Pervasive Powers: The Politics of Corporate Authority 9780367476618, 9780367514426, 9781003053873

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Pervasive Powers

In an era of systemic crisis and of global critiques of the unsustainable perpetuation of capitalism, Pervasive Powers: The Politics of Corporate Authority critically questions the conditions for the maintenance and expansion of corporate power. This book explores empirical case studies in the realms of finance, urban policies, automobile safety, environmental risk, agriculture, and food in Western democracies. It renews understanding of the power of big business, focusing on how the study of temporalities, of multi-​sited influence, and of sociotechnical tools is crucial to an analysis of the evolution of corporate authority. Drawing on different literatures, ranging from research on business associations and global governance to that on the social production of ignorance or on corporate crime, this book aims at contributing to existing works on the capacity of corporations to rule the world. Unlike approaches focused on economic elites and on the political activities of firms, it goes beyond analysis of the power of corporations to influence policymaking to depict their unprecedented capacity to transform and shape the social world. Operating in numerous social spaces and mobilizing a wide range of strategies, corporate organizations have acquired the pervasive power to act far beyond mere spaces of regulation and government. Based on contributions from historians, science and technology studies scholars, sociologists, and political scientists, this book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and students who wish to understand how corporations exert a pervasive influence on public policies and to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and regulatory agencies. Sara Angeli Aguiton is a Sociologist and STS scholar. She is a Permanent Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, France. Marc-​Olivier Déplaude is an Advanced Researcher in Sociology at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, France. Nathalie Jas is an Advanced Researcher in History and STS at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, France. Emmanuel Henry is a Professor of Sociology at the Université Paris-​Dauphine, PSL University, France. Valentin Thomas is a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Lyon, France.

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Routledge International Studies in Business History Series editors: Jeffrey Fear and Heidi Tworek

The Age of Entrepreneurship Business Proprietors, Self-​employment and Corporations Since 1851 Robert J. Bennett, Harry Smith, Cary van Lieshout, Piero Montebruno and Gill Newton Business, Ethics and Institutions The Evolution of Turkish Capitalism in Global Perspectives Edited by Asli M. Colpan and Geoffrey Jones Innovative Consumer Co-​operatives The Rise and Fall of Berkeley Greg Patmore Gendered Capitalism Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–​1940 Paula A. de la Cruz-​Fernández The Emergence of Corporate Governance People, Power and Performance Edited by Knut Sogner and Andrea Colli Leading the Economic Risorgimento Lombardy in the 19th Century Edited by Silvia A. Conca Messina Pervasive Powers The Politics of Corporate Authority Edited by Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​ Routledge-​International-​Studies-​in-​Business-​History/​book-​series/​SE0471

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Pervasive Powers The Politics of Corporate Authority Edited by Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas

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First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Taylor & Francis The right of Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​47661-​8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​51442-​6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​05387-​3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

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Contents

List of Tables  Acknowledgments  Introduction 

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S A R A A N G E LI A GUITO N , MARC- ​O L IVIE R DÉPLAU DE, N ATH A L I E J A S, E MMAN UE L H E N RY, A N D VALENT IN T HOMAS

1 The Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority: Repertoire of Actions, Material Effects, and Democratic Challenges  9 S A R A A N G E LI A GUITO N , MARC- ​O L IVIE R DÉPLAU DE, N ATH A L I E J A S, E MMAN UE L H E N RY, A N D VALENT IN T HOMAS

2 The Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry During the Early Francoist Dictatorship: Experts, Autarky, Agnotology, and Fascism 

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J O S É R A M Ó N B E RTO ME U- ​S Á N CH E Z

3 Corporate Systemic Ascendency: Perspectives from the Pesticide Industry in Postwar France 

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N ATH A L I E J A S

4 From Research Funding to Public Relations: The Making of a Food Industry Think Tank in 1970s France  82 TH O M A S D E P E CKE R, MARC- ​O L IVIE R DÉ P L AU DE, AND N I C O L A S L ARCH E T

5 From Public Problem to Quiet Politics? When US Insurers Mobilized for Automobile Safety Regulation (1959–​1974)  S TÈ V E B E R NARDIN

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6 Coproducing the Rules of the Game: State, Insurance Companies, and Private Equity in 1990s France 

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M A R L È N E B E N Q UE T, PA UL L A GN E A U YMO NET, AND FA B I E N F O U RE AULT

7 Transnational Professional Service Firms and the Corporatization of Infrastructure Procurement 

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C H R I S H U R L AN D A N N E VO GE L P O H L

About the Contributors  Index 

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Tables

4.1 Food tests published by the Que choisir? magazine between 1961 and 1980  4.2 The companies that attended the working group meetings that led to the creation of the FFN (1972–​1974)  4.3 Evolution in the Foundation’s budget between 1975 and 1982 

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Acknowledgments

This book stems from the conference “Pervasive Powers: Corporate Authority in the Shaping of Public Policy”, held at the University Paris-​ Dauphine on 14–​16 June 2018 (Paris, France). We thank Soraya Boudia, Sophie Dubuisson-​ Quellier, Nicolas Fortané, Scott Frickel, Mathias Girel, Sylvain Laurens, Benjamin Lemoine, Paul Lagneau-​Ymonet, Linsey McGoey, and Sezin Topçu for their participation in the preparation or moderation of this conference. Thanks also to the speakers whose contributions we could not include in this book. The organization of this conference benefited from several funding sources including the House of Public Affairs (Paris-​Dauphine University), PSL Research University (Regulrisk and ProPublics research programs), and the Institut francilien recherche innovation société (IFRIS). The preparation of this book also benefited from additional funding from the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire en sciences sociales (IRISSO, Paris-​Dauphine University) and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). The editors would like to thank Barbara Erikson for her copy-​editing of the whole manuscript.

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Introduction Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas

This is how Cargill described itself in 2001 (Kneen 2003): We are the flour in your bread, the wheat in your noodles, the salt on your fries. We are the corn in your tortillas, the chocolate in your dessert, the sweetener in your soft drink. We are the oil in your salad dressing and the beef, pork or chicken you eat for dinner. We are the cotton in your clothing, the backing on your carpet and the fertilizer in your field. Cargill is a company that is little known, despite the fact that it is the second biggest world trade agro and food corporation just behind Walmart and the world’s largest trader in agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn, soybeans, sugar, cocoa, palm oil, and rice (Agrifood Atlas 2017, 11). Cargill and three other corporations (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and the Louis Dreyfus Company) organize a large part of the world’s trade in agricultural commodities. Forming what has been nicknamed the “ABCD group”, these four firms “own ocean-​going ships, ports, railways, refineries, silos, oil mills, and factories”, and even farmland (Agrifood Atlas 2017, 26–​27). They alone control 90 percent of the global grain market and 70 percent of the world’s agricultural commodities market (ibid., 26; Murphy et al. 2012). They not only provide the transport but also transform these commodities into other products (from animal feed to chocolate, along with chemicals and additives for a wide range of industries), thus supplying many agri-​food companies and other industries such as materials, energy, and big pharma. They have also developed insurance products and financial services, to such an extent that they have become major players in the financialization of both commodity trade and agricultural production. Cargill is the largest of the four corporations. Dubbed the “Goldman Sachs of agricultural commodity trade”, it is particularly effective at anticipating extreme price fluctuations in global agricultural markets and turning them into very significant gains (Agrifood Atlas 2017, 26). In 2020, it employed 155,000 people worldwide and had customers in DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-1

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2  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas more than 125 countries (Cargill 2020). Its turnover in that year stood at 114 billion dollars, and it paid a dividend of 1.2 billion dollars to the group’s shareholding family. Despite its size, Cargill is still controlled by the descendants of its founder and therefore remains an unlisted “family company”. Cargill was founded in the United States in 1865. Like the other ABCD corporations, it is a very old company which first gained prominence by taking advantage of the railway boom and then by purchasing storage facilities on the banks of rivers and the Great Lakes. It discreetly developed on an international scale, in particular by setting up in strategic ports. During the 1970s and 1980s, the company diversified further and integrated its activities in response to changes in the global market. In 1978, it already had 140 subsidiaries in 36 countries. In 1994, its non-​merchandising activities (processing of oil seeds and corn, poultry, feed and fertilizer production, financial services, etc.) already represented more than 82 percent of its business (Kneen 2003). It has successfully pursued this strategy to become not only the most integrated of the ABCD corporations but also a formidable financial company. Cargill’s transformation into a powerful corporation has been based on industrial and commercial strategies, including the development of technologies such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the use of subcontracting, and the creation of various mergers and joint ventures. But that is not all. Cargill has also heavily invested in building national and international standards and regulations that are favorable to its activities and projects. To this end, it has developed privileged links with many states and transnational organizations. Like other very large agri-​ food corporations, Cargill is extremely active in the negotiation of major international trade treaties and in building global governance of the agri-​ food system. For example, it was deeply involved in transforming the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has extensive regulatory powers, particularly in the trade of agri-​food products (Agrifood Atlas 2017; Engdahl 2006; Murphy et al. 2012). Finally, Cargill has employed many other strategies to support its development, ranging from legal action (against nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], states, or other firms) to tax optimization and evasion. It has also made clever use of public relations, including philanthropic actions and discourse concerning its role in securing global food supply and its initiatives to become environmentally sustainable. The Cargill Corporation has sometimes been described as “faceless” in that it is not directly associated with any brand known to the general public and has always sought to keep a low profile. It nevertheless came to the attention of NGOs and researchers more than 20 years ago and has been the object of considerable criticism (Mighty Earth 2019). In the second half of the 1990s, it was criticized for investing in GMO seeds (Keen 1998). Along with other agribusiness companies, it has been

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Introduction  3 accused of profiting from forced child labor on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana. It has also been blamed for the major environmental harm caused by the development of intensive farming in certain areas of the world (Amazon rainforest and South Asia) and for its involvement in land grabbing in various countries. Its tax evasion practices, especially in countries suffering from extreme levels of debt, have been condemned, as has its tolerance of the violent methods used by some of its subcontractors against indigenous communities. Cargill has also been linked with multiple cases of chemical and bacteriological contamination (meat contaminated with Escherichia coli bacteria or by Salmonella, water pollution, etc.). The dreadful working conditions of some of its employees, particularly those working in slaughterhouses, attracted especial attention during the Covid crisis (Dryden and Rieger 2020). All in all, Cargill’s activities have major socioeconomic and environmental consequences. The list of accusations against the corporation continues to grow, to such an extent that the Mighty Earth NGO recently named it “the worst company in the world” (Mighty Earth 2019). Given the scope of its activities, the economic and political power it has acquired, the multiple strategies it implements to preserve and strengthen this power, and their major economic, social, and environmental effects, Cargill can be defined as a pervasive company. One specific aim of this book is to highlight the pervasive powers of such corporations, which by virtue of their methods and magnitude possess an unprecedented capacity to transform and shape the social and physical world. The concept of “pervasive powers” relates to the idea of diffuse and generalized powers with both macro and micro dimensions. These economic actors contribute to the production of world views, major decisions, legislations, and teleological discourses, while at the same time remaining active at the local scale, contributing to technical standards, implementation methods, etc. These pervasive powers are consequently exercised in a very wide variety of places such as regulatory arenas, the courts, or influential professional circles. Multiple smaller or less considered social spaces also serve as pervasive dissemination interfaces for these powers without necessarily being immediately perceptible. Yet these powers are never established for all eternity. On the contrary, they require intensive and continuous work by companies and their intermediaries. This book develops the hypothesis that these historically shaped powers accumulate, densify, and constitute what we propose to call “corporate authority”. While similar to the more widely used notion of “private authority”, the concept of “corporate authority” underlines the differences between companies and noneconomic actors (environmental NGOs, for example). It also has the advantage of not presupposing any distinction between “public” and “private” actors, as we defend the idea that corporate authority is coproduced by big business and by states. This calls for the investigation of how corporations not only attempt to influence governments but also how they interact. Attention also needs to be

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4  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas paid to the way in which these corporations and their proxies (business associations, law firms, etc.) work with one another, with states, and with international organizations, to craft regulatory systems that suit them, until they become “rule producers” in their own right. Finally, it is a matter of understanding how they try to transform the social world to suit their own purposes. Such processes are not without their contradictions and conflicts however: although they know how to cooperate on certain common issues, corporate actors are also caught up in competition and diverging interests. Similarly, corporate and state actors do not necessarily have the same objectives or capacity to impose their views. Furthermore, other nongovernmental actors are able to resist the transformations to which they are being subjected and to defend alternative visions for the future of the social and economic development and political functioning of the societies in which they live. One of the challenges of this book is therefore to put these opposing aspects into perspective, so as to make a global analysis of the powers that very large companies have gained over the social world. These issues are explored over seven chapters. The first chapter is a theoretical chapter, coauthored by Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas. It sets out the main reflections running through this book. Based on existing research on the power of the business community and on global governance, it defines the concepts of “pervasive powers” and “corporate authority” that we put forward to account for the capacity of corporate actors to transform and shape the social and physical world. The construction and perpetuation of these powers require continuous work by corporate actors, through which they fuel what we call a “corporate repertoire of actions”. We then look at the material dimension of corporation strategies, at the irreversible effects they produce, and finally at how these pervasive powers challenge democracy. In the second chapter, José Ramón Bertomeu-​ Sánchez takes us to Franco’s Spain at the time of the Second World War. What interests him is to understand how, over this short period, Spanish agriculture began to shift from low-​performance agriculture to a powerful agriculture that relies on the intensive use of pesticides. He shows that this transformation resulted from the combination of modernization projects led by agricultural engineers and fascist autarkic policies. In particular, this combination took the form of public policies that encouraged the development of agronomic programs and of the chemical industry, leading to the creation of the Register of Pesticides in 1942. The success of this register, which made it possible to structure an initial pesticide industry, was essentially based on the refusal to take into account numerous health issues relating to the use of arsenic products in agriculture. The emergence of the Spanish pesticide industry thus led to diffuse forms of violence –​repeated and not necessarily immediately perceptible –​against people working with pesticides and against consumers. The importance of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, it reminds us that the state cannot be conceived solely as the

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Introduction  5 object of attacks by unscrupulous industries. The political and administrative elites have visions of how their countries should develop, and these visions can be transformed into policies aimed to create new industries or bring about the transformation of entire economic sectors, despite the problems or opposition they may generate. At the same time, Bertomeu-​ Sánchez points out that twentieth-​ century projects to modernize the economy required the perpetration of various forms of violence, both visible and more insidious, not only in authoritarian regimes such as Franco’s but also in regimes considered to be democratic. In the third chapter, Nathalie Jas also helps to shed light on the omnipotence that the pesticide industry seems to have enjoyed over recent decades. To this end, she places herself in France, in the period immediately after the Second World War, a period during which the industry underwent rapid development. She shows that this boom cannot simply be explained by the favorable context of a rapid intensification of agriculture backed by voluntarist public policies. It was also the result of strategies and devices used by certain industry representatives to, on the one hand, professionalize and organize the industry and, on the other hand, to establish its presence and its vision of plant protection in a wide range of areas: administrations of the French Ministry of Agriculture, European institutions, agronomic research, technical supervision of agriculture, and even in the courts. Nathalie Jas thus highlights how, as early as the 1950s, certain senior executives of the largest French companies worked to set up what she calls a “systemic corporate ascendency” over the institutions and actors in charge of agricultural development. More specifically, she analyzes one of these devices: a learned society cofounded by the industry, the main function of which was to develop scientific and technical tools (standards, content for professional journals, awards, certifications, scientific events, etc.) that are useful to the industry, while also being aimed at other actors. This chapter thus invites us to denaturalize the existing power of very large corporations and industries and to view it as the result of multi-​situated historical processes, marked by many uncertainties and difficulties. The construction of this power required continuous, multifaceted, and constantly renewed work with many actors. In the fourth chapter, Thomas Depecker, Marc-​ Olivier Déplaude, and Nicolas Larchet propose a micro approach to shed new light on the organizations in charge of representing and promoting industrial interests. They provide an extremely detailed analysis of the progressive shaping of the French Nutrition Foundation, an organization founded in 1974 bench and multinational food companies in order to come up with answers to the rising criticism of industrial food. They highlight the continuous work of negotiation carried out by food company executives, firstly to convince academics to take an interest in their organizational project and secondly to define and develop the shape of the organization itself and the content of its activities. This is an important chapter, as it draws attention to two key aspects of corporate strategies aimed at academia. First of all,

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6  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas the enrollment of academics is not a straightforward process and cannot be understood simply in terms of buying or financial corruption. While it is based on elective affinities, it must also adapt and contribute to the projects and conceptions of the actors enrolled. The latter thus help to construct the new organization. Secondly, this chapter shows that in order to understand how corporate authority is constructed, one must analyze the work carried out at very micro scales. It is this work, repeated in many other local, national, or international spaces, that allows us to understand how the pervasive powers of corporations are constructed and perpetuated. The fifth chapter proposes another angle of approach to the “quiet politics” carried out by economic elites to secure their power over the long term. Stève Bernardin takes a look at American insurance companies and analyzes the strategies they implemented between 1959 and 1974 to promote their road safety and automobile regulation agenda. He shows how they used an extremely varied repertoire of action that was far from being limited to political lobbying alone. Insurance companies thus adapted to changes in debates on traffic safety that could potentially harm their interests and switched between bureaucratic discretion, legal struggle, scientific controversy, or media exposure. They even went so far as to join forces with consumer associations to influence public debate and decisions. Insurance companies thus sought not so much to prevent road safety controversies, as to give themselves the wherewithal to effectively respond to attacks on their interests. This chapter invites us to consider the divergence of interests and conflicts that exist not only between corporations and public authorities but also between industries. It highlights the abundance of resources available to corporate actors and the variety of strategies they are able to deploy. In this way, it shows that the fluidity and adaptability of corporate actors are important drivers of their power and their capacity to endure. In the sixth chapter, Marlène Benquet, Paul Lagneau Ymonet, and Fabien Foureault document the public and private coproduction of public regulations. As an example, they take the case of the creation of a business law. The law in question was introduced in France at the end of the 1990s to encourage life insurance policy holders to use private equity funds to invest their capital, thus contributing toward the very rapid growth of France’s private equity sector. In exploring the creation of this law, the authors underline the conflicts within the financial sector (especially between private equity and insurance companies, which took a very poor view of private equity’s stranglehold on savings) and the state. The study of the coproduction of regulations thus calls for the study of the controversies and power relations that traverse rather than oppose state and corporate spheres. Certain actors consequently weave alliances in order to gain influence over the regulation crafting process. This important contribution to this book shows that public actors are neither arbiters nor passive instruments in the hands of corporate actors, but that they too

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Introduction  7 take advantage of these alliances with the private sector to achieve their own political goals –​in this case, it was a question of strengthening the neoliberal shift driven by the French Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance at the time. As a result, it is the very role of governmental action that the chapter invites us to consider: far from being instruments that are imposed by the state and external to the economic balance of power, public regulations can be tools at the service of this balance of power. The seventh and final chapter explores another modality for the crafting of public policies by corporate actors. Chris Hurl and Anne Vogelpohl shed light on the corporatization of public policymaking for public service procurement by examining the role of four major consulting firms –​KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, and EY in Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The authors propose to conceive corporatization as an overhaul of public service procurement standards based on a corporate model. This allows them to explore in all three countries the rise of public–​private partnerships as the preferred form of public policy on infrastructure. Hurl and Vogelpohl show that consultancy firms develop three strategies. Firstly, they disseminate corporate business models based on specific modes of calculation. Secondly, they build policy-​pipelines that enable the rapid dissemination of these models. And finally, they establish themselves as legitimate experts for the assessment of deals that they themselves draw up on behalf of public authorities. Hurl and Vogelpohl contribute to this book by looking at how corporations influence not only the content of public policy but also the standards with which it is structured. The intermediation work of consulting firms thus consists both in normalizing and internationalizing these standards and in creating areas of robust complicity between public and private actors. Finally, the chapter helps to document the recent growth of financial expertise in the construction of cognitive frameworks and instruments for the evaluation of public policies, which are increasingly focused on the profitability of the services constituted in this manner.1

Note 1 The authors thank Christopher Hinton for his translating assistance.

References Agrifood Atlas. 2017. Facts and Figures About the Corporations That Control What We Eat. Berlin; Brussels: Heinrich Böll Foundation and Friends of the Earth Europe. Accessed 1 October 2020. www.boell.de/​en/​2017/​10/​26/​ agrifood-​atlas-​facts-​and-​figures-​about-​corporations-​control-​what-​we-​eat. Cargill. 2020. 2020 Annual Report. Accessed 1 October 2020. www.cargill.com/​ page/​annual-​report-​2020. Dryden, Joel, and Sarah Rieger. 2020. “Inside the slaughterhouse”. CBS News Interactive. May 6, 2020. Accessed 1 October 2020. https://​newsinteractives. cbc.ca/​longform/​cargill-​covid19-​outbreak.

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8  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas Engdahl, William F. 2006. “WTO, GMO and total spectrum dominance”. Global Research? March 29, 2006. Accessed 1 October 2020. www.globalresearch. ca/​wto-​gmo-​and-​total-​spectrum-​dominance/​2202. Keen, Brewster. 1998. “Restructuring food for corporate profit: The corporate genetics of Cargill and Monsanto”. Agriculture and Human Values 16: 161–​ 167. https://​doi.org/​10.1023/​A:1007586710282. Kneen, Brewster. 2003. “Cargill: size is everything”. Ecologist. The Journal for the Post-​Industrial Age. April 1, 2003. Accessed 1 October 2020. https://​ theecologist.org/​2003/​apr/​01/​cargill-​size-​everything. Mighty Earth. 2019. The Worst Company in the World. Accessed 1 October 2020. https://​stories.mightyearth.org/​cargill-​worst-​company-​in-​the-​world/​. Murphy, Sophia, David Burch, and Jennifer Clapp. 2012. Cereal secrets. The world’s largest grain traders and global agriculture. OXFAM Research Reports. Accessed October 1, 2020. www.oxfam.org/​en/​research/​cereal-​secrets-​worlds​largest-​grain-​traders-​and-​global-​agriculture.

