The Islamic State in Afghanistan In 2014, groups claiming to be part of the Islamic State were reported in several Afghan provinces, particularly Helmand and along the Afghan-Pakistan border. How is one to understand the emergence of this organization in Afghanistan? Is the affiliation of these groups fundamentally symbolic or do they amount to an extension of the Iraqi-Syrian movement? On the basis of interviews conducted in Kabul and Jalalabad in August and September 2015 with Afghans presently or formerly living in districts controlled by the Islamic state, we offer an initial interpretation of this phenomenon. In Afghanistan, more than three decades of civil war have transformed the Afghan religious field into a social and ideological terrain favorable to the establishment of jihadist Salafism. What's more, the perverse effects of Afghan and Pakistani policies in the country's eastern border regions have allowed the movement to establish itself on the Afghan-Pakistan border. In the end, the emergence of groups claiming to follow the Islamic State in Afghanistan is not an extension of the Iraqi model but rather a sign that a new social and political revolution is underway. ■