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The notion of hybrid is often used in analyses of the growing influence of non state actors and informal mechanisms of power in the context of globalisation. Yet, the notion has hardly ever been conceptualised. Building upon critical approaches in international political economy, this article provides a theoretical account of the concept of global hybrids. Recent scholarship on globalisation tends to focus on the private/public nexus of the actors involved in new forms of institutional arrangements and authority. Here, actors, objects and space are analysed as joint issues. The paper argues that global hybrids confer authority on private actors previously deprived of such attributes, include a new class of objects closely related to the political implication of science and technology, and spread out in a space where the endogenous logic of territorial sovereignty gives way to an exogenous logic reinforcing the transnational underpinning of capitalism.

This paper analyses the Europeanization of political competition by looking at the usages of European integration by political actors in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic since 1989. Right after the fall of communism, politicians used European issues to define the new rules of political games and create political identities. European integration was a crucial resource to shape the lines of division that structured Central European political fields along three dimensions : the selection of the actors qualified to take part in political games, competitions between legitimate actors and intra-party rivalries. A sociological approach to Europeanization shows that party positions depended on their location in the political field and their relations with their competitors.

This article focuses on recent drug enforcement policies (1995-2003) applied to road safety. Drawing attention to drug screening tests, the paper analyzes recent changes in public administration in this area of interest. This approach enables to show that the measurement process of instruments usage varies according to a number of criteria : scientific knowledge, modes of promoting the issue (to which tests are meant to respond) as well as changes in political forces at stake. However, political prospect and political antagonism to a larger extent account for the conditional stabilization of instruments usage. Indeed, the latter organize long-term drug enforcement public action.

Addressing the issue of how a conjoint action is built in urban planning dynamics is thus a good way to understand in which conditions a political capacity can be built up in cities. In this paper, taking the examples of Nantes and Rennes, we analyse in details two differing types of political capacity building mechanisms existing in urban planning systems. The first mechanism is the formation of a coalition to achieve a set of objectives. Cooperation between actors involved in coalitions is based on resources exchanges and benefits allocation. The second mechanism is the institutionalization of rules, norms, values and collective representations concerning the content and the process of urban planning.