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1  The Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority Repertoire of Actions, Material Effects, and Democratic Challenges Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas A few years ago, Gary Younge (2014), a journalist with The Guardian, asked: “Who’s in control –​nation states or global corporations?”. As far as he was concerned, the answer was clear: transnational corporations had succeeded in severely limiting the “ability of national governments to pursue any agenda” to the point of seriously threatening the exercise of democracy. State weakening in favor of very large corporations is nothing new. It has been regularly observed by committed observers and social scientists for several decades. The characterization of the political power of corporations and their capacity to reorder the world not only in its economic but also in its social, environmental, and political dimensions nevertheless remains highly topical. An understanding of “the nature, dynamics, and impacts of corporations and the power they exert within contemporary capitalism” (SPERI 2019) and therefore of how “the global economy functions and shapes people’s life chances” (ibid.), remains today a crucial issue for the social sciences. Drawing on different literatures, ranging from research on business associations and “global governance” to that on the social production of ignorance or on “corporate crime”, we wish to contribute to existing work on the capacity of corporate actors to govern and administer the world. We analyze corporate actors not just as actors that influence policy but as actors who have acquired an unprecedented capacity to transform and shape the social world. Operating in numerous social spaces and mobilizing a wide range of strategies, they have acquired a power to act that extends far beyond mere spaces of regulation and government. We will use two related concepts to take account of this power: “pervasive powers” and “corporate authority”. The concept of the “pervasive powers” of large corporations and industries relates to the idea of diffuse and generalized powers that have both macro and micro dimensions. The concept of “corporate authority” aims to describe what these diffuse powers produce: the growing social and political legitimacy of corporate DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-2

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10  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas actors, imposing specific material and normative orders that compete or hybridize with those of states. In the first two sections of this chapter, we will present research that has sought to analyze the political power of corporations, from the study of corporate elites to that of the role that private actors play in global governance. In the third section, we develop the concepts of “pervasive powers” and “corporate authority”, which are at the heart of this chapter. This will lead us, in the fourth section, to highlight the importance of the “corporate repertoire of actions” when considering the diversity of the work done by corporate actors to consolidate and perpetuate their power. In the fifth section, we focus on the material dimension and the irreversibility of their actions. Then in the final section, we return more broadly to what these forms of power do to democracy.

Corporate Elites, Corporations, and the State Corporate power is a classic subject of analysis in sociology and political science. An initial Marxist-​inspired set of works focused on the individuals who make up the business world and the networks in which they operate. In this research, corporate power is analyzed as class power. It has as its origin in C. Wright Mills’ seminal study of the “power elite”, defined as the coming together of “those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences” (2000 [1959], 18). For Mills, the study of the places where the different fractions of these elites interact (clubs, professional associations, philanthropic organizations, government commissions, etc.) is of decisive importance, because they allow their members to define common interests. Among them, those who run major companies exert a growing influence supported by the development of states’ capacities to intervene. Mills’ study has fueled a vast body of sociological research on economic elites, some of which uses formal network analysis tools (Denord et al. 2020). This research has focused on “interlocking directorates”, which consists in senior executives of large companies sitting on the boards of other companies. Such practice has been described as essential when building the cohesion of economic elites and their social and political power (Carroll 2004; Domhoff 1970, 2013; Scott 1997; Useem 1984). This research was renewed in the 1990s in relation to the emergence of a “transnational capitalist class” (Carroll 2010; Sklair 2000). It continues to analyze the power of the business world as a class power, defined as the capacity to monopolize a large share of the profits generated by labor. The accumulation of wealth by business leaders and the professionals who work for them is thus seen as the main marker of their power. Finally, this literature argues that the power of corporate elites is even more important in as much as it is considered legitimate in the rest of society. Researchers have thus underlined the symbolic work

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  11 carried out by certain categories of professionals who, on behalf of these elites, fulfill the function of organic intellectuals (in the Gramscian sense): consultants, business lawyers, and academics from law, business, or management schools thus play an essential role in the constitution of a hegemonic power –​i.e., a power that is recognized as legitimate and which is rarely contested (Carroll 2004). Focused on individuals and their networks, this research tells us little about the companies as such or about their strategies and policies. This is the subject of another body of work, rooted more in political science, on the relations between firms and their organizations (business associations, entrepreneurs’ clubs, think tanks, etc.), on the one hand, and public authorities, on the other hand. Some authors have analyzed these relations as the “capture” of certain administrations or regulatory agencies by economic actors who have succeeded in orienting their activities to their benefit (Carpenter and Moss 2014; Huntington 1952). However, other works have offered a more nuanced analysis of the relationship between the business world and government, in terms of “coproduction”. This is what Marlène Benquet, Paul Lagneau Ymonet, and Fabien Foureault propose in Chapter 6 in this book, taking as a case study the creation of a tax exemption favorable to private equity in France in the 1990s. Focusing on conflicts within both financial communities and public administration, they document the way in which the French government and certain financial actors coproduced a regulation that benefited the private equity sector in order to transform the structure of the French financial sector. More generally, this chapter emphasizes the important role that governments play in the construction of markets and in the processes of concentration and economic influence, whether in Europe, North America, or more recently in Asia and South America. The power of states and the power of the large companies whose development they support go hand in hand (Wilks 2013). Alongside these works that demonstrate the close interconnection between states and corporate actors, other literatures have sought to characterize the power that companies exercise, by situating themselves on a global scale.1

“Private Authority” and “Corporate Power” in Global Governance The question of the power exercised by private actors is crucial for another body of research, which is at the crossroads of the field of the analysis of international relations, international political economy, and the study of global governance. This research examines nonpublic actors and questions their capacity to perform functions that are a priori reserved for states or international organizations, such as the definition and implementation of public policies at national, international, or global levels. There are two trends: research that approaches this power through the concept of “private authority” and research that considers it from

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12  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas the angle of “corporate power”. These two approaches are based on the observation that, since the end of the Cold War, there has been an erosion of the capacity of states to perform certain functions due to the combined effect of several factors: increasing globalization, the development of international organizations, the concentration of large corporations, the financialization of the economy, the implementation of (neo-​)liberal policies, and, for some authors, the acceleration of communication and trade made possible by technological transformations. In both streams of literature, it is a matter of highlighting and analyzing the non-​state actors who participate in the construction of global governance, and the institutional, social, and geographical spaces in which these actors operate, or the instruments they have at their disposal. The notion of “private authority” took shape during the 1990s (Cutler et al. 2003). Private authority is defined as an assemblage of “institutionalized forms or expressions of power”, the legitimacy of which is based on the fact that there is “some form of normative, uncoerced consent or recognition of authority on the part of the regulated or governed” (Hall and Bierstecker 2002, 4). It is therefore a question of understanding how private actors and organizations –​and not only states –​gain rule-​ making authority (Cashore 2002). This research distinguishes between different forms of private authority, including “delegated” and “entrepreneurial” forms. Delegated forms of private authority function as transfers of competences from states to private actors (Green 2014; Hall and Biersteker 2002), while entrepreneurial authority is directly constructed by corporate actors (as evidenced by the contemporary proliferation of the voluntary norms and standards that they adopt). Corporate organizations have become producers of private rules that they impose as being legitimate, to such an extent that they now exercise independent rule-​making authority (Cutler et al. 2003; Flohr et al. 2010; Green 2014). The case of ISO standards is a good example of this trend (Clapp 1998; Graz 2019). The authors who share this perspective have long insisted on the blurred boundaries that exist between “public” and “private” authorities and the interdependencies between the two (Clapp 1998; Strange 1991). Some therefore use the term “hybrid authority” (Andonova 2010) to designate this blurring, which can be found, for example, in the construction of standards, in the control of their implementation or in certain types of device such as public–​private partnerships. In addition to examining the actors and instruments, some research focuses on the need to situate the multi-​sited spaces where “private authority” is produced and implemented. Yet, this body of literature takes into consideration a very wide variety of private actors that does not refer exclusively to companies: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); transnational organizations (especially those that build and administer private standards or international treaties); and even religious, criminal, or terrorist organizations.

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  13 Research that mobilizes the concept of “private authority” thus tends to consider economic actors as private actors among others. Conversely, research that adopts the perspective of “corporate power” focuses its analyses on transnational corporations. It sees multinationals as actors capable of exercising political power in the same way as states. Some authors have considered transnational corporations as contributors to the construction and implementation of global governance, alongside states and transnational organizations, and sometimes other types of private actor (Flohr et al. 2010). Others have sought not only to specify the modalities of corporate intervention in certain global governance mechanisms but also to analyze their economic, social, environmental, or health effects on the sectors concerned (Clapp and Fuchs 2009). More recently, researchers have defended the idea that “big business has developed a profound structural power position on the global scale” (Babic et al. 2017, 21) and have called for the development of research that makes it possible to account for the nature, modalities of exercise, and effects of this power (Milker 2018; SPERI 2019). This power is conceived as being not only economic but also highly political. Depending on the situation, it may be juxtaposed with, interact with, or even surpass that of the most powerful states or international organizations.

The Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority Just like research on the place of corporations in global governance, we wish to focus on corporate actors –​by which we mean first and foremost large corporations. We consider these large companies in all their diversity, in the sense that they are not necessarily controlled solely by private actors. Due to their strategic importance, they can be the object of state participation, as in the mining or armament sectors. Some companies are even wholly owned and controlled by states, such as Chinese state-​owned enterprises (Lin et al. 2020). In various Western countries too, certain industrial sectors have been developed and structured under state impetus. In this book, Chapter 2 by José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez illustrates this phenomenon by showing how the autarkist policies of the Francoist state led to the creation of a pesticide industry in Spain. However, in this book, “corporate actors” not only refer to very large companies and industries. We believe it is also necessary to take into consideration a wider range of corporate actors. We therefore refer not just to economic actors that control a large volume of activities on a local or global scale but also to those which provide them with services or expertise (audit firms, brokers, asset management consultants, public relations firms, etc.). To these may be added organizations responsible for defending or promoting corporate interests (business associations, think tanks, philanthropic organizations, lobbyists, NGOs, law firms, etc.), along with a whole range of individuals who hold strategic powers within these entities. This variety is illustrated in this book by Nathalie Jas’

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14  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas Chapter 3, which shows the diversity of organizations and mechanisms through which the French pesticide industry promoted its interests in the 1950s. To take the polymorphism of corporate actors seriously also means taking into account their complexity. Corporate organizations often rely on extremely elaborate systems that include subsidiaries, specialist services, subcontractors, or alliances with other organizations. The deployment of these systems on an international scale is an important source of power for the companies that build and dominate them, to such an extent that some have acquired capacities for action that exceed those of many states (Babic et al. 2017; Bohme Rankin 2014). Unlike research on corporate power, we believe it is important to underline the systemic nature and multiple forms of the power exercised by corporate actors. To this end, we propose the notion of “pervasive powers”, which refers to the idea of dynamic and multi-​sited powers –​ hence the use of the plural. Diffuse and generalized, they can be observed at both the micro and macro levels and contribute to the production of worldviews. They influence public decision making, regulation, and expertise, as well as the technological horizons of a given society. These powers also leave visible traces at the local level. They are thus exercised both “from above” –​in regulations, values, and discourse –​and “from below”, right down to the materiality of objects. This is the case, for example, of “Terminator” transgenes invented by Delta & Pine Land (later bought out by Monsanto), which are used to sterilize genetically modified plants and thus force farmers to buy seeds from Monsanto every year. These powers are not only exercised over public authorities. They are in fact deployed by companies to mobilize a wide variety of resources in a range of spaces such as regulatory arenas, courts of law, influential professional circles (journalists, academics, teachers, etc.), and NGOs. The construction and maintenance of networks that extend beyond the business community is thus a core activity of corporate-​ funded foundations and think tanks, as Thomas Depecker, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, and Nicolas Larchet demonstrate in Chapter 4 in this book, with the example of a foundation created in France in the 1970s by major food companies in response to growing criticism of industrial food. Finally, the accumulation of these powers leads to the institutionalization of what we propose to call a corporate authority, i.e., a power that corporate actors claim to be legitimate. The institutionalization of corporate authority is the result of a long historical process, which can be traced back at the very least to the seventeenth century, with the creation of charter companies that developed through support from states wishing to strengthen their trading posts and better exploit their colonies (Stern 2011). This process developed progressively, growing through organizational innovations such as the development of joint stock companies from the nineteenth century onward (Barkan 2013; Robé 2011). We see three reasons for using the notion of corporate authority, which

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  15 we distinguish from that of private authority. Firstly, corporate authority is claimed and exercised by powerful economic actors (unlike NGOs) that have a legal existence (unlike mafias or terrorist organizations) and which are explicitly profit oriented (unlike religious organizations). Public authorities grant them a privileged status, anchored in public policies that benefit them socially, economically, and politically. Secondly, these corporate actors have developed considerable influence over the production of rules, be they public or private (Cutler et al. 2003). Their authority is such that coalitions of corporate actors, associated with states, have succeeded in obtaining the establishment of private governance systems (such as international arbitration tribunals) that operate on a global scale and which are often very restrictive for states. In the financial sector, for example, private transnational institutions and processes in global investment and financial regimes “constitute a form of private transnational authority, performing governance functions usually attributed to states and to public authorities” (Cutler 2018, 61). In this sector, it is “private transnational experts” who “craft the legal foundations that advance and secure the expansion of capitalism as the common sense of our time” (ibid.). Finally, through their economic activities and, more often than not, the support of states, corporate actors have acquired a capacity to act on the world and transform it. This transformative capacity for transformation is not only exercised through their influence on the production of public or private standards and rules; their activities also contribute to defining “the who-​gets-​how-​much justice and freedom and economic security” (Strange 1991, 246), thus profoundly shaping the world in its environmental, material, social and political dimensions. These activities also contribute to the construction and diffusion of the categories through which we understand the world. In so doing, corporations contribute to the creation and perpetuation of a world of which they claim to be a vital, even beneficial, component (McGoey 2015). Nevertheless, like all forms of authority, corporate authority is never definitively acquired. It can be challenged not only by actors who criticize and oppose this form of government of conduct (Bartley and Child 2014; Robinson 2013) but also by states, whose interests may diverge (Dubuisson-​Quellier 2017). Corporate strategies for market development, capture, or accumulation sometimes encounter difficulties in the field, due to the reluctance of various human and nonhuman actors to adopt a market scheme (Angeli Aguiton 2019). If we have taken this fragility into account, it does not mean that we relativize the deep asymmetries between actors (Clegg et al. 2006) and the role of corporations in perpetuating or even aggravating inequalities (OXFAM 2020; SPERI 2019). In considering that the pervasive powers of corporate actors may be contested, we defend the idea that in order to self-​perpetuate itself, corporate authority requires a whole range of resources, efforts, and technical and organizational innovations.

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16  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas

The Corporate Repertoire of Actions Corporate actors are constantly working to preserve or consolidate their authority. In order to reflect the wide variety of activities that this work involves, we propose the notion of “corporate repertoire of actions”. Taking the concept from Charles Tilly (1978), Michel Offerlé proposes to use the notion of repertoire of actions to “grasp the set of instruments that those with the means of production and economic management can collectively use to assert and defend their interests” (2009, 63). We draw inspiration from this approach, albeit with one important difference: the concept of repertoire that we use here includes both individual and collective actions. It brings together all the tools and modes of action that corporations mobilize to develop their activities and defend their interests, whether through mediation by other organizations or not. In presenting five dimensions of this repertoire, we do not aim to be exhaustive but to describe the different facets, generally cumulative, according to which corporate strategies can be deployed. The first dimension of the corporate repertoire of actions concerns a wide range of strategies designed by corporate players to make themselves indispensable to many other actors (economic actors, public authorities, consumers, etc.). It is a question of acquiring, to varying degrees and over the long term, a position of structural power that enables a corporation to impose its conditions on its partners or to make any public challenge or attempt at regulation very difficult if not unthinkable (Crenson 1971; McGoey et al. 2018). These strategies are often embedded in firms’ industrial policies, such as those aimed at gaining a predominant position in a productive system so as to control the activity of other economic actors and impose the firm’s own conditions on them (Elmore 2015). We must also consider strategies that consist in developing knowledge, norms, tools and infrastructures (private standards, software, machines, logistics systems, etc.) and making them vital to many other actors (for an example concerning the financial sector, see MacKenzie and Pardo-​Guerra 2014). To these strategies we might add those aimed at acquiring a critical size, at the scale of a town, region, or state, making it possible to obtain special advantages from public authorities (subsidies, tax exemptions, rescue plans in the event of difficulties, etc.). Or those that consist in making oneself essential at the financial level, especially to governments: financing political parties or public facilities, making donations to international organizations or to charitable associations, etc. (Evertsson 2018; McGoey 2015). The second dimension of this repertoire lies in the uses of knowledge and the zones of ignorance that surround it (Déplaude 2015; Henry 2017). Companies might argue that they have expertise in their field of activity, either to reject or reduce the scope of any external control or to disqualify any other form of expertise or knowledge that does not meet the canons of “sound science” as defined by them (Krimsky 2003; Ong

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  17 and Glantz 2001). They can also keep to themselves data that might harm their business if published (on the toxicity of a chemical substance, the risks associated with a financial product, etc.) or communicate only part of it to regulatory authorities (Michaels 2008). More broadly, companies might use strategies designed to maintain a certain level of vagueness or ignorance about their activities and products in order to avoid unfavorable regulatory measures (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). The most powerful firms invest considerable resources to this effect, resources likely to bias the production of the knowledge on which regulatory authorities rely (Michaels 2020; Sismondo 2011; Vogel 2013). The third dimension of the corporate repertoire of actions lies in the relationship with the law. This involves a wide range of practices, from official forms of lobbying through which corporate organizations seek to influence the production of legislation, to the use of illegal means (corruption, fraud, extortion, etc.). The latter have been described and analyzed by the literature on white-​collar and corporate crimes (Pontell and Geis 2007). Between these two extremes, there is a vast gray area, corresponding to practices that take advantage of loopholes or ambiguities in the law, the limited capacities of oversight bodies, and the opportunities offered by the existence of different legal systems or levels of regulation. These practices are not simply the work of a few “rogue” firms; they are common in the business world but are rarely sanctioned (Gobert and Pascal 2014; Tombs and Whyte 2015). Governments often support these strategies to varying degrees, for example, when they choose to ignore certain offenses or to not enforce existing laws.2 For Barak (2017), neoliberal deregulation policies have even been accompanied by the development of these practices, which are tolerated in the name of economic development. In other words, the use of illegality and the exploitation of gray areas of the law are systemic in nature and are part of many corporations’ repertoire of actions. The fourth dimension of the corporate repertoire of actions lies in the various forms of violence that companies use to consolidate or defend their activities. This dimension does not entirely overlap the third, despite its similarities: it includes strategies that range from acts of denigration or harassment of opponents to actions that harm their physical integrity –​including murder –​or the use of abusive legal procedures such as SLAPPs, i.e., strategic lawsuits against public participation (Global Witness 2017; Pring and Canan 1996). These actions do not only target actors external to the firms but can also be directed at their employees or those of the administrations in charge of regulating them in order to obtain their submission or their eviction, which some authors qualify as intellectual suppression (Henry 2012; Martin et al. 1986; McGoey 2012). The final dimension of this corporate repertoire of actions relates to the degree to which these actions are visible or invisible. A number of studies have underlined the fact that companies have easier access to regulatory arenas and to holders of political power, thus allowing them to

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18  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas assert their interests in confined settings (Wilks 2013). As part of “quiet politics” (Culpepper 2011), decisions taken in private, nonregulatory arenas –​such as company boards of directors –​can also have considerable economic, social, or environmental impact without the elected officials and populations concerned having to express an opinion. However, corporations can also vociferously invest public space to make their views heard and influence public debates, as seen with neoliberal and climate-​sceptic think tanks, generally financed by large corporations or their owners (McCright and Dunlap 2003; Medvetz 2012). Even actions based on intimidation and violence require a minimum of publicity in order to be effective: beyond their immediate effect on the individuals or organizations targeted, they can be analyzed as “acts of power” (Crenson 1971, 177), through which the reputation of their alleged perpetrator may be strengthened. This outline of the corporate repertoire of actions requires amplification. Firstly, the types of action that corporations are likely to mobilize within this repertoire vary immensely, depending on the economic, social, and political characteristics of the countries in which they operate. What is possible for a large company in a Central American state or in Southeast Asia is probably not possible in the United States and vice versa (Bohme Rankin 2014; Fortun 2001). Companies know how to adapt to the social and political configurations proper to each country (Bartley 2018). Secondly, as we have already mentioned, large companies are complex organizations, with a wide range of structures (local, national, international, by function, by sector, etc.) and forms of representation. This gives them two advantages. On the one hand, it allows them to easily adjust their strategies to suit each regulatory framework and to rapidly adapt to measures that are not favorable to them (Clapp 2010). On the other hand, this organizational complexity means that companies’ strategies are still only known to some of their employees or managers, the others remaining unaware of them or only having access to scraps of information. These forms of ignorance, which are to some extent strategically organized (McGoey 2012), are also what keep companies going, allowing employees to continue to work for them without feeling that they are betraying their values, even when their employer resorts to illegal or violent practices. Thirdly, as other research has already clearly pointed out, companies do not produce these strategies on their own. They do so with the help of specialist companies: lobbying and public relations firms, law firms, companies specialized in scientific writing, intelligence or private security companies, etc. (Boulier 2019; Laurens 2017; Oreskes and Conway 2010; Walker 2014). Delegating the design and implementation of corporate strategies to these actors helps to circulate knowledge and know-​how and to unify the corporate repertoire of actions. Fourthly, it is important to take into account the temporality of these strategies: contrary to a common view whereby companies are above all subject to the short-​termism of investors or financial markets, we defend the idea that

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  19 they often have long-​term strategies, using resources that they constantly adapt. This is what is demonstrated in Stève Bernardin’s Chapter 5 in this book, based on an analysis of the strategies implemented in the 1960s and 1970s by American insurance companies to promote and defend their conception of road safety, particularly against attempts to deregulate the automobile sector. In short, by using the notion of the corporate repertoire of actions, we wish to underline the variety of strategies that large corporations employ to reinforce their economic and political power. Unlike what is defended in Marxist-​and Gramscian-​inspired research on corporate elites, investments in the field of ideas –​for example, through the action of think tanks and foundations –​are just one strategy among many. The control exerted by corporate authority is based on multiple mechanisms, including the production of ignorance, illegalism, and violence. These actions can produce irreversible effects that help to embed corporate authority in the materiality of beings and things: this is an essential aspect of its pervasiveness.

