Contenu du sommaire : Hommes d'affaires en politique

Émile-Justin Menier, a Chocolate-Maker in French Politics: Disputes about the Political Competence of a Manufacturer in the early Third Republic The institutional transition from the Second Empire to the Third Republic after 1870 allows new figures to enter politics. Émile-Justin Menier, a rich chocolate manufacturer who built his fortune under the Second Empire, joins the republican camp in 1871. This article analyzes how this manufacturer soon succeeds in converting his financial resources into political and electoral resources. Combining strong local support with direct access to national republican networks, he becomes a distinctive figure of the republican camp. His originality lies in his overlapping involvements in business, science and politics. The disputes triggered off by his political career and by his struggle in favour of the implementation of a single tax on capital highlight the difficulties of the process of legitimizing the political competence of manufacturers and merchants. This resistance also sheds light on how professional politicians try to marginalize newcomers in politics. Lastly, Menier's social and political career illustrates the changing forms of republican politics and announces the birth of a new category in the public sphere, namely the representation of the “taxpayer's interests”.

The French employers and businessmen in the political and election arena (19th-20th centuries): an historiographical approach This paper tries to summarize a certain number of major points of the historiography dealing with the question of the place of the French employers and business community in the political and election arena since the mid-19 century. More precisely, by questioning the different ways historians and other researchers in social science analyse this subject, we aim to shed light on the entry, the place and the significance of these manufacturers and businessmen in the direct political competition – i.e. not only the recurring but often vague mentions of the employers' “influence” over political life, even in the scientific literature. Fur this purpose, we analyse several stakes dealing with the temporal dimension of the processes. This progression of the reasoning leads us to examine several concrete scenes of interaction between political and economic arenas, relating to the issue of socio-spatial scales – i.e. the different levels (local, regional...) of the employers' investments in politics.

Businessmen in Politics, in Russian Provinces: Outbreak, Consolidation and Decline of a Type of Political Actors Russian Post-Soviet politics have been impacted by the power struggle at the top of the State among businessmen (known as the « oligarchs ») with close ties to the Kremlin. However, in Moscow, very few of them have embarked upon a political career which would have pitted them against professional politicians, whereas in the Russian provinces, many businessmen have participated in electoral races since the 1990s. Being influential locally thanks to important financial means and a vast social network, they have taken advantage of the weakening of the political center in Moscow, and of the absence of a real pluralistic party-system. This article explains the phenomenon, on the basis of the case-study in the Bryansk Province (Central Russia) of Nikolai Denin, the director of a giant poultry and eggs factory, elected as Bryansk Governor in December 2004, thanks to his links with the pro-Kremlin party « United Russia ». During Vladimir Putin's two presidential terms, particularly after the regime's evolution towards authoritarian rule in 2004, we have observed the recentralization of political resources, leading eventually to the exclusion of businessmen from the political game. The diachronic study on the involvement of businessmen in politics in the Russian provinces since 1991 shows the institutional changes taking place in Russia as much as the personal strategies of those particular social actors.

The failure of an attempted political conversion in Morocco: the electoral loss of the former “patron des patrons” (2001-2007) The disappointments of A. Lahjouji's recent electoral adventure are instructive in revealing the adaptable relationships between business politics. At the head of the employers union during the last decade – the years of economic liberalization – Lahouji reshaped the organization under the slogan of “civic business” and was the spokesman of the “entrepreneurs”. In 2000, he founded a political party, Forces citoyennes, ran for national election in 2002 and 2007 and lost, as did most the members of his party. This failed political experience stands in sharp contrast with the more successful electoral experience of other Moroccan businessmen and as a result raises questions about the conversion of entrepreneurial and corporative resources into political and electoral success.

“We will not go underground”. Entrepreneur and politics in Tunisia From the Tunisian case study, this article discusses the idea of a specific and circumstantial “entry in politics” of entrepreneurs, of a “politisation” of entrepreneurs. It defends the idea that entrepreneurs are always political. Relations between entrepreneurs and politics cannot be reduced neither to politician games and uncertainties of political life stricto sensu, nor to the process of political normalisation. Entrepreneurs are always political because they fit into power relations, they participate in conflicts, compromises between actors, and they are part of balance of power and, then, also shape the political. In authoritarian regimes as is Tunisia, all strategies of accommodation, arrangement and distance are not political in a restricted sense: the entrepreneurs do not totally subscribe or contrast with the regime. But the fact that entrepreneur partially subscribe and take into account constraints, personal interest and latent violence or that they express discontent is political in the general sense of the word: doing so, entrepreneurs show positions, balances of power, strategies and perceptions that ultimately draw the outlines of power relations.

“Social Movements “on a Head of a Pin”? The Role of Physical Space in the Process of Contention in the Case of Mobilizations in Public Housing for “Isolated” Foreigners” Social movements scholars had for a long time privileged the historicisation approach in examining contention processes rather than analysing their spatial and localized dimensions. Based on the French Sonacotra hostels “rent strike” in the seventies, this article emphasis on examining collective action within its physical environment. It shows that, if the spatial dimension is to be reconsidered as a central issue in the collective action, one must probe the mechanisms by which individuals and groups are involved in developing and managing places and space, and how they utilize them to their own benefit. Ultimately only a localized analysis of social strategies in constructing, appropriating and reappropriating one's space leads to understand the impact of this particular social game on collective action.

Curfew in Paris in 1958 and 1961: A measure imported from Algeria in order to fight the FLN ? Recent historiography about autumn 1961's events in Paris tends to consider this repression as the result of Maurice Papon's action, who is supposed to have reproduced the methods of counter-insurgency he learned before, in Morocco and Algeria. This article wants to discuss such a thesis because, notably, it neglects the role of the police troops in the decision of pronouncing a curfew. And finally, the reconstitution of the process of decision shows that Maurice Papon's former experience wasn't simply reproduced as such.