Materiality and Irreversibility The exercise of corporate authority also affects the very materiality of the physical, biological, and social world, producing forms of irreversibility. The notion of “irreversibility” should be understood here in both senses of the word, both socio-​political and material. It is not only a lock-​in of the expectations of different organizations (Borup et al. 2006) and of the framing of social issues but also a material irreversibility, when living beings and environments are forever marked by the choices made by corporate actors (Boudia et al. 2018). These material effects can be seen in the monopolization of numerous spaces for the benefit of industrial projects –​a classic illustration of the power of large companies and of states that support their projects in order to develop their territories (Ferguson 2005; Scott 1999). Authoritarian decisions, violent repression against the populations that resist them, and the circumvention of environmental regulations are often at stake. This was the case, for example, at Notre-​Dame des Landes, in France, where an international airport was to be built on a wetland and where various communities were experimenting with alternative lifestyles –​and whose resistance eventually succeeded in undermining the project. The case of the Amazon region, where primary forests are deforested and burned to free up land for intensive agriculture, logging, and livestock farming, is also symptomatic of these corporate and state practices. This stranglehold can take different forms, such as bioprospection (Foyer 2010; Hayden 2004), extractivism (Ferguson 1999; Kinchy et al. 2018), the patenting of life by genetically modified organism (GMO) seed producers (Glover 2010), or the capture of human biological material by the pharmaceutical industry (Lafontaine 2014). Such occupation of the world invites us

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20  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas to think about the concrete ways in which large corporations control the environment and life. Large companies also help to build new material, social, and geographical orders. The territorial expansion practices of manufacturing or service industries –​and the infrastructures they require –​can thus be observed throughout the world. It is primarily industrial goods that materially organize the world. For example, the industrialization of certain commodities, as was the case for agricultural goods produced in the area around Chicago in the nineteenth century, led to a reorganization of the entire metropolitan territory to allow for the agronomic standardization, transportation, storage, and marketing of such commodities (Cronon 1991). Similarly, the characteristics of oil as a source of energy have profoundly transformed the metabolism of societies, its liquidity and transportability allowing extraction, refining, and consumption sites to be located thousands of miles away. The materiality of oil has thus made it possible to reorganize production relations to benefit energy companies, in particular by allowing them to free themselves from the power that miners held over the coal extraction system (Mitchell 2011). Corporate intervention is also measured at the scale of the infrastructures that allow goods to circulate. Here, one might think of the private logics that govern the construction of cities and transport infrastructures, which perpetuate inequalities in new material arrangements (Anand 2006; Graham and Marvin 2001; Winner 1980). These transformations concern not only heavy infrastructures, but also the service economy, which is a central driver of the hegemony of global cities (Sassen 1991). In an extremely concrete fashion, financial and banking services, insurance groups and the digital industry are reorganizing the physical arrangements necessary for the circulation of information (Angeli Aguiton 2021; Carnino and Marquet 2018). Major digital and financial companies are discreetly digging their undersea networks (Starosielski 2015) and erecting pylons on mountains or in the middle of deserts so that high-​frequency trading waves may reach other international marketplaces as quickly as possible (Laumonier 2019). The material hold exerted by large corporations thus has significant irreversible effects on the physical, biological, and social world. Furthermore, this hold can lead to mutually reinforcing lock-​in effects, as in the case of infrastructural embedding processes (such as when computer networks are built into the base of freeways) or in the case of obduracy, when the irreversibility of technological choices and material arrangements feeds path dependency on a social, economic, or political level (Guthman 2019; Hommels 2005). Finally, irreversibility is undeniable when we look at the toxic residues of past industrial infrastructures, buried or forgotten, and often invisible to the inhabitants and new users of these contaminated spaces. Environmental health issues are tragic markers of these irreversibilities. For example, entire residential neighborhoods are sometimes built on former industrial sites where pollution remains hidden and unknown to

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  21 the public (Frickel and Elliot 2018), often leading to poor and racialized populations being exposed (Pulido 2000). The materiality of the pervasive powers of large companies is also crucial to the management of health risks and environmental destruction. Industrial activities produce a toxic world and are associated with modes of government that make them possible (Boudia and Jas 2014, 2019). In the case of occupational health risks, for example, industrial actors become involved in the field of expertise and scientific knowledge in order to establish their power over administrations and trade unions (Henry 2017; Markowitz and Rosner 2002). Industrial routine also has crucial material consequences. Health and chemical sectors have built global markets for their molecules that circulate, combine together, and accumulate in bodies and environments. Our understanding of intoxication processes –​and therefore of the complex material effects of these technoproducts –​has been considerably broadened by taking into account endocrine disruptors, the chronic effects of low doses of chemical substances, and the iatrogenic effects of certain molecules circulating massively throughout pharmaceutical markets. These material residues and toxic traces require the social sciences to renew their conceptualization of risk (Boudia et al. 2018; Fortun et al. 2016) and to document the way in which environmental justice movements challenge these dangers (Allen 2003). Market logics nevertheless persist in a toxic world, with new extractivist practices developing from what was previously considered waste (Hecht 2018).

When Corporate Authority Challenges Democracy Finally, corporate authority has serious effects on the values we associate with democracy. In order to understand them, we must bear in mind that the changes to corporate power described in this book echo those that have taken place in democratic states. Since the 1970s and 1980s, the idea that companies’ modes of organization are more efficient than those of states and that public action must integrate these ways of operating has thrived in public administration. This phenomenon has been described as the emergence of a corporate state (Wilks 2013), particularly in Great Britain and the United States, where corporations have acquired a key role in policy making and in the delivery of public services. The privatization of nationalized companies, recourse to subcontracting in public services, public–​private partnerships, new public management, or technical standards defined by the private sector (ISO, Codex Alimentarius, etc.) are thus all examples of “business-​like” instruments that have become central to the daily functioning of democracies (Raco 2013). From this perspective, states can see companies as the yardstick for new forms of government, not only in the sense that they delegate public service missions to corporations but also in that these partnerships transform ways of governing and the objectives pursued by public authorities (Saint Martin 2013). Institutions over which public authorities do not exercise

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22  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas any authority also constitute new means of action for large firms in their relations with states. This is the case of arbitration tribunals, the role of which is central to the application of major transnational trade agreements (Dezalay and Garth 1996; Sweet and Grisel 2017). Corporate authority thus affects the way democracies function, in several ways. Firstly, democracy can be seen as a form of governmental regime based on a set of institutions and procedures that ensure the representation of citizens (through universal suffrage in free and competitive elections), the accountability of elected officials and of the administration, the independence of organizations that set up counterweights (the judiciary, expert agencies, etc.), and the effective enforcement of the law. In this formal acceptation of democracy, the regime provides citizens –​in principle at least –​with easy access to the locations where deliberations and the exercise of power take place and offers the possibility of recourse if there are breaches of the law. In France, for example, the courts, parliamentary sessions are public spaces accessible to each and every citizen. However, corporate authority challenges this accessibility. The pervasive powers that corporations implement very often consist in using dedicated channels to access spaces of power, creating places and institutions that are difficult to access and lacking in visibility, with no participation from outside audiences (Culpepper 2011; Laurens 2017). Here we find an initial tension between corporate authority and the model of democratic societies: not only do companies have a significant influence in the production of public policy, but they are also able to access, and even shape, spaces that are by definition nondemocratic, where decisions affecting society as a whole are taken. A second conception of democracy relates to critical activities expressed in social movements in the public space and in associative life. Here, it is the conflictual dimension of democracy that is emphasized (Balibar 2009; Rancière 1995, 2005), a conflictuality that also opens the door to the expression of alternative forms of living and social experimentation (as in the “Occupy” movements around the world, or the protests in defense of Gezi Park in Istanbul). Faced with such criticism, corporate actors might respond with counterstrategies, whether by challenging their arguments or by using violent means against them. But they can also either appropriate the criticisms or develop new ones. Companies thus seek to become the repositories of social and environmental protests and to draw inspiration from social movements and their mode of conflictuality in order to renew their repertoire of action (see Kolleck 2013 on the concept of “sustainable development”). This is documented in research on astroturfing, a strategy that companies use to challenge NGOs’ criticism “by producing a discourse that would seem to emerge from the base of society and which misrepresents their watchwords” (Laurens 2015, 86). These techniques are similar to those of professional grassroots lobbying campaigns (Walker 2014), which aim to ensure popular support for companies and help them gain influence. New media and new platforms

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  23 (community management on Facebook, online petitions, etc.) have thus led to corporate strategies that consist not in manufacturing “false social movements” but in initiating a corporate public mobilization through which a company politically organizes its clients and users to defend its interests (Gervais 2018). A third way to approach democracy is to consider it in terms of its strong link with public services, which guarantee everyone access to essential services (health, education, water, energy), whatever their income may be. In this respect, corporate authority can result in the disappearance of certain public services and in forms of dispossession. In this book, Chapter 7 by Chris Hurl and Anne Vogelpohl clearly illustrates the growing importance of the decision-​making tools designed by large consulting firms on behalf of public actors. These tools are based on an economic rationality of efficiency and cost-​effectiveness, which encourages public authorities to make decisions that are seen as deals rather than as the provision of public services. Benjamin Lemoine (2016) has documented this phenomenon in his research on the financialization of sovereign debt. Through these transformations, it is the channels, the instruments, and the very meaning of public policy that are being requalified. The budgetary reforms of public hospitals in France is a similar case where the introduction of a new instrument called “activity-​based pricing”, developed by economists, made it possible to establish a new standard of hospital management, according to which hospitals must function as companies that bill for services and not as public services that provide care to patients (Juven 2016). The erosion of democracy as a provider of public services is thus taking place on two fronts: that of the privatization of public services and that of the corporatization of decision making and management methods within the public services that remain (Valkama 2013). This process affects not only countries whose public services were the most highly developed, such as European social democracies, but also others: as of the 1980s in the United States, many public services, such as the supply of drinking water and electricity, were entrusted to private operators (Hess 2011; Robinson 2013). Finally, democracy can be understood as a regime that should offer reasonably equal living conditions –​or at least limit inequalities –​and allow everyone to live with dignity. This conception of democracy can be linked to the postwar period, which contributed to the emergence of the idea of social progress, combined with a whole range of social rights: reduced working hours, paid vacations, minimum social benefits, and other social protection mechanisms. This conception might be compared to the notion of social democracy, which refers to the democratic procedures governing relations between capital and labor and organizing modes of employee representation within companies. These “social” conceptions of democracy are now being eroded and are seen as the remains of an old world in need of reform. As has continuously been the case ever since the rise of neoliberalism in Western democracies in the late 1970s, the centrality

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24  Aguiton, Déplaude, Jas, Henry, and Thomas given to employment issues has thus led to the establishment of social protection systems favorable to companies (Pierson 2001). The state is rethinking the meaning of social protection, by implementing “policies of expenditure activation, of ‘workfare’, where the requirements of competitiveness seek to minimize the ‘cost of labor’, to subsidize employment or to adapt ‘human capital’ to suit corporate needs” (Delouette and Le Lann 2018, 33). Different dimensions of democracy are thus being eroded by the practices and strategies of corporate actors. Some of them are even openly advocating the adoption of reforms that aim to reduce the role of democratic deliberation arenas in favor of more authoritarian forms of government that are more beneficial to the business community (Chamayou 2018; Miller and Dinan 2015; Plehwe et al. 2020). In other words, it is the very legitimacy of democratic forms of government that is being challenged by corporate actors, who promote a form of “authoritarian liberalism” that combines a restriction on areas where the state may intervene, with a limitation of the possibilities for opposing the decisions made by governments or corporations (Chamayou 2018).

Conclusion In this chapter, we have proposed various theoretical approaches to extend existing analyses in order to apprehend the systemic and pervasive dimensions of corporate authority. It is a question of understanding how corporate actors have shaped their capacity to become technologically, socially, politically, and economically indispensable in local, national, and international arenas. These theoretical propositions have important methodological dimensions. Firstly, we believe it is important to consider temporalities that are sufficiently long to allow us to grasp how corporate actors are able to gradually gain a strong hold on social, economic, technological, scientific, or political activities so as to have a determining influence on changes to the social world. Secondly, we consider it necessary to switch focus and examine diverse arenas that are not just governmental, intergovernmental, legislative, or administrative. It is also crucial to document other actors such as municipal or local institutions that regulate specific economic sectors and corporate organizations themselves. Finally, we underline the need for the social sciences to study the wide range of tools and instruments that corporate actors use to transform the social world, from the production of simple technical norms or material infrastructures to political lobbying or systemic violations of the law. Various research traditions have been built around the analysis of some of these strategies –​such as those dealing with lobbying and public relations practices, the production of ignorance, and corporate crimes. Yet, more research is needed over the long term to understand all of these dimensions in the study of a given corporation or industry. Research

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Pervasiveness of Corporate Authority  25 taking a sideways step to examine corporations and industries on the basis of the technologies that structure the deployment of their production systems can be particularly heuristic. For example, surveys such as those conducted by Julie Guthman (2019) on the California strawberry industry, by Heike Buchter (2015) on financial asset manager BlackRock, or by Barton J. Elmore (2015) on Coca-​Cola, invite us to see the central role that certain technologies (including organizational ones) play in the success of these corporations or industries: methyl bromide soil fumigation for the strawberry industry, algorithms for data analysis and financial asset management for BlackRock, and outsourcing of both the production and distribution of virtually all its products for Coca-​Cola. These approaches also make it possible to show how a wide variety of elements (natural, material, economic, social, technical, regulatory, and political) come together to consolidate the activities of these companies. They also allow us to account for the effects, which may be irreversible, associated with the development of these very large corporations and industries. These studies thus demonstrate the utility of systemic approaches, taking into consideration a wide variety of issues, scales, and practices, in order to shed light on how the power of corporate actors is developed and perpetuated.

Notes The authors thank Christopher Hinton for his translating assistance. 1 2 Some authors use the notion of “state-​corporate crimes” to designate these interdependencies (Brisman and South 2015; Kramer et al. 2002).

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2  The Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry During the Early Francoist Dictatorship Experts, Autarky, Agnotology, and Fascism José Ramón Bertomeu-​Sánchez

Introduction By the end of the 1960s, as broad-​ spectrum pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) came under increasing attack, some agricultural engineers and economic entomologists began to publicly question the dominant methods of pest control since the Second World War (WWII). One of the most insightful critics was Robert van den Bosch (1922–​1978), an outstanding Californian entomologist who portrayed the vested interests behind what he called the “pesticide treadmill”, the process which establishes the massive use of pesticides in the mid-​twentieth century while marginalizing other forms of pest management. According to him, a “pesticide mafia”, that is, a powerful coalition of experts, governmental agencies, and private institutions, had successfully managed to develop and perpetuate “a costly, inefficient, and pollutive pest-​ management system”. At the top of the list was the agricultural–​chemical industry, but van den Bosch also included in the group many other protagonists: pest-​control operators, aircraft applicators, agri-​businesses, grower organizations, food processors, key politicians, members of governmental agencies (US Department of Agriculture), mass media, professional societies (agronomist, entomologists, etc.), and a disparate set of individuals in universities and companies. Apart from denouncing the limited regulation, van den Bosch’s book is full of shameless stories of villainy, corruption, deceit, and conceal, mostly happening behind the scenes. As an inside-​participant, he offered precious glimpses of valuable information that historians can hardly find in official archives (Bosch 1989, 57–​59). Van den Bosch’s conspiracy picture on the pesticide treadmill has been revised by subsequent historical works. In his pioneering study on US economic entomologists, John Perkins (1982) explored other perspectives different from the “corruption thesis”. He distanced himself from van den Bosch’s narrative of how chemical manufactures had managed to DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-3

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34 Bertomeu-Sánchez dominate and even corrupt the work of agronomic experts, farmers, politicians, and regulators. Perkins discussed how the “socioeconomic organization of American farming” involved certain requirements to any successful pest control technology, so favoring the use of pesticides by agricultural engineers. In a similar vein, yet relying on a comparative analysis between the US and Canada, Paolo Palladino discarded that entomologists were “the victims of a terrible, corporate conspiracy” (1996, 4–​5). On the contrary, he regarded them as “active participants in the evolution of the insecticide crisis” because “not only did they exploit existing institutional formations to advance their goals”, but “they also helped to shape them” in ways that marginalized other forms of pest control (ibid., 6). While accepting the role of the chemical industry in encouraging the pesticide treadmill, Palladino remarked that “the success of insecticides also rested on farmers’ and entomologists’ shared beliefs in technological progress and the control of nature” (ibid., 180–​181; see also Dunlap 1981). Further studies on the history of toxic products have reviewed in even more sophisticated ways the interactions between discursive constructions, sociotechnological objects, expert knowledge, vested interests, activism, and decision making (Boudia and Jas, 2014, 2019; Bertomeu-​Sánchez and Guillem-​Llobat, 2016; Rothschild, 2016; Guillem-​Llobat and Nieto-​ Galan, 2020). One of the main subareas of research has been the history of agrochemicals and their effects in public health and the environment (Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019b, 2021). The dominant narrative on the history of pesticides is focused on the US, DDT, and the transformations which took place after WWII. This narrative is clearly found in van den Bosch’s book, in which he describes DDT as the miraculous pesticide which “worked like nothing ever had before”. “Overnight”, affirmed van den Bosch, “pest control was transformed from a side show to the center stage of modern technology”, so catalyzing “an explosive expansion of the pesticide industry”, due to the “enormous demand for them”. “Vast amounts of capital” were invested in making the “production capacity required to satisfy this demand”. As a result, the expansion of the pesticide industry was “so rapid and massive that it simply steamrollered pest-​ control technology”, and for many decades, pest control was equated to pesticide use (Bosch 1989, 20–​21). With the works of Rachel Carson ringing the bell in the 1960s, the subsequent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban on DDT seems to be a success story for the American environmental movement, a success which has been fiercely questioned by those against any form of regulation of the chemical industry (Dunlap 1981; Davis 2019; Morris 2019). In this way, the narrative constructed around DDT and American eagles largely neglected other relevant issues in the history of pesticides and provides misleading bases for dealing with current problems by narrowing the public debate and invisibilizing the risks of other pesticides which are still in use. When focusing just on DDT in the US, historians

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  35 and activists face the “perils of synecdoche”, as Davis has dubbed it, by forgetting other pesticides (arsenic, organophosphates, etc.) and invisibilizing the risks to farmworkers, consumers, and rural communities. Davis remarks that the dominant narrative conveys the idea that “the DDT ban in 1972 solved once and for all the pesticides problem not only in America but around the world” (Davis 2019, 470). However, controversies on other pesticides were common in the following decades. This is still the case, for instance, the recent banning in Europe of organophosphate products such as chlorpyrifos, or the ongoing debate on the herbicide glyphosate, the massive usage of which in South America has been largely contested (Lyons 2018).1 Therefore, the controversy on pesticides is likely to persist and problems caused by their massive use are far from being solved, also in the case in Spain. At the beginning of the twenty-​first century, Spain was one of the first European consumers of fungicides and insecticides. Moreover, Spain was one of the last European countries allowing aerial spraying in the late 2010s. A detailed report on the analysis of river water showed a large amount of pesticides, including many products whose use was supposed to have been long time prohibited by national and international regulations.2 My main aim with this chapter is to offer some clues to understand how Spain entered the “pesticide treadmill”. I claim that pesticides before DDT, particularly those based on arsenic compounds, were crucial in this process, particularly during the first years of the Franco dictatorship (Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019a). Therefore, while relying on van den Bosch’s insights, I move away from DDT-​centered narratives by paying attention to other sociotechnological products (arsenic pesticides), human and nonhuman protagonists (agricultural engineers and Colorado beetles), toxic hazards (poisoning of workers and food consumers), and geopolitical contexts (fascist and autarky policies in Spain during the 1940s). I start by the arrival of pesticides in early twentieth-​century Spain agriculture. Then I describe the challenges created by the advent of the Colorado beetle in the early 1940s. I discuss how the politics of autarky offered new opportunities for developing pest control programs, chemical industry, and economic policies. The main regulation was the National Register of Pesticides created in 1942. This register, and its associated documents, is the main source for reconstructing the early pesticide industry.3 Finally, I discuss the consequences of these regulations in invisibilizing the risks of pesticides for farmers and food consumers. Pesticides became sources of slow poisoning and tools for social control while reinforcing the alliance of agricultural engineers and fascist politicians in their autarkic/​ authoritarian dreams. In this way, my chapter shows the coproduction of the Spanish pesticide treadmill and the early Francoist regime thanks to the coalescence of an array of disparate circumstances and long-​term trends, including lead arsenates, Colorado beetles, agricultural engineers, and fascist politicians. My main point is that the emergence of the

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36 Bertomeu-Sánchez early Spanish pesticide industry was marked by striking inequalities in the production of knowledge and ignorance concerning pesticides and their risks. This situation produced an unbalanced distribution of costs and benefits (Bohme 2015) which lasted for many decades after the episodes described in this paper and encouraged the marginalization of alternative methods for pest control and the silencing of critical voices through discursive, regulatory, and repressive measures, all of them in tune with the large amount of industry advertising which flooded newspapers and agriculture magazines. With the help of the agricultural engineers, this unequal distribution of risks and benefits was naturalized in regulations, standards, and rules regarding the production and commercialization of pesticides, thus shaping the development of the Spanish pesticide treadmill during the decades to come.

Experts Lead arsenate was introduced in agriculture at the end of the nineteenth century. The first uses are connected with the campaign against the gypsy moth in Massachusetts (Spear 2005). Soon it became the most popular of a new group of pesticides based on arsenic: Paris green, London purple, calcium arsenate, and lead arsenate. The new pesticides were conceived to combat the new insect plagues produced by the combination of the development of new agricultural ecosystems (particularly, large extension monocultures), extended national and global food markets, and new industrial transport systems. These three circumstances favored the diffusion of insects previously isolated in certain areas and encouraged the development of new methods of pest control. Not only at farms but also at homes, insects were more and more regarded as frightening menaces to be removed, even more so when new discoveries in early twentieth-​ century microbiology offered further evidence of their role as disease carriers. Methods of pest control varied and were based on changes in cultural methods, manual pick-​up of insects and larvae, biological control (i.e., the use of natural depredators of plagues), and pesticides. While the early pesticides were mostly based on vegetal extracts (hellebore, pyrethrum, tobacco, etc.), new inorganic mixtures entered the market in the second half of the nineteenth century, copper sulfates and arsenates being the most important ones. The various methods of pest control coexisted during the first third of the twentieth century, but pesticide usage increased thanks to a varied array of circumstances, including the development of the chemical industry and spray equipment from manual dusters to bucket pumps and sprayers in cars, tractors, and, later on, in airplanes (Whorton 1974, 3–​34; Palladino 1996, 80–​97; Cook 1999; McWilliams 2008a, 82–​100). How pesticides became the favored twentieth-​ century way to deal with pests is still open to further research. The views of some influent entomologists and agricultural engineers, who prompted the use of

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  37 pesticides over other forms of pest control, were also relevant, particularly in the case of key actors such as Leland O. Howard, who was at the top of the US Bureau of Entomology. He encouraged the use of lead arsenate at the international level thanks to his large network, travels, and meetings (Howard 1930; McWilliams 2008b). At the same time, many authors remarked the dangers of pesticides such as lead arsenates for humans and animals, while pointing out their limited role in pest control. The use of the new pesticides stirred up fierce controversies among farmers, physicians, and entomologists concerning their effectiveness, hazards, and long-​term risks for farmworkers and consumers. For instance, in France, a debate took place at the medical academies along with the introduction of the new lead arsenates which challenged the nineteenth-​century regulations limiting the uses of arsenic products in agriculture. Several serious accidents related to food (fruits) and drink poisoning attracted public attention while creating commercial tensions among countries, which encouraged the introduction of the first attempts to control the maximum amounts of toxic products in food and drinks (Whorton 1974, 22–​34; Copping 2009; Fourche, 2017; Suay-​Matallana and Guillem-​Llobat 2018). In Spain, the new arsenical pesticides entered the scene in agriculture production and forest management and in the fight against disease vectors (mosquitos Anopheles carrying pathogens of malaria). It involved a large group of experts from entomologists to public health doctors and agriculture and forest engineers, who performed experimental research and small-​scale field essays, thus paving the way for large anti-​pest campaigns. One can find references to arsenates and other pesticides in agronomic literature addressed to farmers in the early 1900s, but the circulating information was mostly about other countries –​for instance, France, including the debate on the banning of arsenates in agriculture (Fourche 2004). In other cases, journalists expressed their concerns regarding the problems caused by arsenical pesticides on bees (Anonymous 1900; “Agricultura” 1910).4 Before being intensively used in agriculture, arsenical pesticides were first tested in experimental farms. As early as 1909, Jaume Nonell Comas, a Catalan agricultural engineer who ran the agronomic service in Barcelona, explored the uses of arsenates against grapevine pests (Altica ampelophaga). Different types of arsenates were also applied in the 1910s against pests in olive trees. Also in the Catalan area, another agricultural engineer, Isidor Aguiló, explored new products against the olive fruit fly at the Tortosa experimental field station. He refined the method developed by the Italian entomologist Antonio Berlese, who was the director of the Florence station, using bait sprays and cotton threads made of molasses, honey, and potassium arsenate. He even commercialized a new pesticide (“Mata-​Dacus”, i.e., “olive fly killer”) improving its effectiveness, persistence, and adherence to the trees. He presented its virtues in his reports describing his experiments at the experimental station (Aguiló 1926; Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019a).

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38 Bertomeu-Sánchez Agricultural engineers also helped to introduce the new lead arsenate pesticide by means of leaflets, papers, and courses during the 1920s. Reports on the virtues of lead arsenates became increasingly frequent in the agronomic literature as well as in publications addressed to farmers. The first reports, most of them written by agricultural engineers, included guidelines on methods, quantities, and alternative mixtures, as well as precautions for managing the toxic hazards. Agricultural engineers recommended several simple actions to avoid the increasing amount of dangerous pesticides, for instance, the use of special labels or even colorants to distinguish the pesticides from foodstuffs. He also offered guidelines for making and using the mixtures: machinery and workers’ hands had to be carefully cleaned, and toxic products had to be strictly separated from food, cattle, and children. During these first years, many agricultural engineers even recommended that only trained workers be allowed to prepare pesticides as dangerous as lead arsenate. In fact, special courses were created in the 1910s for training “capataces fumigadores” (fumigators). Although mostly focused on cyanide fumigations, these practical courses also included a general overview of pest control and presented instructions for spraying with arsenates (Guillem-​Llobat 2019). International meetings on pest control, such as the International Olive Fly Conference held in Madrid in 1923 also served to popularize the new chemical methods. The various techniques were discussed by agricultural engineers, who expressed contrasting views on the uses of arsenic compounds. Other methods for pest control, including biological control, were also mentioned and discussed, and the national regulations on the uses of arsenic compounds in agriculture were reviewed. The meeting was followed by other ones, thus reinforcing the international network of experts in pest control, which was enlarged during the next decades and played a substantial role in the adoption of the new pesticides. Spanish entomologists and agricultural engineers also traveled to other countries in order to learn how to use the new pesticides (Anonymous 1923; Conférence Internationale 1923). Apart from agricultural engineers, some influential politicians such as Enric Trènor Montesinos, who became the Conde de Montornés thanks to his marriage with a member of the Royal family, played a crucial role in the introduction of new pesticides. From a wealthy family with economic interests in intensive food production, the Conde de Montornés was trained in science at the university before traveling to England and Belgium in order to learn new methods in agriculture. He held important positions in the local and national administration and was elected member of the Spanish parliament. He participated in international meetings on agriculture and helped to organize visits of famous experts to Spain in order to encourage new pesticide methods, particularly cyanide fumigations. For instance, in the summer of 1910, he helped to organize the visit of Russel Sage Woglum, an expert in citrus pests who worked at the USDA Bureau

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  39 of Entomology and who supervised several experiments with cyanide tent fumigation in the South and East of the peninsular area (Howard 1930, 326–​329; Guillem-​Llobat 2019, 56–​ 57). The count developed large popularization campaigns by means of publications and talks. In one of these talks at the Madrid Society of Agriculture, he developed two key arguments employed in future years for the implementation of pesticide usage: the effectiveness as demonstrated by their usage in other countries or by field experiments performed by famous entomologists, and the economic profits generated from increased food production, which largely compensated the costs of pesticides (Anonymous 1910). Other famous experts in pest control also traveled to Spain and helped to introduce new techniques, machinery, and pesticides while reinforcing their connections to the emerging Spanish community of experts. In 1923, participants at the Madrid olive tree conference included other famous entomologists such as Paul Marchal, who pioneered biological methods for pest control in France and Leland O. Howard, one of the most famous supporters of pesticide usage in the US. Howard had already visited Madrid, where he had met members of the Phytopathological Station. During the 1923 olive conference, Howard had “a long talk” with “the veteran Ignacio Bolivar and his son, Cándido Bolivar”, as well as with Ricardo García Mercet. He acknowledged that these authors “had done, and were doing, admirable work with certain groups of parasites” (Howard 1933, 207–​209). These naturalists, who had strong ties with the National Museum of Natural History, played a major role in the emergence of Spanish entomology, which was gaining momentum during the 1920s, and they organized an important international meeting in Madrid in 1935 (Gomis Blanco 2014; Albaladejo et al. 2016; Albaladejo and Sanchiz 2017). Apart from agricultural engineers and entomologists, forest engineers represented another relevant group interested in pest control. With its roots in the previous decade, the new Office for Forest Pest Control (Servicio de Estudio y Extinción de Plagas Forestales) was created in the early 1920s under the leadership of the forest engineer Manuel Aulló Costilla. Forest engineers had made abundant use of lead arsenate in the campaigns against the gypsy moth in southern Spain. Trained as an entomologist, Aulló started to work on pest control in the early 1910s. He was well versed in recent developments in pest control in the US, including both chemical and biological methods, but he relied heavily on lead arsenate during the forest pest campaigns. Thanks to the work of mediators like Ceballos, who was not only a professor at the Forest School but also had research interests in general entomology, in the 1930s, the Forest Office came into contact with the group of entomologists working  at  the  National  Museum of Natural History in Madrid, including Bolívar and García Mercet. Like the entomological section at the museum, the office was abolished at the beginning of the Civil War, and during the 1940s, most of its responsibilities were transferred to the

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40 Bertomeu-Sánchez new Institute of Entomology and other centers (Gomis Blanco 2014; Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019a). The other area in which arsenates were used widely in Spain was the campaign against malaria in the 1920s. A special commission (Comisión Central Anti-​Palúdica) was created, and several methods were explored, including the use of oils and arsenates (Paris green) against mosquitos. Experiments were performed in controlled fields, and the results were reported by epidemiologists and parasitologists. The use of Paris green in malaria control was limited due to its high cost; in fact, spraying was suspended in many areas affected by mosquitoes in the early 1930s and was finally canceled during the years of the Civil War (Rodríguez Ocaña 2003). Thus, the arrival of lead arsenate in Spain took place two decades after its first uses in the US and Canada, along with its increasing presence in other European countries such as France. Its usage was promoted by agricultural and forest engineers as well as some politicians and members of the government. It was employed during the 1920s and 1930s in crops (grapes, olives, apples etc.), forest pests (such as the gypsy moth), and public health campaigns (against insect vectors of human diseases). The use of pesticides coexisted with other forms of pest control, particularly with different forms of biological control, which were also developed in experimental farm stations, thanks to the collaboration between agricultural engineers and entomologists.

Colorado Beetles, Autarky, and Fascism Colorado potato beetles, along with the gypsy moths, were the most important pests related to the circulation of lead arsenate. The bug moved eastward from the Rocky Mountains to the East coast during the late nineteenth century and reached Europe (England, France, Germany, etc.) at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Spain, as in many other countries, several regulations were implemented in order to avoid importing potatoes from America and other infected countries as early as in 1875. In spite of the drastic measures taken (burned fields, pesticides, control of exports, zones of defense, and quarantine), the plague spread to France during the late 1920s and reached the German borders and the Pyrenees in the 1930s, alarming the European agronomic authorities (Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019a). The first case was detected in Maçanet de Cabrenys (northern Catalonia, near the Pyrenees) during the summer of 1935. Drastic steps were taken: the area was isolated, the potato harvest was destroyed, and all the surrounding area (forty kilometers) was treated with arsenic pesticides. This first episode was successfully contained, but the frustrated military coup against the democratic government in July 1936, which unleashed the Spanish Civil War, dramatically reduced the resources for controlling the pest. Potato beetles also appeared in northern Spain but

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  41 were not reported by farmers, either because they did not recognize the insect or because they were afraid of the consequences of informing the authorities –​namely, the destruction of their harvests and the burning of the surrounding areas (Alfaro Moreno 1941). Potatoes were the second most important crop (after wheat) in the years before the Civil War, so the pest was particularly threatening in the early 1940s, the years marked by political terror and famine. The challenge reinforced the intensive use of pesticides promoted by agricultural engineers in previous decades. New services for pest control were created, including a particular office for dealing with Colorado beetles under the supervision of the agricultural engineer Agustín Alfaro Moreno. He coordinated an extended network of provincial Agriculture Offices (“jefaturas agronómica”) and Laboratories of Phytopathology (in some provinces), which were set up in the previous decades. In each province, at the top of the agriculture office, an agricultural engineer was in charge of coordinating the campaigns against the Colorado beetle. The campaign included many propaganda activities addressed to the farmers: talks, practical courses, leaflets, articles in newspapers, radio broadcasting, and even documentary films. Agricultural engineers also established a service of surveillance for detecting new pest outbreaks with the help of local police and the new Francoist agrarian organizations. They also handled the acquisition of arsenical compounds and spraying equipment, which were distributed for free (or at low prices) to the farmers in order to encourage further investment in these products. The war against Colorado beetles was portrayed as a survival campaign for the Nation. Disciplining antimodernist/​antipatriotic farmers with new technoscientific practices was a national duty to protect the food supply during the famine years while encouraging the development of local Spanish industry. Reluctant peasants risked having their crops confiscated or even being put in prison (Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2020a). The regular supply of agrochemicals was crucial for these campaigns against both Colorado beetles and political resistance in the rural areas. WWII choked off the supply of pesticides, not only arsenates but also cupric sulfate, which was crucial for the making of “Bordeaux mixture” (the main fungicide in grapes), and sodium cyanide (employed in fumigations of citric trees). Arsenic products, which were regarded by agricultural engineers as the main tool for fighting the Colorado beetle, were also affected. According to an official report, just 115 tons of lead arsenate were imported in the years 1941–​1942 and a similar quantity of all the other arsenates (Paris green, sodium arsenate, etc.). The author remarked that the potato beetle pest had produced an “unexpected” demand for arsenates. The early Francoist government attempted to keep the imports while encouraging national production, which was just “starting and developing” at the beginning of the 1940s (“Importaciones” 1942). During the next years, the consumption increased between six or seven times (until 3,000–​3,500 tons per year) from the quantities employed in the 1930s (500 tons) (Dirección General de Agricultura 1954, 111–​113).

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42 Bertomeu-Sánchez While raw materials such as cyanide or cupric sulfate could not be obtained in the Iberian Peninsula, the arsenic mines in the North provided an underused resource for the development of the Francoist autarky policies. This opportunity was highlighted in a report written by the mining engineer Antonio Comba y Sigüenza. He was an outstanding member of the Fascist Nationalsyndicalist Organization, and he also prepared other reports on the Spanish mining resources during those years. He remarked the increasing extraction of arsenical minerals, particularly in the area of Galicia, the “Spanish arsenical province” for its mines of arsenopyrite and an emerging arsenical industry (notably in Teixeiro). Lead was one of the main mineral resources in Spain, so the national production of lead arsenate was assured (Comba y Siguenza 1942). In this way, arsenic pesticides became a convenient sociomaterial product for the development of early Francoist autarky policies. It is worth noting that these policies were not the only answer to the undesired critical economic situation created by the crisis of international commerce. Like in other similar contexts, autarky policies were considered as crucial for the new authoritarian state which was in the making during the early 1940s (Saraiva and Wise 2010; Saraiva 2016). They were presented as political goals for the new regime. Many Francoist politicians claimed that self-​sufficiency required a centralized authoritarian regime, which could impose more effective practices in agriculture, the intensive exploitation of natural resources, and the development of national industry. The engineer Antonio Robert, who penned one of the most influential texts on autarkic policies, described autarky as “the subordination of economic development to the political requirements”, thus making nations independent from external imports. Relying on examples from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, he claimed that an accelerated industrialization was required, particularly in areas related to basic products and military needs. One of these industries, which Robert wanted to be developed in Spain as fast as possible, was agrochemicals, particularly nitrogen fertilizers (Robert 1943, 126–​131; Gómez Mendoza 2000, 85–​99). In this context, the mobilization of experts, such as mining, forest, and agricultural engineers, was crucial. They offered resources for legitimating the policies of state intervention in these areas while providing expert advice for the development of the Francoist projects in public works, water supply, mining, industry, and agriculture. In return, engineers gained public authority, academic positions, laboratory resources, and, not the least, great capacity of influence in Francoist policies, so they could develop part of their modernizing dreams in crucial areas (Néstor and Roqué 2013; Swyngedouw 2015; Camprubí Bueno 2017; Gorostiza 2017).

The National Register of Pesticides While promoting the search for natural products, the increasing demand for pesticides created a growing circulation of bad-​quality, adulterated,

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  43 or fraudulent products, lacking of insecticide effects and sometimes being harmful for plants. In the previous decades, this issue had been regarded by agricultural engineers as a major source of peasants’ reluctant view on pesticides. They supported the quality control of these products and advocated for regulations similar to those introduced in the US during the early twentieth century. Reviewing the problem at the end of the 1920s, the agricultural engineer José del Cañizo remarked that many commercial arsenical pesticides were deficient in terms of adherence, insecticide power, active ingredients, and soluble salts which were harmful for plants. He recommended taking into account the quality and composition of the pesticide products before making the mixtures in the due doses and applying them in the farms. He remarked similar problems for the other major pesticides (nicotine, copper sulfate, etc.) and recommended that farmers buy just “well-​known products” instead of “secret compositions” with “capricious names”, which were barely efficient and “always more expensive” (Cañizo 1929; Herce 1934). In Spain, at the request of agricultural engineers, several minor norms were implemented in the 1920s and 1930s, but the most important ones were introduced in the early years of the Francoist regime (Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019a). In 1940, just after the end of the Civil War, the Service for Pest Control was reorganized. A new office centralized the different provincial agronomic departments, the centers for agronomic research, and experimental field stations. It was also in charge of supervising pest campaigns, including the control and survey of the production and commerce of insecticides (Anonymous 1940). Two years later, the National Register for Phytosanitary Products was created, almost at the same time as a similar service in Vichy France. Like in the French service, workers’ safety, public health, and environmental issues were absent and always subordinate to agriculture production and the industrial development (Jas 2007, 375–​ 377). The register was aimed to guarantee the quality of pesticides, that is, their deleterious virtues on bugs and their harmless effects for plants. No information was required regarding risks for cattle, farmers, or food consumers. The government aimed to encourage national production (a separate procedure was created for imported pesticides) as well as to prevent the trading of adulterated products and fakes (BOE 23 October 1942). A large number of applications for trading pesticides were sent during the first months of 1943. By the early 1950s, around 1,000 pesticides produced by Spanish industry had been submitted, while just 100 from foreign industries (Dirección General de Agricultura 1953). The applications frequently highlighted that the pesticides were made just of “national products”. Foreign industries were included in a separate register with stricter requirements. Samples of the pesticides, along with description of the industry, were sent to the Provincial Agriculture Offices, whose directors wrote a preliminary report with a particular focus on the activities of the producers and their capacity for making large amounts of pesticides. The product was sent for analysis to the laboratory run by Miguel Benlloch, head of the Madrid Phytopatological

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44 Bertomeu-Sánchez Station. He reported the effects of the pesticide, the existence of similar products (thus avoiding reselling), and the absence of damaging effects for the plants. More than 900 products were analyzed between 1943 and 1950 by Benlloch (1951). The number of the rejected proposals was high: around 28 percent of the submitted proposals were rejected during the first decade. Around 600 pesticides were admitted by the end of 1952, while 100 more (most of them foreign products) were “provisionally accepted” (Dirección General de Agricultura 1953, 4–​5). During the first years, most of the registered pesticides were insecticides, most of them based on arsenical compounds (lead and calcium arsenate). After 1945, an increasing number of organochlorine products were registered, around two thirds of them made of different mixtures of DDT. Other pesticides such hexaclorohexane and lindane also played a substantial role in subsequent years. By the middle of the 1950s, organochlorine compounds were the biggest group of registered pesticides (around one third of all insecticides in 1952), almost twice the number of the arsenate compounds (less than 20 percent). The other important group of insecticides was mineral oils (25 percent) and products of vegetal origin (mostly from nicotine) (15 percent). Apart from insecticides, the other important group in the register was the fungicides made of copper salts (Bordeaux mixture) or sulfur (Dirección General de Agricultura 1953).

Early Pesticide Industry Proposals for pesticide registration were presented by different chemical, pharmaceutical, and agrochemical industries in 1943. In the years previous to the Civil War, the distribution of pesticides was undertaken by commercial businesses or industries selling or manufacturing other products, just some of them related to agroindustries (fertilizers). In many cases, they were just importers of pesticides produced in Italy or Germany. With the new National Registers of Pesticides, the Spanish government attempted to limit the number of retailers and importers while encouraging national production. An example of the group of small producers was Andreu Dalmau Ribas. He was the owner of “Comercial Whitt” in Girona and was very well known in the area as seller of rodenticides and home insecticides from the 1920s. After the Civil War, he started to manufacture agricultural insecticides and fungicides (for instance, the Bordeaux mixture) and affirmed in 1943 to being able to produce 100 tons of lead and calcium arsenates from national raw products.5 Another example is Pedro Mataix Hellin, a small producer of lead arsenate in Alicante in mid-​1940s.6 One of the most important agrochemical industries was “Productos Químicos Penta”, which was set up in Madrid in 1928. Among other agrochemical products, they sold sprayers and arsenical pesticides, most of them imported from Germany, the UK, and the US.7 An agricultural engineer, Francisco Alférez Cañete, acted as manager. In the 1940s, the

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  45 society established branches in many villages all over the Castilian area and started to produce their own arsenates. Many of their products (also including nicotine, sulfur, and copper pesticides) were accepted in the official register thanks to help of agricultural engineers such as Santiago Cibrián Miegimolle, who prepared the proposals during the first months of 1943. Later on, he developed his career in the agricultural administration of the Francoist regime.8 Outstanding chemists, with good connections to the Francoist regime, also attempted to profit from the increasing demand for pesticides during the 1940s. Luis Blas Alvárez, who was a professor of chemistry, established his own pharmaceutical laboratory in Madrid after having collaborated as expert on chemical war with the Francoist army. He enlarged the production with new pesticides and started to produce a pesticide similar to another one produced by the German industry Schering. Blas published one of the most popular books supporting pesticide usage, which was reprinted several times during the 1950s.9 Other proposals were submitted by groups related to the pharmaceutical industry, in most cases with connections to the Francoist regime. One of the biggest producers was the “Sociedad Española de Industrias Químicas y Farmacéuticas LLOFAR”, which established an industry of arsenates in Teixeiro (La Coruña), in 1941, near the mines of arsenic in the Galician area, with the help of their subsidiary specialized in arsenic mining, the “Sociedades Arsenicales Reunidas S.A.” (Comba y Siguenza 1942, 164). They soon produced 3 tons of arsenates per day. At the end of 1946, they claimed to have produced around 6,000 tons in total (around a third of the Spanish consumption). Therefore, they proudly affirmed having provided the “the most necessary chemicals to industry and the most important pharmaceutical drugs”, always using “purely national raw materials”.10 Following the political guidelines, LLOFAR adopted the rhetoric of autarky so common in the pharmaceutical industries during the 1940s (Nozal 2017). Many of the advertisements in newspapers or agronomic journals referred to the usage of “national raw materials”, so mobilizing patriotic feelings in tune with the new Francoist regime. Advertisements also mentioned the controlled quality of the products, advising farmers not to use “low-​quality arsenates” which could “burn their crops” (Anonymous 1943). Familiar pharmaceutical businesses and individual apothecaries were also part of the first arsenate producers of arsenates. One of the first proposals submitted to the National Register was signed by José Daunis Montada. Trained in chemistry and pharmacy, and having fought with the Francoist army in the Civil War, he established a chemical industry in Sant Vicenç dels Horts (near Barcelona), a small village in which he became appointed mayor in the late 1940s. He affirmed to produce calcium and lead arsenate with “completely national” raw materials, and in February 1943, he claimed to be able to produce 10 tons per month of lead arsenate.11 These perhaps too optimistic, claims were relevant

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46 Bertomeu-Sánchez because the authorities wanted to avoid reselling and many apothecaries saw the proposals rejected. One example is the apothecary Máximo Ancín, who affirmed to have been producing lead arsenate in his old apothecary in Lizarra (Navarra) since 1942. His proposal was rejected due to the report of the agricultural engineer who crossed out his name and added “reseller”.12 After 1945, an increasing number of organochlorine products were registered, most of them made of different mixtures of DDT. By the middle of 1950s, organochlorine compounds were the most important group along with mineral oils, vegetal extracts (mostly from nicotine), and fungicides such as Bordeaux mixture. New industries emerged in this context, in many cases associated with pharmaceutical companies. One of them was Zeltia, which was also one of the first companies advertising DDT in journals. Another pioneering producer was also a pharmaceutical company: the Fábrica Española de Productos Químicos y Farmacéuticos in Bilbao, which produced “Detano”, a mixture which was presented as the “true and real DDT”, obtained according to its own method.13 Other important companies producing DDT in the mid-​1940s were Sociedad Anónima Cros, a producer of fertilizers and connected in previous years to the German Company IG Farben, and Cruz Verde, an industry based in Barcelona area which manufactured and sold a broad range of pesticides for agriculture and domestic uses. Many other early producers of DDT were small local firms such as José Escorihuela Perelló, Francisco Villanova Ibañez, and José Ramón Rivelles Talón, most probably small retailers of agrochemicals in Valencia area (Pérez Criado and Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2021). Other important organochlorine pesticides produced in Spain at the end of the 1940s were hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) and its gamma-​ isomer (lindane). HCH was described in Francoist chemical publications as the “Spanish insecticide”, being his discovery attributed to Juan Gomeza, a pharmaceutical chemist working at the Insecticidas Cóndor SA, one of the main producers of pesticides in the 1940s. The company also enrolled Juan Gil Collado, one of the leading entomologists from the previous years. They established their laboratory in Bilbao and obtained good terms with other European producers, for instance, the French company Pechiney-​Progil and the Swiss industry Doctor R. Maag, both involved in the production of organochlorine pesticides in the 1940s (Andrés Turrión 2018, 2019). An agreement with Spanish companies was a convenient way for foreign industries to have their products in the Spanish market. The number of foreign industries which could register their pesticides in the 1940s was small for the above-​ mentioned reasons. The National Register encouraged national products and organized a separated procedure for foreign companies. However, some important foreign companies managed to introduce their products in Spain, even during the early 1940s. The German company Schering submitted several proposals for arsenic and

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  47 organochlorine pesticides in mid-​1940s.14 Geigy industries, the first producer of DDT (Straumann 2005), managed to establish a branch office (Irga) in Barcelona and obtained the first authorization to sell “Gesarol”, the DDT mixture intended for agriculture. It was followed by other products conceived for other uses (anti-​parasites, cattle, and molesting insects). A large number of advertisements on these foreign products were published after mid-​1945 in local and national newspapers and in magazines addressed to farmers and presented as the “real” insecticide made by the discoverers (Pérez Criado and Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2021).

Agnotology and Undone Science The previous examples offer hints about the early pesticide industry in Spain which emerged in the 1940s. The restrictions to foreign companies favored the emergence of local pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies with a reduced number of employees, including some chemists, agricultural engineers, or entomologists in some cases. Some of these companies grew during the following decades and turned into important pesticide makers in Spain during the 1960s. During their first years, they coexisted with a large number of small producers and retailers whose activity was less persistent and many of them disappeared over the next years. For this last group, and the bigger companies, having good political connections was crucial. When they submitted their products for registration, a report was written by the agricultural engineer at the front of the “Jefatura Agronómica”, that is, the engineer who organized the pest control campaigns in connection with political authorities. The reports usually included information regarding political views. In fact, many small producers became local political figures, as the previous examples showed. How licenses were granted is difficult to say, but the available information seems to suggest that under-​the-​table practices were common, even if different from those described by van den Bosch. Pablo Corral reviewed many of these practices regarding the management of medioambiental problems during the Francoist regime. Litigations started by victims, municipalities, or public health officers were easily mitigated, delayed, or canceled thanks to the behind-​the-​scenes barriers imposed by political authorities (particularly the provincial “Governadores Civiles”). In other cases, expert committees, largely dominated by “engineers of doubt” who adopted several strategies for rejecting the demands, with the complacence, if not the help, of the chemical industry and the Francoist authorities. The disparate and inconsistent regulations, involving different governmental offices, also played their role. When needed, low fees, public inaction, or even executive pardons ended the litigations, frequently in very unsatisfactory terms for the victims (Corral Broto 2014, 2018). In this highly corrupted scenario, it is likely that the new register of Phytosanitary products reinforced the ties between the emerging Spanish

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48 Bertomeu-Sánchez pesticide industry and the Francoist regime before the advent DDT. Moreover, the register provided further authority to agricultural engineers in pesticide quality control and pest management. By the beginning of the 1950s, Miguel Benlloch reviewed the emergence of the Spanish pesticide industry in a talk delivered to his colleagues and many influential Francoist politicians at the First National Meeting of the Agronomic Engineering Association. He pointed out the dramatic growth in the use of agrochemicals during the late decade thanks to the role of the Spanish industry, which he praised for having so successfully dealt with the dreadful moments of scarcity after the Civil War and the crisis of agrochemical imports. He recalled that the industry, with the help of political authorities, could “intensify and increase the production of arsenates, to the extent that self-​sufficiency was reached”. While acknowledging that some crucial products (copper sulfates, nicotine, cyanide, etc.) still depended on international commerce, he foresaw that the new Spanish industry of organochlorine pesticides would soon solve the problem of pest control in Spanish agriculture (Congreso 1950, 38–​43; Barciela López and Ortiz 2013). Apart from promoting pesticide usage and the emergence of the Spanish industry, the National Register also encouraged research on pesticide quality control (Ruiz Castro 1942; Herce 1943, 1945). Many agricultural engineers undertook research on chemical tests which could be employed for that matter. Thanks to the connections between agricultural engineers and Francoist authorities, their results were soon transformed into decision making and new regulations in November 1946 (BOE 7 December 1946). Pesticide producers were requested to present further details regarding the chemical composition of their products in order to confirm their licenses.15 Due to their chemical features, the new organochlorine pesticides posed additional challenges to quality control, and new research on analytical techniques was performed under the supervision of agronomic engineers with the support of political authorities, always worried about the potential frauds and adulterations (Herce 1954). In sharp contrast with these developments in pesticide quality control, problems related to health hazards remained silenced and were marked by the lack of both research and regulatory activity. Those who wanted to visibilize the health hazards of pesticides faced serious difficulties for captivating the attention of decision makers (Henry 2017, 79–​ 123). Not until massive accidents took place, were some minor regulations introduced. Food poisoning accidents involved new groups of victims (food consumers) and experts (public health doctors). In contrast with agricultural engineers, whose research was easily transformed into regulations, public health doctors were in the early 1940s a small community focused on campaigns on infectious diseases such as malaria or typhus, in which pesticides also played an important role. The Civil War ruined the promising developments in the 1930s concerning social medicine, hygiene measures, occupational diseases, and sanitary

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  49 administration. Political repression affected the medical community very tragically and many left-​wing doctors were killed, exiled, or marginalized by the new Francoist regime. One of the most dramatic poisoning incidents took place in the small village of Pradoluengo (Burgos) during the summer of 1946. It affected more than 200 people, at least one of them passed away while other victims experienced acute neuropathic damage, involving sensory and motor deficits for life. A detailed report was written by Ignacio López Saiz, a psychiatrist, who described the neurological damage produced by arsenic pesticides, while reviewing the international literature on the hazards of chronic exposure and the risks of accidents. He recommended very simple measures to the Spanish Public Health Council to avoid future similar accidents (López Saiz 1947; Gómez López 2009). Just some minor regulations concerning arsenic products were published at the end of 1946: lead arsenate could not be sold anymore in grocery stores, containers had to be labeled with big read letters (“very poisonous sack”), and they could no longer be used for storing foodstuffs anymore (BOE 7 December 1946). Other costless measures suggested by doctor López Saiz, which were part of the regulations in other European countries, were never enforced, for instance, placing lead arsenate under the control of pharmaceutical institutions and “denaturalizing” (with coloring or fragrant matters) lead arsenate in order to avoid confusion with foodstuffs (López Saiz 1947, 37). In the case of organochloride pesticides, some additional regulations were introduced at the end of the 1940s. Being products employed in houses and hospitals, they were included in the register of pharmaceutical drugs, so their quality was under the control of the pharmaceutical inspectors, and they were required to be sold in apothecaries. While medical control was adopted, the main concern was again quality control in terms of their insecticide virtues (BOE 13 May 1947). With just these minor norms limiting the circulation of dangerous pesticides, the problem of their presence in foodstuffs was also neglected by the Francoist authorities. The issue was well known to agricultural engineers, food analysts, and doctors. Information regarding famous cases (such as arsenical beer in Manchester or arsenic-​laced apples in California) had circulated in academic and popular publications during the first third of the twentieth century. Moreover, the issue had been brought to the fore in the early 1930s due to a high-​profile poisoning affair which took place in France, apparently caused by Spanish wine containing arsenic. As the commercial interest was so important, a large group of French and Spanish experts participated in the controversy regarding the risks of arsenical compounds in viticulture, ranging from total prohibition to restricted use in controlled conditions (Suay-​ Matallana and Guillem-​Llobat 2018). No regulations were introduced at that time, neither in the subsequent years, even after the regulations on food safety were introduced in the US and other countries before the

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50 Bertomeu-Sánchez WWII. In Spain, similar regulations were never implemented before the 1960s. Further developments were introduced in many cases due to the push of international and European laws (Alonso-​Allende Yohn 1977). Therefore, even if a large amount of toxicological knowledge was available, regulations on the commerce of pesticides and the control of their presence in food were barely enforced before the 1960s. The situation was even worse in the case of health hazards for farmers. In her famous book, Rachel Carson remarked that “anyone who has watched the dusters and sprayers of arsenical pesticides at work must have been impressed by the almost supreme carelessness with the poisonous substances are dispensed” (1962, 18). These worries certainly apply to the case at stake. Apart from the questions reviewed in this chapter, two additional issues contributed to invisibilization and non-​decision making: the defective nature of occupational safety regulations (particularly in agriculture) and the “undone science” (Frickel 2004, 2014) on the effects of long-​term low-​dose exposure to pesticides. Spanish doctors in the 1930s acknowledged that, like in the industry, occupational safety regulations were focused on physical, violent, sudden, accidents and were ill-​conceived for long-​term workplace hazards such as chronic intoxications. Therefore, while acute poisoning cases were sometimes reported, the effects of chronic poisoning were hardly taken into account. In fact, the connections between lead arsenate exposure and hazards for peasants’ health remained ill-​defined until the 1980s, when it was recognized in the new Spanish regulations on occupational safety. While the issue of food poisoning was recognized by agricultural engineers in the mid-​1950s, it is somehow surprising that the hazards of arsenical pesticides were neglected for farmers. By the middle of the 1960s, a famous agricultural engineer acknowledged that the main problems were not acute poisoning accidents (which he regarded as insignificant in statistical terms), but the “slow, insidious” poisoning caused by the accumulation in human bodies of small quantities of pesticides. “This kind of long-​term toxicity”, he affirmed, was “so barely studied and, therefore, so difficult to prevent”. This was the real concern for Aurelio Ruiz Castro, one of the agricultural engineers who worked on developing chemical tests for arsenical pesticides quality control during the 1940s. Twenty years later, he reviewed the most recent literature on the hazards of pesticides, with an eye on Carson’s Silent Spring. Ruiz Castro was concerned with the problem of chronic poisoning for food consumers. He highlighted the toxic hazards emerging from the existence of pesticides in “the food we ate everyday”, but he did not include any reference to the similar, even more insidious and long-​term, chronic poisoning affecting farmers and sprayers (Ruiz Castro 1966).

Conclusion The making of the Spanish pesticide industry during the early years of the Francoist regime was marked by striking inequalities in the production

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  51 of knowledge and ignorance concerning the manufacture, usage, quality, and risks of pesticides. The resources invested in pesticide quality control and the regulation of the pesticide industry sharply contrast with the practices of agnotology and non-​decision making regarding health hazards to peasants or food poisoning to consumers. In this chapter, I have shown that this contrasted situation was in tune with the needs of the emerging pesticide industry, the fascist politics of autarky, and the modernizing program of agricultural engineers. This chapter also shows that the path to the pesticide treadmill in Spain cannot be described in terms of the narrative of the “pesticide conspiracy” adopted by van den Bosch in his famous book. My review suggests that nepotism, political ties, and vested interested played a substantial role, particularly in the early days of pesticide industry. However, no “corruption thesis” nor “pesticide mafia” is needed to explain the accelerated introduction of pesticides in Spanish agriculture during the 1940s. Fascist politicians, industry managers, and agricultural engineers worked hand to hand around a constellation of converging goals: social control, self-​sufficiency, and agriculture modernization. In contrast with the lack of interest in peasants’ bodies, the effects of pesticides on crops and insects were thoroughly studied by agricultural engineers. They could enjoy the facilities offered by the new Francoist state in terms of laboratory resources, permanent positions, and support for their campaigns. While enjoying these advantages for their projects of chemical pest control, agricultural engineers helped to consolidate the new Francoist regime by providing technological solutions to the food crisis and connecting agriculture and industry by means of national raw materials in the times of autarky. These circumstances allowed the coproduction of the Spanish pesticide treadmill and the early Francoist regime thanks to the agency of arsenical pesticides, Colorado beetles, agricultural engineers, and fascist politicians. In this sense, pesticide spraying can be regarded as a form of slow and silenced violence (Nixon 2011) against farmers, somehow complementing other more conspicuous forms of political violence and social control in rural areas during the early years of the Francoist dictatorship. When invisibilized by agnotology practices, this form of slow violence is lasting (Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2020b). Those wanting to resist the toxic hazards faced serious difficulties in capturing the attention of experts, public opinion, and political authorities, particularly in authoritarian regimes such as Francoist Spain. While the brutality of political repression somehow decreased in the 1950s, people’s exposure to dangerous pesticides in rural areas remained and even increased during the next decades. Without research programs and decision making, the human costs of the accelerated introduction of pesticides in Spanish agriculture remained largely invisibilized, even when concerns regarding food poisoning or environmental hazards were brought to the fore during the 1960s. Moreover, activists and agrarian trade unions faced many difficulties in dealing with the problem after the end of the dictatorship, when

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52 Bertomeu-Sánchez the use of pesticides in Spanish agriculture dramatically rocked until becoming a leading country in pesticide consumption. While some clues can be found in the peculiarities discussed in this chapter, many other issues remain for future research, notably: the emergence of the organochlorine pesticide industry in the 1950s and the role of international commerce of agrochemicals during the Cold War years; the national and international environmental regulations implemented in the 1960s and the effects of the banning of DDT and other organic pesticides; and the emerging environmental activism in the 1960s and its relationship with consumer rights associations, agrarian trade unions, and the anti-​ Francoist movement.

Notes 1 In research on history of pesticides, see my review in Bertomeu-​Sánchez (2019b). For a recent review on history of toxic products see Bertomeu-​Sánchez (2021). This paper is part of the research project PID2019-​106743GB-​C21. 2 According to Eurostat (2020), Spain and France were the leading countries in using pesticides in 2014 accounting each one for around 19%–​20% of pesticide use in UE. 3 I have reviewed the documents gathered at the Archivo General de la Administración (AGA) in Alcalá de Henares, as well as the regulations published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado (hereafter BOE). 4 On bees and pesticides, see Suryanarayanan and Kleinman (2017) and Frøyen (2019). 5 AGA, Agricultura 61/​5846. 6 AGA, Agricultura 61/​5485. 7 Gaceta de Madrid, 1 March 1934 and 28 March 1936. 8 AGA, Agricultura 61/​6416. 9 Blas (1936, 1951). AGA, Agricultura, 61/​5485; BOE 2 February 1944, 588. 10 ABC, 19 September 1946, 6. 11 AGA, Agricultura 61/​6416. 12 AGA, Agricultura 61/​5846. 13 ABC, 3 June 1945, 36. 14 AGA, Agricultura 61/​9022. 15 AGA, Agricultura 61/​6416.

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54 Bertomeu-Sánchez Bosch, Robert van den. 1989. The Pesticide Conspiracy. University of California Press: Berkeley. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas, eds. 2014. Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World. Berghahn Books: New York. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas. 2019. Gouverner Un Monde Toxique. Quae: Paris. Camprubí Bueno, Lino. 2017. Los ingenieros de Franco: Ciencia, catolicismo y Guerra Fría en el Estado franquista. Editorial Crítica: Barcelona. Cañizo, José del. 1929. “Los insecticidas en agricultura. Reglamentación necesaria”. ABC, 3 August 1929. Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. Riverside Press Cambridge: Houghton. Comba y Siguenza, Antonio. 1942. Estudio sobre la posibilidad de fabricar en España los arseniatos necesarios para el consumo nacional. Gráficos Reunidos: Madrid. Conférence internationale de lutte contre la mouche de l’olive. 1923. Gráficas Reunidas: Madrid. Congreso Nacional de Ingeniería Agronómica. 1950. Asociación Nacional de Ingenieros Agronómos: Madrid. Cook, George M. 1999. “Spray, Spray, Spray! Insecticides and the Making of Applied Entomology in Canada, 1871–​1914”. Scientia Canadensis 22: 7–​50. Copping, Matthew. 2009. “Death in the Beer Glass: The Manchester Arsenic-​ in-​Beer Epidemic of 1900–​1 and the Long-​Term Poisoning of Beer”. Brewery History 132: 31–​57. Corral Broto, Pablo. 2014. Historia de los conflictos ambientales bajo la dictadura franquista de Aragón (1939–​1979). Ph.D. University of Granada. Corral Broto, Pablo. 2018. “Historia de la corrupción ambiental en España, 1939–​1979. ¿Franquismo o industrialización?” Hispania Nova 16: 646–​684. https://​doi.org/​10.20318/​hn.2018.4051. Davis, Frederick Rowe. 2019. “Pesticides and the Perils of Synecdoche in the History of Science and Environmental History”. History of Science 57(4): 469–​492. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​0073275319848964. Dirección General de Agricultura. 1953. Registro de Productos y Material Fitosanitario. Ministerio de Agricultura: Madrid. Dirección General de Agricultura. 1954. Los Servicios de Fitopatología y Plagas del Campo. Bosquejo de su actuación en el período 1939–​49. Ministerio de Agricultura: Madrid. Dunlap, Thomas R. 1981. DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy. Princeton University Press: Princeton. Eurostat. 2020. Agri-​ environmental Indicator –​Consumption of Pesticides. Accessed October 20, 2020. https://​ec.europa.eu/​eurostat/​statistics-​explained/​ index.php/​Agri-​environmental_​indicator_​-​_​consumption_​of_​pesticides. Fourche, Rémi. 2004. Contribution à l’histoire de la protection phytosanitaire dans l’agriculture française (1880–​1970). Université Lyon 2: Lyon. Accessed 20 October 2020. http://​theses.univ-​lyon2.fr/​documents/​lyon2/​2004/​fourche_​ r#p=1&a=TH.1. Fourche, Rémi. 2017. “Internationalisation des traitements arsenicaux: des doryphores américains aux abeilles françaises (1868–​ 1922)”. Histoire & Sociétés Rurales 47 (2): 137–​176. Frickel, Scott. 2004. Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick.

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  55 Frickel, Scott. 2014. “Not Here and Everywhere: The Non-​ Production of Scientific Knowledge”. In Handbook of Science, Technology, and Society, edited by Kleinman, Daniel and Kelly Moore, 263–​278. Routledge: London and New York. Frøyen, Anne Jorunn. 2019. “Influencing for Results: Bees, Beekeepers and Norwegian Pesticide Legislation”. HoST –​Journal of History of Science and Technology 13 (1): 28–​50. https://​doi.org/​10.2478/​host-​2019-​0002. Gómez López, José Manuel. 2009. “Intoxicación colectiva por arsénico en el Pradoluengo de la postguerra (1946)”. Boletín de la Institución Fernán González 88 (238): 35–​44. Gómez Mendoza, Antonio. 2000. De mitos y milagros: el Instituto Nacional de Autarquía, 1941–​1963. Universitat de Barcelona: Barcelona. Gomis Blanco, Alberto. 2014. “Mimbres para otro cesto: De la Sección de Entomología del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales al Instituto Español de Entomología”. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 108 (1–​4): 37–​47. Gorostiza, Santiago. 2017. Mobilising Nature between Democracy and Fascism. An Environmental History of the Spanish Civil War and the Legacies of the Francoist Autarky. University of Coimbra: Coimbra. Guillem-​Llobat, Ximo. 2019. “Following Hydrogen Cyanide in the Valencian Country (1907–​1933): Risk, Accidents and Standards in Fumigation”. HoST –​ Journal of History of Science and Technology 13 (1): 51–​75. https://​doi.org/​ 10.2478/​host-​2019-​0003. Guillem-​Llobat, Ximo, and Agustí Nieto-​Galan, eds. 2020. Tóxicos Invisibles. La construcción de la ignorancia ambiental. Icaria: Barcelona. Henry, Emmanuel. 2017. Ignorance scientifique et inaction publique: Les politiques de santé au travail. Presses de Sciences Po: Paris. Herce, Pedro. 1934. “El arsénico soluble de los insecticidas arsenicales”. Boletín de Patología Vegetal y Entomología Agrícola 7: 166–​172. Herce, Pedro. 1943. Condiciones que deben exigirse a los insecticidas arsenicales. Ministerio de Agricultura: Madrid. Herce, Pedro. 1945. Análisis de insecticidas. INIA: Madrid. Herce, Pedro. 1954. Análisis agrícola: Fundamentos y técnicas operatorias. Dossat, S.A.: Madrid. Howard, Leo O. 1930. A History of Applied Entomology: Somewhat Anecdotal. The Smithsonian Institution: Washington. Howard, Leo O. 1933. Fighting the Insects; the Story of an Entomologist, Telling of the Life and Experiences of the Writer. Macmillan: New York. “Importaciones de insecticidas durante el año agrícola 1941–​ 42”. 1942. Agricultura 11 (119): 116–​118. Jas, Nathalie. 2007. “Public Health and Pesticide Regulation in France before and after Silent Spring”. History and Technology 23 (4): 369–​388. https://​doi. org/​10.1080/​07341510701527435. López Saiz, Ignacio. 1947. “Intoxicacion arsenical colectiva”. El Siglo Médico 93 (115): 29–​37. Lyons, Kristina. 2018. “Chemical Warfare in Colombia, Evidentiary Ecologies and Senti-​Actuando Practices of Justice”. Social Studies of Science 48 (3): 414–​437. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​0306312718765375. McWilliams, James E. 2008a. American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT. Columbia University Press: New York.

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56 Bertomeu-Sánchez McWilliams, James E. 2008b. “‘The Horizon Opened Up Very Greatly’: Leland O. Howard and the Transition to Chemical Insecticides in the United States, 1894–​1927”. Agricultural History 82 (4): 468–​495. Morris, Peter. 2019. “A Tale of Two Nations: DDT in the United States and the United Kingdom”. In Hazardous Chemicals: Agents of Risk and Change, 1800–​2000, edited by Ernst Homburg and Elisabeth Vaupel, 294–​ 327. Berghahn Books: New York and Oxford. Néstor, Herran, and Xavier Roqué. 2013. “An Autarkic Science: Physics, Culture, and Power in Franco’s Spain”. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 43 (2): 202–​235. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​hsns.2013.43.2.202. Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. Nozal, Raúl Rodríguez. 2017. “La construcción de una industria farmacéutica autosuficiente en la España de la Autarquía: entre la necesidad, la utopía y la propaganda franquista”. Asclepio 69 (1): 173–​189. Palladino, Paolo. 1996. Entomology, Ecology, and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America, 1885–​ 1985: Harwood Academic Publishers: Amsterdam. Pérez Criado, Silvia, and José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez. 2021. “From Arsenic to DDT: Pesticides, Fascism and the Invisibility of Toxic Risks in the Early Years of Francoist Spain (1939–​1953)”. Culture & History 10 (1): e004. https://​doi. org/​10.3989/​chdj.2021.004. Perkins, John H. 1982. Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis: The Quest for New Pest Management Strategies. Plenum Press: New York. Robert, Antonio. 1943. Un problema nacional: La industrialización necesaria. Biblioteca de Estudios Económicos. Espasa-​Calpe: Madrid. Rodríguez Ocaña, Esteban, ed. 2003. La acción médico-​social contra el paludismo en la España metropolitana y colonial del siglo XX. CSIC: Madrid. Rothschild, Rachel Emma. 2016. “The Turn Toward Toxins: An Essay Review”. Endeavour 40 (2): 128–​130. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.endeavour.2016.03.004. Ruiz Castro, Aurelio. 1942. “Algunos casos dudosos en el análisis de insecticidas arsenicales”. Boletín de Patología Vegetal y Entomología Agrícola 11: 331–​338. Ruiz Castro, Aurelio. 1966. “Plaguicidas agrícolas: Toxicidad residual y salud pública”. Boletín de Patología Vegetal y Entomología Agrícola 29: 1–​32. Saraiva, Tiago. 2016. Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism. Inside Technology. MIT Press: Cambridge. Saraiva, Tiago, and M. Norton Wise. 2010. “Autarky/​Autarchy: Genetics, Food Production, and the Building of Fascism”. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40 (4): 419–​428. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​hsns.2010.40.4.419. Spear, Robert J. 2005. The Great Gypsy Moth War: The History of the First Campaign in Massachusetts to Eradicate the Gypsy Moth, 1890–​ 1901. University of Massachusetts Press: Boston. Straumann, Lukas. 2005. Nützliche Schädlinge: Angewandte Entomologie, Chemische Industrie und Landwirtschaftspolitik in der Schweiz 1874–​1952. Chronos: Zürich. Suay-​ Matallana, Ignacio, and Ximo Guillem-​ Llobat. 2018. “Poisoned Wine: Regulation, Chemical Analyses, and Spanish-​French Trade in the 1930s”. Ambix 65 (2): 99–​121. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​00026980.2018.1452838.

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Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry  57 Suryanarayanan, Sainath, and Daniel Lee Kleinman. 2017. Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health. Rutgers University Press: New York. Swyngedouw, Erik. 2015. Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-​ Modernities in Twentieth-​Century Spain. MIT Press: Cambridge. Whorton, James. 1974. Before Silent Spring: Pesticides and Public Health in pre-​ DDT America. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

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3  Corporate Systemic Ascendency Perspectives from the Pesticide Industry in Postwar France Nathalie Jas

The pesticide industry is among those industries that are both economically powerful and highly contested. Since the early twentieth century (Whorton 1974, 36–​67; Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2019), it has regularly been accused of producing, selling, and encouraging the use of products with harmful effects on health and the environment. Regardless, it has continuously developed and expanded its activities: six large transnational corporations formed a highly effective business association which dominates the global “crop protection product” market today. In 2019, the value of this global market was 84.5 billion dollars, and with an annual growth rate of 11.5%, it is expected to reach 130.7 billion dollars in 2023 (The Business Research Company 2020). Journalists, activists, and social and human science researchers have tried to understand the controversial expansion of this industry. A considerable body of work has demonstrated its many strategies for the adoption of regulations favoring its interests and orienting their implementation. Often documented in great detail, they describe the phenomena of intensive lobbying; collusion with governmental authorities and organizations responsible for pesticide regulation, agricultural research, or agricultural advice; the production of strongly biased evaluations of the hazards posed by products, to the point of concealing toxicity and downplaying risks; impunity; and arranging to discredit people or organizations identified as problematic (Bosch 1978; Bosso 1987; Rankin Bohme 2015; Gillam 2017; Jansen 2017). While this is a large body of work, the practices it identifies –​which some authors describe as a “conspiracy” (Bosch 1978) –​are not enough to explain how central pesticides have become to intensive agriculture. As Angus Wright (1990 [2005], xiv) stressed in his foundational book: to dwell on this [conspiracy theory] alone is to leave very important questions unanswered. […] For very large conspiracies to work over large geographical areas and for decades at a time, the conspiracy must be transformed into something else –​a belief system, a world view, a concept of proper professional behaviour, even a crusade. DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-4

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  59 In addition to Wright’s The Death of Ramón González (1990 [2005]), several bodies of work have exposed the processes through which multiple actors in various parts of the world and time periods were promoting pesticides and made them central to their practices. Some have analyzed the disciplinary and professional logics at work in agricultural science and technical expertise that led them to favor pesticides over other technologies for a wide range of situations (Perkins 1982; Palladino 1996; Bertomeu-​Sánchez, 2021). Others have been interested in how scientific and technical administrations responsible for managing pesticides’ health and environmental effects function and the rationales underlying their actions (Dunlap 1981; Sheail 1985; Jas 2007; Jouzel and Prete 2017). Some have highlighted the role of public policy in the development of a pesticide industry or pesticide use (Dunlap 1981; Bertomeu-​Sánchez 2021). Another set has focused on the technical and economic interdependence maintained by recourse to pesticides that makes it difficult to impossible to adopt alternatives (Guthman 2019). Lastly, some have demonstrated the much more structural dynamics in which intensive pesticide use is ensnared (Wright 1990 [2005]; De Silva et al. 2017). All this work contributes to revealing the complexity of pesticides’ success and how deeply they are embedded in agricultural production systems. However, by focusing on actors other than those of the industry, it rarely provides discussion of the actions that industry might take, targeting these actors so that they would incorporate pesticides into their practices to the point of largely reorganizing their activities around them. This question is crucial to understanding how pesticides become established in places and periods where they were not yet dominant or analyzing how the industry resists the challenges to which it is subjected. In other words, how does the pesticide industry participate in shaping a worldview (to use Wright’s term) in which pesticides appear to many actors as the most appropriate technical solution, despite their deleterious effects? What strategies does the industry employ to help embed this worldview in the professional practices of other actors in agriculture, so that they get involved in its promotion? The study of the French pesticide industry in the period from the end of World War II to the early 1960s helps to answer these questions. Indeed, although France had had a pesticide industry since the late nineteenth century, this industry only achieved a dominant role after the war. The reconstruction of the economy, devastated by war and the Occupation, and the political choice to rapidly intensify agriculture certainly fostered a favorable setting (Duby and Wallon 1975; Bonneuil and Thomas 2009), but it is insufficient to explain the rapid adoption of pesticides that occurred at that time. To do so we also have to examine the multiform and multidirectional work undertaken by some actors in the pesticide industry to transform it and establish it as a necessary partner and resource with an array of economic, scientific, technical, and governmental actors involved in the agricultural modernization process. This work took the form of

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60 Jas the establishment of several instruments fostering interactions between pesticide industry representatives and other actors, in which the former managed to leave a strong imprint on the latter. In so doing they worked to create what I term “corporate systemic ascendency”, which allows the industry to ubiquitously and pervasively intervene in many of the professional, scientific, technical, and governmental spaces of agricultural modernization. In what follows, I will firstly develop the concept of corporate systemic ascendency. I will then show that the French pesticide industry’s work to establish corporate systemic ascendency in the immediate postwar period relied on four major dynamics: the organization of the pesticide industry into an effective business association by some of its actors; the pathologization and medicalization of crops; the professionalization and increased technicity of crop protection; and establishing an ideological hold over actors of crop protection.

Corporate Systemic Ascendency The concept of corporate systemic ascendency is intended to account for the capacity of some industries to simultaneously penetrate multiple professional and social spaces to contribute to how they are shaped and become part of how they operate. It is based on the idea of “emprise” in French, a word without a simple equivalent in English that I have translated as “ascendency”. In everyday use, emprise means the intellectual or moral ascendency that someone may have over others or the influence of a phenomenon on a person. In these cases, it is usually translated as grip, hold, influence, ascendency, or power. But it is also a technical term, used in law to indicate the assumption of possession of private real estate holdings by governmental authorities and in geography to account for the spread of human activity over a given territory and the associated transformations of that space. It has also been developed as a concept in French psychoanalysis to indicate a particularly harmful form of power relationship that, when it succeeds, proves destructive for the person subjected to it, since it is intended to “bring the other to the function and status of an entirely assimilable object” (Dorey 1981, 144). This relationship of emprise is established surreptitiously by steps. It initially relies on mechanisms of seduction that gradually transform into mechanisms of domination, which are expressed in the appropriation and denaturing of the other and violence in situations where the other tries to break away. This conception of emprise has been adopted in political, economic, and journalistic spaces to describe certain phenomena of domination as being particularly pernicious (Fragnon 2018). The term emprise is also used in the French social sciences. In some cases, it means performativity of certain phenomena and their ability to give order to the world: this includes markets (Callon 2017), gender (Löwy 2006), and finance (Chambost et al. 2018). In other instances,

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  61 it is used to emphasize the ability of certain actors to act upon other actors, such as describing industrial corporation’s assumption of power over previously unrelated sectors (Raynaud, 1999) or that of an industry over governmental administrations (Boullier and Henry 2020). When research in the social and human sciences explains its use of the term emprise, it tends to focus on how it accounts for asymmetries of power between various actors and the performative presence of some actors, their products, and their interests –​a presence that is diffuse, multiform, difficult to pin down, and operates on a wide range of scales (Chambost et al. 2018; Boullier and Henri 2020). These elements have also been developed by Francis Chateauraynaud (2015) who formalized the concept of emprise in order to think about power and domination without resorting to critical sociology. He added two mutually dependent dimensions. Like other sociologists, he considers that power is the result of relations that, although they succeeded, might also have failed. Consequently, by using the images of a spider patiently weaving her web, he highlights the invisible or barely perceptible processual dimensions of an ascendency relationship that takes hold and grows in strength over time (Chateauraynaud 2015, 3). Taken together, these dimensions lead to denaturalizing ascendency and seeing it as a process that has a share of indetermination and requires time and significant social work from the person or the organization controlling it, not only to establish it but to maintain and strengthen it as well. The concept of corporate systemic ascendency that I have presented here connects the descriptive and theoretical uses of emprise found in French social and human sciences and takes up some aspects from its psychoanalytic usage. I use it to account for the power that corporate actors might acquire by approaching it from their ability to (re)order the world in such a way as to make it as favorable as possible to their interests. It stresses the fact that the power of corporate actors is expressed in ascendency relationships, which can become extremely imbalanced and spread across multiple actors and spaces at once to try to create a system and become as pervasive as possible. Relating to this, the ascendency relationships that corporate actors do manage to establish were not a foregone conclusion: it takes time to put them in place in a way that is nearly imperceptible to the targeted actors –​especially because all involved actors can benefit from these relations in the initial phases. Putting such relationships in place, like their maintenance, requires substantial social work from corporate actors. Lastly, the concept of corporate systemic ascendency is a call to consider the transformative character of corporate actors’ actions over other actors –​transformations affecting corporate actors themselves as well as their targeted actors –​and reflect on how this transformative character might not only occur to the benefit of the former but also to the detriment of the latter, ultimately with potentially negative effects. The implication of this hypothesis is that if we are to understand how corporate systemic ascendency is exerted, it cannot only be studied after

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62 Jas it has become established. We also have to identify the historical moments and social spaces that may have been particularly decisive in its development. It has to be historicized and situated, therefore studied well before corporate actors had acquired visible and massive power. Reaching these ascendency relationships of the past that unavoidably contain elusive components can prove to be arduous, all the more so as it entails having access to actors who may have a culture of secrecy or may no longer exist and whose archives may not have been preserved. The reconstruction of the establishment of what I term corporate systemic ascendency by the French pesticide industry immediately after World War II runs up against these challenges. My account is thus based on scattered and incomplete traces: trade publications, gray literature, reports of learned society meetings and academic and technical conferences, and documents in public archives. As imperfect as these traces may be, they nonetheless provide elements to demonstrate the four dynamics announced in the introduction.

Organizing the Pesticide Industry The French pesticide industry changed rapidly over the period spanning the end of World War II to the mid-​1960s. An industry for chemical crop protection products had emerged in France at the end of the nineteenth century. Up through the World War II, it mainly supplied wine grape and orchard fruit production (and other crops to a more limited extent) with fungicidal and insecticidal products based on a limited number of substances, including sulfur, arsenic, copper, and mercury derivatives, and nicotine (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 11–​13; Fourche 2017). As soon as the war ended, new synthetic substances (organochlorides, organophosphates, organomercurials, phytohormones, and so on) came onto the French market (Willaume 1955). New substances continued to be introduced and were found in a multitude of products. From 1944 to 1967, 4,000 commercial products were authorized for sale on the market by the Ministry of Agriculture, and 1,000 received temporary authorization (Winckelmüller 1968, 30). The variety of products on offer significantly renewed the use of fungicide and insecticides and also fueled the boom in chemical weed control. Over the 1960s, while fungicides (70% of which were sulfur-​based) remained the most used products in terms of tonnage (63% of tonnage, as compared to 21% for herbicides and 14% for insecticides, adding up to a little over 111,000 metric tons), herbicides became the most important products in terms of value, ahead of fungicides and insecticides (Winckelmüller 1968, 48). Over the 1950s and 1960s, the French pesticide market was in continuous growth, and by the latter half of the 1960s, the industry was confident about its future development (Colas 1968). The landscape of the French pesticide industry changed drastically during this period. At the end of the war, it was composed of hundreds

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  63 of small businesses and a handful of larger ones, but it was concentrating rapidly. The number of companies manufacturing pesticides declined. Between 1946 and 1948, the number of companies with membership in the industry’s main business association went from 376 to 280, and it fell to 190 in 1950. Membership stabilized at around 90 in the 1960s, representing about 95% of industry activity (Colas 1968, 23). In 1960, 15–​20 companies already ensured 90% of the industry’s total turnover (Bonastre 1969, 161; Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 48). The French industry consisted of manufacturers of technical products and formulators that developed commercial products using preexisting technical products. Some supply cooperatives also offered products under their own brand. Rhône-​Poulenc was the only French company to have its own patents –​the others used patents fallen into the public domain. The intensifying concentration resulted in part from competition between companies struggling to stand out because they were unable to offer original products. Mergers between businesses led to companies with dense sales networks and the reputation of distribution of high-​quality products, thus creating an unbridgeable gap with smaller companies (Colas 1968, 23–​24; Bonastre 1969, 160–​161). The successes of this increasingly concentrated industry were due to more than the market dynamics developing from the rapid intensification of agriculture. They also resulted from the industry being taken in hand by some of its actors, who managed to organize it into a formidable business association. Fernand Willaume was the most visible driver of its development. He started his career as agronomic engineer in public agronomic research in the 1920s and was hired in the early 1930s by a major chemical company that became Péchiney in 1950. He gained experience organizing the pesticide industry in the late 1930s as he participated in negotiations among companies in the sector to develop common positions to face the French government. He ended up establishing himself as one of the organizers of the industry under the Occupation, as a pillar of the organization charged with distribution of primary materials among pesticide manufacturers and managing production in the industry (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 14–​22). In 1945, he became involved in the creation of a single business association for the French pesticide industry –​which hitherto had had two, not to mention specialized business associations for each product type. Although we have no information on the industry’s internal debates, some elements lead us to think that the creation of this association was quite difficult (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 14–​37). Subsequent heads of the Business Association mentioned the existence of major dissent in its first years. From 1945 to 1952, it experimented with various forms of internal organization, and changed names several times, ultimately settling on the Chambre Syndicale de Phytopharmacie (Union Chamber of Phytopharmacy, “the Business Association” hereafter). The business associations for copper-​based products and horticultural products remained

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64 Jas independent. The first president of the Business Association resigned and was replaced by Willaume in 1946, and all of the longest standing figures of the industry left their positions in the Business Association in 1950. At the end of the 1950s, despite the fiercely competitive commercial context, the biggest companies, Péchiney and Rhône-​Poulenc chief among them, seem to have managed to get the upper hand over other long established companies that had trouble adapting to the ongoing changes. By the time of Willaume’s death in 1957, the Business Association was perfectly operational. From the earliest years of its existence, even before its operations and legitimacy stabilized, the Business Association launched activities in all directions. Numerous internal sections and commissions were created, for every major subgroup of products as well as for regulatory issues (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 29). But the Association’s activity was largely directed outward. It sought to be integrated into governmental ministries. The partnership system of the time gave it the right to representation in various governmental committees and commissions concerning their products, notably the bodies related to premarket authorization (Jas 2007). But it also hired a young lawyer, Claude Moreau, in 1947, and one of his main functions was the everyday negotiation of legislative and regulatory texts concerning the pesticide industry and its products with relevant ministerial services (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 27). From 1960 onward, the Association also ensured a presence in the fledgling European Economic Community by being a driver in the creation of a European business association based in Brussels (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 50). It furthermore set about working with agricultural organizations in charge of technical aspects of crop protection. These organizations often developed out of private initiatives begun in the interwar years, but they also involved scientists and engineers working for public institutions. They were undergoing significant institutional reorganization in the 1950s, even as they were refocusing their activities on chemical control (Fourche 2004, 270–​273). One of the major actors of these reconfigurations was François Le Nail. Closely tied to the Business Association (to the point of becoming its secretary general in 1967), he first worked as the secretary general of the Confédération Française des Producteurs de Pommes de Terre (French Potato Producers’ Confederation), for which he wrote a crop protection manual (Le Nail 1953) before becoming, in the mid-​1950s, the secretary general of both the national agricultural technical organizations the most active in crop protection, for which he coordinated a common agenda (Fourche 2004, 302–​303). The first was the ACTA (Association de Coordination Technique Agricole [Association of Agricultural Technical Coordination]), the result of a joint venture between the Chambers of Agriculture and the growers’ organizations for five major crops (grains, beets, oil crops, flax, and potatoes). The second, La Ligue (The League), came out of a prominent organization of scientists specialized in crop

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  65 protection which expanded during the interwar period. Over the 1950s, it was transformed into an organization federating professional groups, the FNGPC (Fédération nationale des groupements de protection des cultures [National Federation of Crop Protection Groups]), that organized crop protection efforts at the local level (Fourche 2004, 271). The ACTA and the FNGPC developed working partnerships with technical services of the State as well as the pesticide industry, focused on chemical control. This partnership work took a variety of forms, the more prominent being jointly coordinated scientific or technical events, field experimentation, and regular attendance at events held by one another. This work was of varying degrees of formality. In some instances, it led to long-​lasting instruments, the best known being COLUMA (Fourche 2004, 293–​299).1 Focused on developing the use of herbicides, which initially encountered considerable resistance in French agriculture, COLUMA was long piloted by the head of herbicides at Péchiney, who was also one of the Business Association’s representatives to COLUMA. Lastly, the Business Association devoted a significant share of its activities to the technical administration of the Ministry of Agriculture, especially its Crop Protection Service, and public agronomic research, especially INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research), created in 1946. This action mainly relied on two instruments that, here again, have a significant partnership-​based dimension: a learned society and an interprofessional journal. The leading characteristic of both was to foster the development of a joint effort by industry and governmental services to pathologize and medicalize crops, allowing each group to have a role but especially benefitting the industry.

Pathologization and Medicalization of Crops Historians have analyzed agricultural entomologists’, agronomists’, and the pesticide industry’s use of the military metaphor in some countries since the late nineteenth century (Russell 2001). This metaphor was also present in France. But the medical metaphor was just as important in the configuration of professions in the French crop protection sector. Using Robin Villmaine’s (2017) terms, the pathologization and medicalization of crops took root in certain influential circles of the industrial, governmental, and scientific elite in crop protection in the interwar period. In France, the idea to create “plant medicine” similar to human and veterinary medicine germinated in debates over the quality and effectiveness of fungicides and insecticides that raged in the 1920s. At the time, some scientists and agricultural engineers, high-​ranking civil servants, and a few industrialists requested the establishment of strict regulations guaranteeing the effectiveness of pesticides (Journées de la Défense Sanitaire des Végétaux 1937; Fourche 2004, 41–​47, 273–​285). In developing this analogy (manifest in the term “phytopharmacie” created at that time), promoters of strict legislation insisted on the necessity of developing

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66 Jas instruments similar to those already in place for drugs. They requested the establishment of a sort of codex that would catalogue pesticides and state norms for their composition and establish methods for use (Journées de la Défense Sanitaire des Végétaux 1937, 20–​22). The existence of such a codex would require an industry capable of manufacturing standardized products, agricultural engineers and technicians capable of determining and proscribing their use (like doctors and veterinarians), and a scientific and technical administration capable of defining their quality and effectiveness (Journées de la Défense Sanitaire des Végétaux 1937, 19–​24). This project gathered actors with a variety of objectives. There were scientists from La Ligue working in public institutions, like Robert Régnier, who were trying to rationalize crop protection. There were also scientists invested in new specializations, like Marc Raucourt, the first director of the first French State “Phytopharmacy laboratory”, in charge of determining the effectiveness of pesticides and evaluating their harmful effects. There were also young engineers working in public research who saw chemical control as one of the solutions of the future to crop protection problems, such as Bernard Trouvelot or his colleague Fernand Willaume. This project also appealed to high-​ ranking civil servants from the Ministry of Agriculture, like Charles Vézin, who were trying to build a sizable administration specialized in crop protection. And lastly, it mobilized pharmacists, such as Emile Perrot, who were seeking a significant role in the regulation and sale of plant-​protection products (Association professionnelle de la phytopharmacie 1936). Already well developed by the late 1930s (Journées de la Défense Sanitaire des Végétaux 1937, 19–​24; Fourche 2004, 45–​ 47, 280–​ 281), legislation concerning State authorization of crop protection products guaranteeing their composition and effectiveness was adopted under the Vichy Regime. The Crop Protection Service was established at the same time as a new specialized technical administration with a vast jurisdictional reach that included running pesticide field experiments for premarket authorization (Dixmeras 1947). After the war, some prominent members of the agricultural scientific, technical, and administrative elite and elites from the pesticide industry who had been involved in debates over the premarket authorization continued to use the medical metaphor, this time as the basis of a common endeavor to develop a multidisciplinary, interprofessional scientific and technical field. This field was presented as recent and crossing phytiatry or “plant medicine”, defined as “the science that studies the methods for the sanitary protection of plants”, and “phytopharmacy”,2 conceived as “the science that has the objective of studying products and preparations intended for the protection and improvement of crops, excluding fertilizer” (Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie 1951, 2). “Crop protection” was understood as the organization of crop protection in actual practice. This pathologization and medicalization of crops was then supported by the Société française de phytiatrie et de

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  67 phytopharmacie (The French Society of Phytiatry and Phytopharmacy, the Society hereafter). The Society was founded in 1951. Plans for such a society began before World War II and were resumed by the pesticide industry as soon as it had ended. Fernand Willaume, representing the Business Association, teamed up with the entomologist Robert Régnier and the phytopharmacologist Marc Raucourt, both working for the INRA at the time, to obtain the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and a variety of scientific institutions (Régnier 1951a, 3). This plan brought together scientists from INRA and agronomic engineering schools, high-​ ranking civil servants from the Ministry of Agriculture’s technical services, academic toxicologists who were active in pesticide regulatory bodies, professionals with technical and scientific responsibilities in various technical agricultural organizations, and leaders in the pesticide industry. According to its first president, Régnier, the Society’s vocation was “to professionally organize” “plant medicine and pharmacology” in order to put an end to the “empirical character” of crop protection and to ensure the “transposition of research into practical terms” that does not give “incomplete results, which was discouraging for farmers for farmers” (Régnier 1951b, 12). Promoters of the Society presented this scientifization of “the fight against the enemies of crops” as a necessity in the intensification of agricultural production because “in breaking with the natural balance of species, it provokes an increased aggressiveness of parasites” and “their permanent ‘control’ constitutes for the farmer the sine qua non of success” (Société française de Phytiatrie et de Phytopharmacie 1951, 1). In so doing, they were trying to ensure plant medicine and pharmacy a permanent place among the most recent agronomic sciences (ibid., 1). Following a pattern having become a classical example in the agronomic sciences (Jas 2001; Bonneuil and Thomas 2009), it was a matter of creating an alliance between the promotion of finalized biological sciences (here, for crop protection) and the development and use of new technologies and their associated industries (here, pesticide industry) by decisively contributing to a modernizing agenda backed by public administrations and the agricultural sector. Although the Society’s promoters did not see pesticides as the only way to protect plants (Régnier 1951b, 14–​16), they were at the heart of this project, which proposed reorienting a large share of plant-​protection research, from the most fundamental to the most applied, to chemical control, previously seen in France as only one of the ways of protecting crops. This project lastly emphasized that premarket authorization was not enough to make chemical control effective: it also needed major scientific and technical research requiring a wide variety of expertise (Régnier 1951b). Led by some members of the French scientific, administrative, and industrial elite in crop protection, the Society grew rapidly. Initially composed of about 300 members, by late 1957, it had 439 full members and 128 associate members and prided itself on being present in 25 countries.3

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68 Jas It was organized in six sections (zoology; plant pathology and physiology; “phytopharmacy”; crop protection; chemistry and toxicology; and agriculture, forestry, and materials) and specialized commissions particularly addressing various aspects of the technical standardization of pesticides. The Society held eight or nine meetings annually in which it discussed society business and scientific papers were presented. The specialized commissions met separately, on their own schedules. Society activities were presented in newsletters sent to members,4 and members of the commissions also received specific reports. The Society published Phytiatrie-​Phytopharmacie, a scientific journal composed of articles based on papers given at its meetings and reports on its activities. The Society was involved in many scientific activities and the technical standardization of pesticides, nationally and internationally. Although it was developed as a learned society, the pesticide industry had a strong influence. Not only was a substantial share of its activities directly useful to the industry, but the industry also ensured its administrative support and part of its funding through specific gifts for prizes, the membership fees of industry members (about 25% of this source of the Society revenues) and company subscriptions to the journal. Most of all, unlike members from other groups (notably agricultural organizations), its representatives held key leadership positions in the Society as well as its sections and commissions, making sure that the society’s activities remained as focused as possible on the industry’s concerns. The society also contributed to the journal Phytoma, which was intended for a wider specialist readership of engineers and technicians in crop protection. This journal came directly from the industry. In 1947, the brand-​new president of the Business Association, Fernand Willaume, created a “Propaganda Committee” in the form of another, independent association that also included the business associations for copper-​based and horticultural products (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 29–​30). Willaume, as Chairman of the Propaganda Committee, made its main task the development of a journal targeting relevant professionals. The first issue of Phytoma came out in March 1948. The journal was initially part of a process begun before the war by a small group of pesticide manufacturers who believed that “the particular interests of their respective firms were united with the elevation of the professional group’s standing” (Pailleret 1948, 2). While working on enhancing the respectability of the industry, the journal was also intended to promote crop protection, conceived as the result of “the science of the medicine for plants or phytomedicine” and “the evolution of crop industries” that were “advancing by giant steps” in the farming world (ibid., 3). Even though it was backed by the industry, it was addressed to a readership not only within the industry but also technical and scientific crop protection specialists working in governmental administrations or agricultural organizations. From its inception, Willaume sought to make Phytoma into a professional journal. If he failed to rally La Ligue (Fourche 2004,

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  69 321), he managed to make it one of the publication outlets of the Society and in 1953 give it the status of the official journal of the Agricultural Pest Warning Service, part of the Crop Protection Service at the Ministry of Agriculture (Willaume 1951, 1953). These actions largely benefitted the industry. Obtaining this much sought-​after status of interprofessional journal made it possible to reach 30,000 subscriptions and a wide readership (Comité de direction, 1953). Its editorial committee was expanded to include INRA scientists and high-​ranking civil servants from the Ministry of Agriculture, who were certainly quite favorable to pesticides but who above all conferred scientific and technical credibility on the publication. Relating to that, these alliances ensured access to a regular supply of quality technical and scientific content. The Crop Protection Service, and INRA scientists to a lesser extent, found it a useful means for promoting their activities and expertise. For all that, Phytoma was still deeply impacted by the pesticide industry: up to a third of it consisted of advertisements for pesticides, sometimes taking the form of technical articles. A large share of the technical and scientific content directly or indirectly concerned pesticides and chemical control. The numerous controversies relating to pesticide use were not ignored but, as we shall see, were addressed in ways favorable to the industry. The Society and Phytoma were thus first and foremost built around a highly chemical “plant medicine”, based on the technicized use of “plant medicines”, distancing “the empirical”, and trying to marginalize other ways of approaching crop protection (biological control, resistant varieties, farming techniques) as much as possible. Paradoxically, however, the chemical pest control for which they were engaged was far from operational.

The Professionalization and Technicization of Crop Protection Over the 1950s, a new kind of plant-​protection professionals spread throughout scientific and technical administrations, agricultural organizations, and industry, charged with operationalizing chemical crop protection so that it would live up to the promises of its promoters. This operationalization occurred through the technicization of crop protection in which the Society and Phytoma, both largely controlled by the industry, contributed. Their first role was producing and disseminating technical and professional information. Phytoma was a central relay for many kinds of information needed by crop protection professionals, contributing to the creation of common references in its readership. It developed several columns addressing regulations, newly approved products, the use of products, issues in crop protections, agricultural warnings, and recent publications of interest. It presented research findings as well as experiments with new products and application methods. It announced a burgeoning number of

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70 Jas scientific and technical events and reported on some of them. It also related the activities of some international organizations specialized in chemical crop protection and agriculture, such as the International Congresses of Phytopharmacy or the European Organization for Plant Protection (OEPP). Although it had weaknesses, especially where advanced scientific and technical issues were concerned, Phytoma was a technical and professional resource that proved indispensible to a wide range of actors engaged in advancing chemical control in farming practice. The Society also had an informational function but at a different level. It allowed its members, for the most part high-​level scientists and engineers, to acquire an overview of the latest research in France in various domains relating to crop protection, with a particular focus on chemical products. It also mobilized its most eminent members, who were very active at the European and international levels, to report on the activities of other European and international organizations in which they, but not the Society, were directly involved. But most of all, the Society sought to present itself as the organization of the French “phytopharmacy” and represent it in international organizations. Accordingly, the Society reported on its own seminars, awards, and jointly sponsored scientific or technical symposiums and conferences in France and abroad. In addition to its involvement in agricultural pest warnings, it also highlighted two interdependent activities in which the industry played a key role: the production of technical norms for pesticides and participation in European and international organizations seeking to influence the development of technical regulations in Europe. Chemical control was operationalized by more than just the configuration of a professional space through an organization and a journal. It also required the resolution of countless technical problems posed by the use of new synthetic pesticides (Régnier 1951b; Dumas 1953). Indeed, the marketing of new products and application equipment did not come with the equally rapid perfection of technical itineraries appropriate to the countless situations that might be encountered in field, orchard, greenhouse, storage, or forest. It was not enough to identify the pests upon which products were effective; effective application methods for local use conditions (climate, adjacent crops, other issues with the crop) also had to be established. Since products are rarely used separately, effective product combinations had to be developed for every situation. Pesticide manufacturers, even the biggest ones, were not able to respond to all these questions on their own. Numerous laboratory and field experiments by regional Crop Protection Services, INRA research centers, and the technical institutes of agricultural organizations were thus essential in acquiring the knowledge necessary to the efficient use of pesticides. Neither Phytoma nor the Society participated in organizing these experiments. They did, however, contribute to ensuring that, despite many challenges, the attention of actors in crop protection remained as focused as possible on pesticides. In their midst they defined the problems

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  71 under the watchful eye of industry. New knowledge was shared there, and the approaches to be developed in research design for laboratory or field trials were discussed. The Society’s monthly scientific seminars were an especially clear reflection of the many stakes in the spread of pesticides. In the meeting on 21 November 1956, for example, there were four papers illustrating the painstaking work required by the operationalization of chemical control. Two entomologists from the INRA, Bernard Hurpin and J. Maillard, presented their work on “the determination in the laboratory of doses of application of Chloradane, Heptachlore, and Parathion against white grubs”.5 The three other papers presented the results of field experiments comparing various products, combinations of products, and application strategies against certain pests. For instance, head of the Alger Crop Protection Service Pierre Frézal’s experiments demonstrated the superiority of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) over other tested products against Mediterranean fruit flies, at least in the studied conditions, while showing that the “yeast hydrolysate-​based formulas gave significant burns to the leaves of peach trees”.6 This last remark is not insignificant. The development of application of technics was also supposed to take account of all the possible harmful effects of pesticides that might affect crops and crop protection strategies. Some of these effects are clearly stated from the earliest issues of Phytoma: serious crop burn, especially by new synthetic herbicides, and disrupted ecological balance impacting crop protection (Dumas 1948; Vézin 1949). The issue of insect and weed resistance to insecticides and herbicides would soon join the list. Phytoma’s handling of these issues tended to make them into technical issues, presented as being under control or controllable in a near future. For example, in 1961, when Phytoma presented the conflict between wine grape growers and grain farmers in the Champagne production area over major vineyard damage as a result of herbicide spraying by the latter, it insisted that users of herbicidal hormones should take “full account” of the abundant advice for use from state technical services in order to avoid any problems (Siriez 1961). This attitude was also found in the Society. Seminar minutes reveal the existence of concern among scientists and engineers over both the magnitude of the many problems encountered and what strategies should be taken to remedy them. Divergent points of view were expressed, especially in the Biocoenosis Commission where some members were attached to biological control and the preservation of ecological balance. However, representatives of industry and researchers and engineers from public organizations won over by pesticides worked systematically to reduce opposition. For example, at the 15 January 1958 meeting, a paper on the influence of pesticides on the predators of aphids demonstrated that these products were irreconcilable with the preservation of beneficial insects. This observation worried some of the attending scientists. Some were adamant that effects on beneficial fauna should be taken into account in regulatory assessment. But Jean Lhoste, a prominent

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72 Jas entomologist working in industry and pillar of the Society, supported the idea “that it is impossible […] to not sacrifice certain predators”7 and that in any case, the production of new scientific knowledge would ultimately make it possible to resolve the problem. The Society’s scientific activities contributed to shaping the significant work of operationalizing chemical control on the ground by offering forums for exchange making it possible to evade some crop protection professionals’ criticisms of the harmful effects of pesticides. But the Society’s role was much more direct in another aspect of the increasing technicity of chemical control: the technical normalization of pesticides. If Fernand Willaume pressed his partners in research institutions and technical governmental administrations for the rapid fruition of plans for a learned society in 1951, it was mainly because the French pesticide industry had committed to holding the third International Congress of Phytopharmacy in Paris –​after Louvain in 1946 and London in 1949 (Régnier 1951a, 3). The organization had to rely on a range of important actors in French crop protection, however, and a society bringing together private and public actors alike seemed like a necessary co-​ organizer. These International Congresses of Phytopharmacy had a scientific dimension, but because national pesticide industries were very present, they also offered a space for international discussion of pesticide standardization and normalization. Above all, the industry seized control of three issues that were important to both the authorization of their products in France and their international circulation: bioassays (to test product effectiveness as part of the authorization process), terminology, and chemical and physical methods for analyzing pesticides. Like the Business Association, the Society had technical commissions for handling each of these issues. Industry representatives were very active in Society commissions, which allowed them to work directly with representatives of governmental technical administrations. Society commissions produced private norms, whether solely endorsed by the Society or for broader certifications, by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or AFNOR (the French Standardization Association). These norms were destined to become part of standard practice not only in industry but also in governmental administrations. Society commissions, piloted in great part by industry, were thus places for the production of norms designed to serve as technical bases for public pesticide regulations in France and internationally. Industry’s use of the Society’s commissions to enter the spaces where these technical norms were defined took various forms. The Bioassay Commission produced norms that were rarely certified in the 1950s but nevertheless adopted by state services and industry. Thanks to its representative Jean Lhoste, the Bioassay Commission was also active in the International Commission for Bioassay Normalization, whose activities were partly linked to the International Congresses of Phytopharmacy.8

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  73 The Terminology Commission, which mostly handled the normalization of the common names of pesticides, worked so closely with AFNOR that the activities of each became somewhat confused in international discussions –​which made it possible for the Commission to have a seat at the table for ISO norms negotiations.9 The Commission on chemical and physical methods for pesticide analysis relied on a very close collaboration between industry and governmental administration’s representatives. For instance, at the 1957 Hamburg International Congress of Phytopharmacy, a decision was made to form a “select committee” of experts representing Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland so they could work together on the pesticide analysis norms to be promoted at the European level. Jean Prat, a military engineer and high-​ranking civil servant, director of the National Central Chemical Services Laboratory, and president of the Society’s commission on analytical methods, committed to defending the French positions, which had previously been agreed upon by the Business Association. It was of utmost importance to him that France not be forced to adopt future European norms that did not meet the approval of the French industry.10 The industry’s efforts to develop pesticide-​centric systems for professionalizing and technicizing crop protection throughout the 1950s were not only massive but based in a wide range of continuous interactions that were maintained over the long term. With Phytoma and the Society, the pesticide industry managed to ensure its presence and its views in a wide range of spaces where many aspects of chemical control were defined and implemented. These two instruments also helped it to take actors of crop protection in hand ideologically.

Taking Ideological Control of the Actors of Crop Protection The war was barely over when new pesticides started to raise concerns some becoming low-​level alerts or court cases (nearly 1,000 cases by 1960, according to a non-​exhaustive study by Charles Vézin (1961)). Some criticism came from doctors, who indicated the dangers of pesticides for human health (Jas 2008), while naturalists worried about the consequences for wildlife. Some came from within agriculture and crop protection circles. As we have seen, a number of secondary effects of pesticides worried some engineers and scientists from early on. Some of these effects also raised conflict in rural areas. Beekeepers decried the new insecticides that wiped out their hives (Humbert 2021). Hunters thought they would lead to the disappearance of game. Farmers blamed neighbors, manufacturers, and suppliers for the destruction of their crops, which they attributed to spraying. Some of these problems took such proportions that they forced the administration to intervene, in the form of ad hoc committees or regulations meant to solve the problem. Faced with this criticism, some coming from eminent scientists such as the naturalist Roger Heim, the industry and its allies developed

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74 Jas arguments for actors in crop protection and the farming world. These arguments helped to build a worldview that there are solutions for any problem that pesticides might have, effectively discrediting any concerns that were voiced. The Society was a space where some of these arguments were regularly disseminated and some of its members had no qualms in using them in other scientific and technical arenas. For example, in 1955, at a meeting of the French Academy of Agriculture at which the harmful effects of insecticides were being discussed, Bernard Trouvelot –​ who had become a well-​recognized entomologist –​defended the technicist approach promoted by the Society and emphasized its work to ensure that pesticides would be subject to thigh regulatory oversight (Anonymous 1955, 644–​645). But the ultimate place for the construction and dissemination of such arguments was probably Phytoma. Conceived as a central propaganda tool and reaching all crop protection professionals, the industry-​driven editorial team used the journal to spread the “right” way of thinking about the harmful effects of pesticides. In this team, in the mid-​1950s, Henri Siriez, a high-​ranking civil servant with the Ministry of Agriculture and bellicose mouthpiece of the industry, became the one responsible for developing an effective discourse for the defense and promotion of pesticides, which he moreover set out to establish among the Ministry’s technical and scientific administrations.11 In addition to insisting on how problems were under control or controllable in a number of scientific and technical articles, Phytoma developed three other kinds of argument. The journal first of all developed an economic argument notably in some editorials and a specific column (Robin 1949). The journal then regularly used the same argument, adapting it to the context, and some elements of this continue to this day. This argument insists that pesticides are absolutely necessary to produce sufficient quantities of quality food at a low enough price, while at the same time trying to demonstrate, with plenty of figures, that the “peasant” in the process of becoming a “farmer” attentive to the profitability of his farm has a duty to use pesticides to increase his production while reducing costs. The journal next vaunted “legislation” over pesticides, which it presented as particularly strict. This strategy was used particularly for the issue of the health effects of pesticides. The journal didn’t hesitate to publish articles by renowned academic toxicologists –​who nonetheless had industry ties –​(Fabre 1952). However, these articles also stressed the possibility of preventing these effects through research and adapted regulation, and other articles by phytopharmacologists at INRA or by Ministry of Agriculture officials responsible for pesticide authorizations presented these regulations in such a way as to demonstrate how protective they were of human health (Raucourt 1950). But the same strategy was also applied to other issues, especially damage to vegetation caused by herbicides, the harmful effects of insecticides on bees, and the effects of toxic baits intended for crop-​damaging rodents or birds on wild game.

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  75 The journal indicated the existence of regulations that had to be respected by farmers, like not treating while in bloom and following the instructions for using poisoned baits. In any case, Phytoma rarely discussed the possibilities of implementing regulatory requirements or their effectiveness (Jas 2007, 2008; Humbert 2021). Correlatively, the journal defended the position that accidents were due to poor usage, not problems intrinsic to pesticides. It thus placed responsibility for accidents on users alone, in the process clearing manufacturers (Moreau 1953). The last strategy used by the promoters of pesticides that is particularly visible in Phytoma is the appeal to reason. The argument that one must keep a sense of proportion is perceptible in articles emphasizing the controllability of the problems they study. It comes with a more or less explicit discrediting of people with a less optimistic views. But this recourse to reason was also developed in the vaunting of commissions and committees organized by the Ministry of Agriculture to foster discussion between representatives of various parties involved in especially visible conflicts, particularly those over bees (Siriez 1954) and wild game (Siriez 1957). It aimed to show that a reasonable dialogue could lead to effective solutions that are acceptable to all, thus leading the journal to minimize differences of points of view that might have been expressed and omit or rearrange certain facts. Accordingly, people who continued to indicate problems after these commissions and conciliation meetings were presented as unreasonable and the source of conflict that shouldn’t exist. Thus, for example, the journal published a report on a commission meeting on the use of glucochloral on magpies and crows, a product that hunters accused of killing their game,12 held in April 1956. Unsurprisingly, the report, written by Siriez, the commission’s president, highlighted arguments asserting the product’s necessity for farmers and its innocuousness for wild game when used properly. But it also relayed the thoughts of Claude Moreau, lawyer for the pesticide industry (Siriez 1957, 29): it is desirable that hunting federations put an end to lawsuits that are as abusive as they are unpopular, misplaced actions filed on the topic having often been denied by the criminal courts themselves … [and] that a fair confrontation of respective points of view should make it possible to reconcile the interests of hunting and the farming world. As Léna Humbert (2021) shows for the handling of bee harming pesticide-​related issues, the 1950s was a time when industry and agricultural organizations representatives and some of their closest allies in the upper ranks of the technical administration of the Ministry of Agriculture crafted a worldview normalizing the harmful effects of pesticides in France. Pesticides were promoted as an absolute economic necessity that justified a few inconvenience. Their harmful effects were presented as under control or controllable in the near future, either through technical

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76 Jas solutions or by regulation. They were also downplayed, and sometimes their very existence was denied. By the time Rachel Carson’s famous book Silent Spring was first published in France in 1963, all the elements of the ideology that pesticides presented no risk were already well established in the crop protection world. An especially strong expression of these elements can be found in Henri Siriez’s defensive response to Carson book’s success in France (Fourche 2004, 131–​136; Jas 2007). By then, Phytoma was a proven instrument that he could put to use, notably to publish a series of long articles on “birds and agriculture” intended to undermine arguments deployed in Silent Spring and by French naturalists.

Conclusion At the dawn of the 1970s, the Business Association, very aware of the rising activism against pesticides and the significance of the transformations underway in pesticide legislation under the influence of the European Economic Community, adjusted its methods of intervention (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 57–​63). Among its actions of the time was the strengthening of its relationships with research institutions, agricultural organizations, and governmental administrations –​in particular by means of the Society. It also created a new organization, “Protection des Plantes et Environnement” (Plant Protection and Environment), which was entrusted to Valtat’s public relations firm –​which also worked for the asbestos industry. While Business Association leadership thought that it had previously succeeded in ensuring “in constancy” “the education of the farming world” through the Propaganda Committee founded 20 years earlier and its associated tools (especially Phytoma), it hoped that this new organization would henceforth be able to react effectively “to media attacks” (Le Nail and Defaucheux 1987, 61). This analysis by the industry leadership highlights the strategic dimension of the long-​term, multidimensional, multi-​situated, and constantly renewed work undertaken by the French pesticide industry to adequately transform the world and make it so that its products become essential. Of course, this work occurred through socializing among elites of the crop protection sector or lobbying –​strategies I did not focus on in this chapter. But as history here shows, it also and perhaps mostly sought to establish enduring instruments that industry representatives could use to interact with a great variety of crop protection professionals –​and to transform them. The most influential actors of the pesticide industry worked in a large spectrum of spaces to lessen, work around, or suppress resistance to their vision of pesticide use. They sought to solve internal industry conflicts, the professional practices of influential agronomists and entomologists that were an ill fit with intensive chemical use, the lack of knowledge to operationalize chemical control, farmer distrust of certain products, and the definition of technical norms for pesticides or conflicts over spraying in the countryside.

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  77 The corporate systemic ascendency that the French pesticide industry started building at the end of the war was not complete in the early 1960s. Throughout the 1960s and even more so in the 1970s, some scientists and engineers continued to develop approaches that were deeply rooted in biological control. Conflict did not disappear while new activism against pesticides was being organized. The Ministry of Agriculture’s technical administrations for pesticides developed practices and made decisions that did not always meet the industry’s expectations. The development of the European Economic Community and new international regulatory instruments like the Codex Alimentarius complicated the work of crafting technical norms and regulation of pesticides. But the French industry managed to hold on this critical period of the 1970s unscathed –​ a sign of the success of the foundational work to establish a lasting systemic ascendency over all spaces involved in crop protection. In the long term, pesticides and pesticide industry remain central to French agriculture. However, the great French pesticide industry vanished with the purchase of the last French transnational corporation in the sector by Bayer in 2002. Technical administrations of the Ministry of Agriculture that had benefitted from the development of the use of pesticides did not survive the reorganization of the French government in the 2000s. Lastly, in the 1980s–​1990s, reorientations of INRA’s scientific strategy presented strong challenges to some disciplines (especially entomology) that, through some of their eminent representatives, had favored pesticides to ensure their development 40 or 50 years earlier.

Notes COLUMA papers, French National Archives, 5 SPV 170. 1 2 Today, “phytopharmacy” has a different meaning in English. In the postwar period, it is sometimes found with this meaning in documents written in English. 3 Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie, “Compte-​ rendu Assemblée générale du 19 mars 1958”, Feuilles d’information 6 April 1958. 4 Part of these “feuilles d’information” are to be found in the archives of the Service de la Protection des Végétaux de Lyon deposited at the Musée départemental la résistance Henri Queuille in Neuvic, France. Part of their content was published by Phytiatrie-​Phytopharmacie and Phytoma. See also French National Archives, Pierrefitte-​sur-​Seine, 19880600/​56 and 19920144/​ 210. 5 Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie, Feuilles d’information 9 December 1956, 4. 6 Ibid., 5. 7 Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie, Feuilles d’information 3 March 1956. 8 Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie, Feuilles d’information 6 May 1958, 12–​13. 9 Ibid., 11–​12.

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78 Jas 0 Ibid., 15–​17. 1 11 Siriez’s papers, French National Archives, Pierrefitte-​sur-​Seine, 16 SPV 1–​24. 12 French National Archives, Pierrefitte-​sur-​Seine, 20150847/​47 and 19840502/​6.

References Anonymous. 1955. “Insecticides de synthèse”. Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie d’agriculture de France 41: 641–​645. Association professionnelle de la phytopharmacie. 1936. Compte rendu de la troisième réunion tenue à la Faculté de Pharmacie de Paris le mercredi 14 octobre 1936. Maretheux et Pactat: Paris. Bertomeu-​ Sánchez, José Ramón. 2019. “Introduction. Pesticides: Past and Present”. HoST –​Journal of History of Science and Technology 13 (1): 1–​27. https://​doi.org/​10.2478/​host-​2019-​0001. Bertomeu-​Sánchez, José Ramón. 2021. The Making of the Spanish Pesticide Industry During the Early Francoist Dictatorship: Experts, Autarky, Agnotology, and Fascism”. In Pervasive Powers: The Politics of Corporate Authority, edited by Sara A. Aguiton, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, Nathalie Jas, Emmanuel Henry, and Valentin Thomas. Routledge: London. Bohme, Susanna R. 2015. Toxic Injustice: A Transnational History of Exposure and Struggle. University of California Press: Oakland. Bonastre, Jean-​Bernard. 1969. “Industries d’amont et évolution agricole: le cas des productions végétales”. Economie Rurale 79–​80: 157–​167. Bonneuil, Christophe, and Thomas Frédéric. 2009. Gènes, pouvoirs et profits. Recherche publique et régimes de production des savoirs de Mendel aux OGM. Versailles: Quae. Bosch, Robert van den. 1978. The Pesticide Conspiracy. University of California Press: Berkley. Bosso, Christopher J. 1987. Pesticides and Politics: The Life Cycle of a Public Issue. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh. Boullier, Henri, and Emmanuel Henri. 2020. “L’expertise chimique sous emprise industrielle”. Sciences Sociales et Santé 38: 49–​76. https://​doi.org/​10.1684/​ sss.2020.017. Callon, Michel. 2017. L’emprise des marchés. Comprendre leur fonctionnement pour pouvoir les changer. La Découverte: Paris. Chambost, Isabelle, Yamina Tadjeddine, and Caroline Vincensini. 2018. “Empreintes et emprises de la financiarisation”. Terrains & Travaux 33: 5–​23. https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​tt.033.0005. Chateauraynaud, Francis. 2015. “L’emprise comme expérience. Enquêtes pragmatiques et théories du pouvoir”. Sociologies. Accessed 1 October 2020. http://​journals.openedition.org/​sociologies/​4931. Colas, Jean. 1968. “L’industrie des pesticides”. Cahiers des Ingénieurs Agronomes 231: 21–​25. Comité de direction. 1953. “Phytoma sextuple son tirage”. Phytoma April: 9. De Silva, Amarasiri M.W., Steven M. Albert, and J.M.K.B. Jayasekara. 2017. “Structural Violence and Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka”. Social Science & Medicine 178: 184–​195. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​ j.socscimed.2017.02.016. Dixmeras, Jean. 1947. “Organisation régionale et locale de la protection des végétaux”. In Journées de la Défense Sanitaire des Végétaux, 22–​23. Publications de la Ligue nationale de lutte contre les ennemis des cultures: Paris.

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  79 Dorey, Roger. 1981. “La relation d’emprise”. Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse 24: 117–​140. Duby, George, and Armand Wallon. 1975. Histoire de la France rurale –​Tome 4. La fin de la France paysanne. Le Seuil: Paris. Dumas, Paul. 1948. “Accidents causés par un produit à base de phytohormones sur les cultures fruitières”. Phytoma November: 17–​18. Dumas, Paul. 1953. “Une propagande nécessaire en faveur des spécialités antiparasitaires homologuées”. Phytoma June: 5–​6. Dunlap, Thomas R. 1981. DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy. Princeton University Press: Princeton. Fabre, René. “L’emploi des toxiques en agriculture et la sauvegarde de la santé publique”. Phytoma, August–​September: 31–​32. Fourche, Rémi. 2004. Contribution à l’histoire de la protection phytosanitaire dans l’agriculture française (1880–​1970). Université Lyon 2: Lyon. Accessed 1 October 2020. http://​theses.univ-​lyon2.fr/​documents/​lyon2/​2004/​fourche_​ r#p=1&a=TH.1. Fourche, Rémi. 2017. “Internationalisation des traitements arsenicaux: des doryphores américains aux abeilles françaises (1868–​ 1922)”. Histoire & Sociétés Rurales 47 (2): 137–​176. https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​hsr.048.0137. Fragnon, Julien. 2018. “La radicalisation sous emprise? Le processus de radicalisation au prisme de Stop Djihadisme”. Quaderni 95: 13–​38. https://​doi.org/​ 10.4000/​quaderni.1135. Gillam, Carey. 2017. Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. Island Press: Washington. Guthman, Julie. 2019. Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry. University of California Press: Oakland. Humbert, Léna. 2021. “Protéger les abeilles et moderniser l’agriculture: l’intégration des intoxications comme dégâts inévitables du développement agricole (1945–​1960)”. In Retour sur les modernisations agricoles du XXe siècle, edited by Margot Lyautey, Léna Humbert, and Christophe Bonneuil. Presses Universitaires de Rennes: Rennes. Jansen, Kees. 2017. “Business Conflict and Risk Regulation: Understanding the Influence of the Pesticide Industry”. Global Environmental Politics 17 (4): 48–​66. https://​doi.org/​10.1162/​GLEP_​a_​00427. Jas, Nathalie. 2001. Au carrefour de la chimie et de l’agriculture: Les sciences agronomiques en France et en Allemagne, 1840–​ 1914. Les éditions des archives contemporaines: Paris. Jas, Nathalie. 2007. “Public Health and Pesticide Regulation in France before and after Silent Spring”. History and Technology 23(4): 369–​388. https://​doi. org/​10.1080/​07341510701527435. Jas, Nathalie. 2008. “Pesticides et santé des travailleurs agricoles en France dans les années 1950–​1960”. In Sciences, agriculture, alimentation et société en France au XX° siècle, edited by Christophe Bonneuil, Gilles Denis, and Jean-​ Luc Mayaud, 223–​246. Quae: Paris. Journées de la Défense Sanitaire des Végétaux. 1937. Publications de la Ligue nationale de lutte contre les ennemis des cultures: Paris. Jouzel, Jean-​Noël, and Giovanni Prete. 2017. “La normalisation des alertes sanitaires. Le traitement administratif des données sur l’exposition des agriculteurs aux pesticides”. Droit et Société 96: 241–​256. https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​drs.096.0241. Le Nail, François. 1953. Guide pratique de lutte contre les ennemis et les maladies de la pomme de terre. SOGACI: Paris.

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80 Jas Le Nail, François, and Yves Defaucheux. 1987. L’industrie phytosanitaire (1918–​ 1986), Soixante-​huit ans d’organisation syndicale en France. UIPP: Boulogne. Löwy, Ilana. 2006. L’emprise du genre. Masculinité, féminité, inégalité. La Dispute: Paris. Moreau, Claude. 1953. “Ce que tout acheteur d’une spécialité de défense des cultures doit savoir”. Phytoma June: 23–​27. Pailleret, G. 1948. “Enfin une revue spécialisée de défense des cultures”. Phytoma March: 1–​2. Palladino, Paolo. 1996. Entomology, Ecology, and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America, 1885–​ 1985. Harwood Academic Publishers: Amsterdam. Perkins, John H. 1982. Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis: The Quest for New Pest Management Strategies. Plenum Press: New York.Raucourt, Marc. 1950. “La dénaturation par coloration des produits toxiques utilisés en agriculture”. Phytoma June–​July: 29–​31. Raynaud, Bénédicte. 1999. “L’emprise des groupes sur l’édition française au début des années 80”. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 130: 3–​10. Régnier, Robert. 1951a. “La Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie. Historique”. Phytiatrie-​Phytopharmacie 1: 2–​4. Régnier, Robert. 1951b. “La médecine et la pharmacie des végétaux en face du problème de la productivité”. Phytiatrie-​Phytopharmacie 1: 11–​23. Robin, François. 1949. “Le prix de revient des traitements antiparasitaires dans les vergers”. Phytoma March: 24–​25. Russell, Edmund. 2001. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Sheail, John. 1985. Pesticides and Nature Conservation: The British Experience, 1950–​75. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Siriez, Henri. 1954. “Apiculture et traitement insecticides du Colza”. Phytoma November: 21–​25. Siriez, Henri. 1957. “Les pies et corbeaux. Commissions d’étude des moyens de lutte”. Phytoma May: 27–​31. Siriez, Henri. 1961. “A propos de certains dégâts causés par les herbicides à base d’hormones”. Phytoma September–​October: 43. Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie. 1951. La Société française de phytiatrie et de phytopharmacie. Fondation. Inauguration. Statuts. Règlement intérieur. Institut National Agronomique: Paris. The Business Research Company. 2020. Pesticides Market. Accessed 1 October 2020. www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/​report/​pesticides-​market. Vézin, Charles. 1949. “Les insecticides bien utilisés ne nuisent pas aux abeilles”. Phytoma March: 3. Vézin, Charles. 1961. “Une statistique des litiges survenus à la suite de traitements anti-​parasitaires agricoles”. Phytoma April: 23–​24. Villmaine, Robin. 2017. “Le productivisme agricole en images. Une analyse sociohistorique de couvertures illustrées de guides techniques (1959–​2014)”. Images du Travail. Travail des Images 4. Accessed 1 October 2020. https://​ imagesdutravail.edel.univ-​poitiers.fr/​index.php?id=1469. Whorton, James C. 1974. Before Silent Spring: Pesticides and Public Health in Pre-​DDT America. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

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Corporate Systemic Ascendency  81 Willaume, Fernand. 1951. “Pour une nouvelle marche en avant”. Phytoma February: 5–​6. Willaume, Fernand. 1953. “Phytoma sextuple son tirage”. Phytoma April: 9. Willaume, Fernand. 1955. “L’industrie française des pesticides au service de l’agriculture”. Phytoma January: 5–​10. Winckelmüller, Alain. 1968. Aspects économiques de la production, de la distribution et de l’utilisation des pesticides à usage agricole en France. INRA: Massy. Wright, Agnus. 1990 [2005]. The Death of Ramón González. The Modern Agricultural Dilemma. The University of Texas Press: Austin.

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4  From Research Funding to Public Relations The Making of a Food Industry Think Tank in 1970s France Thomas Depecker, Marc-​Olivier Déplaude, and Nicolas Larchet

Introduction More and more, the food industry is having to cope with attacks from the pseudo-​scientific media, and all companies can do in response is report on their own works –​the objectivity of which is challenged not only by consumers and the organizations that defend them, but also, sometimes, by public authorities. […] In the work carried out by the Foundation and in its very existence, opinion makers and public opinion itself will find the reassurance that they need in the current climate of “consumerist” protest, says the call to arms contained in a memo produced in March 1974 by the Fondation française pour la nutrition (French Nutrition Foundation, or FFN), an organization established the same year by several major companies and organizations in the French agri-​food sector. Initially, this organization proposed to support existing research in the field of nutritional sciences and to participate in the dissemination of their results. However, it quickly appeared that the limited funds at its disposal did not allow it to compete with public support for research, in the manner of the large American foundations oriented toward medical research. Funded exclusively by professional organizations and companies, the FFN was not established as a tax-​exempt foundation under French law, despite its name, but had the more limited status of a nonprofit association. Launched as a funding agency, it gradually developed as a place to meet and to produce expertise that would influence public debate in the manner of a “think tank”. In the declaration of intent that accompanies its statutes, the FFN declared its “independence” and the “endorsement of scientific communities” to solve “the current problems of modern food and nutrition”. With think tanks that were becoming autonomous at the same time in the United States, it shared an interstitial position between academic, political, economic, and media fields, which gave it DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-5

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  83 the character of a hybrid organization whose success depended on its capacity to ensure that these sectors communicate with one another (Medvetz 2012). Just as the most activist conservative think tanks came into being in the 1970s in the United States to counter the influence of radical intellectuals and social movements, the food company executives who created the Foundation wanted to compete with consumer associations on their own ground –​that of information –​but without appearing to do so. The period was indeed characterized by the development of consumer associations in France as a media power denouncing potentially harmful industrial products and practices but also as experts in regulatory battles (Chatriot 2006). Because they were compelled to mention the composition of foodstuffs on packaging from 1972 onward, food companies needed to convince the general public of the harmlessness of the ingredients and food additives they used. They therefore needed allies: recognized researchers or academics, who were the only people who could give their organization (a) an appearance of autonomy in terms of economic interests and (b) a guarantee of seriousness and scientificity to counter consumerist criticism. In this chapter, we study how the FFN was progressively shaped into a think tank, from the very first meetings in 1972 to discuss its creation, through to 1982 when its operation and the orientation of its activities became stable. Our approach will consist in analyzing the successive negotiations that led to its creation, the tensions that divided its members, and the way in which they were resolved.1 In the first section, we will situate our approach more specifically within the academic literature on think tanks. Unlike the majority of works which analyze the public activities of think tanks, we will focus on their lesser known internal processes. The FFN will thus be analyzed as a “negotiated order”, bringing together competing interests. In the second section, we will present consumer associations’ critiques of the food industry in 1970s France, which led to the creation of the FFN in reaction to a controversy on cooking oils and food labeling. To appear as a neutral and scientific organization and not merely as food industry interest group, the FFN had to open its rank to academics: these “enrollment” strategies led to negotiations between academic and industrialists and will be discussed in the third section. In the final section, we will examine how the FFN reoriented its policies to engage in public relations and consumer information, after the departure of academics who hoped to use it as a funding agency.

Think Tanks as Negotiated Orders The 1960s and 1970s were marked by a “deep crisis of legitimization of industrial activities” in Western societies (Boudia and Jas 2019, 53). Major social movements denounced the working conditions that corporations were forcing upon their employees, the impact of their

48

84  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet activities and products on health and the environment, and more generally their alleged contribution to the well-​being of the population. These movements, which led to the adoption of regulations that provided a tighter framework for economic activities than was hitherto the case, in turn led to major mobilizations by corporate actors (Vogel 1983; Chamayou 2018). Imitating the methods and strategies employed by their opponents, the initiators of these counter-​movements engaged in various arenas: workplaces, courts, parliaments, administrations, the media, scientific communities, etc. This led in particular to the creation of new organizations including think tanks. They first developed in the United States and the United Kingdom before spreading to the rest of the world (Stone 2015). In France, they allegedly emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s in organizations based within business, political, and administrative elites such as the La Boétie Institute and the Saint-​Simon Foundation (Schwartz 2010). For the most part, research on think tanks has focused on the dissemination of neoliberal doctrine in the field of economic policy and of neoconservative worldviews in foreign policy (Stone 1996; Denord 2002; Pautz 2012; Stahl 2016; Plehwe et al. 2020). More recent works have looked at organizations working on health and environmental risks, particularly those relating to economic sectors implicated in climate change (McCright and Dunlap 2003; Oreskes and Conway 2010). These works analyze think tanks as organizations that aim to influence public authorities in the field of ideas, using various strategies: the organization of events designed to bring together members of various elite circles (business leaders, academics, journalists, senior civil servants, politicians, etc.), publications (newsletters, journals, reports, policy briefs, etc.), and media interventions (Stone 2007). Although these strategies often have a long-​term horizon, they can coexist with lobbying actions aimed at creating short-​term effects on those in power (Caré 2010). Different notions have been used to characterize think tanks: “intermediaries” (James 1993), “border organizations” (Stone 2007), “transfer agencies” (Plehwe 2015), “brokers” (Schlesinger and Junqua 2012; Tchilingirian 2018), etc. They all stress the fact that networking and coalition-​building activities constitute a fundamental aspect of how think tanks work. Yet, these studies essentially focus on the public activities of think tanks and on their façades. They say little about their internal operation, the way their strategies are defined, and the nature of the relationships among their members. However, given their activities, think tank members generally come from different backgrounds (businesses, universities, public administrations, etc.). They have potentially conflicting interests, the convergence of which is by no means self-​evident. Works produced by academics who are themselves employed by think tanks have raised this issue (Weaver 1989), but so far, it has not been explored to any great extent, even in research based on ethnographic observations or in-​depth

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  85 interviews with members of these organizations (Medvetz 2012; McLevey 2015; Shaw et al. 2015). In the following sections, we will look at how an organization such as the FFN is built, bringing together individuals who do not all share the same interests and who do not all have the same expectations: the form of the organization, its operation, the orientation of its activities, and its budget are subject to negotiation. We analyze this organization as a “negotiated order” (Strauss et al. 1963; Fine 1984), i.e., a place and a product of continuous negotiation among its members. The outcome of each negotiation, whether or not it results in an agreement, determines the subsequent negotiation. This leads to an analysis focused on processes consistent with the interactionist tradition in sociology (Abbott 2001). The data available to us make it possible to accurately reconstruct these negotiation processes. This chapter is based on the archival records of the Fonds français pour l’alimentation et la santé (French Food and Health Fund, FFAS), an organization founded in 2010 as an offshoot of the FFN. They include all of the minutes of meetings of the Foundation’s internal bodies since their creation: its Bureau, Board of Directors, Scientific Committee, and Communication Group. For the period 1972–​1978, they also include minutes of working group meetings, summary notes, budget documents, correspondence, etc. In addition to these internal documents, we also analyzed the following Foundation publications: a monthly letter to its members (1976–​1977), a quarterly newsletter, and an annual activity report from 1979 onward. It was between 1972 and the early 1980s that the Foundation acquired the attributes that it would retain until the end of the 2000s. In studying this singular process, we will try to identify the typical problems encountered by organizations such as the FFN, which aim to enroll academics in the service of economic interests, while at the same time ensuring a certain autonomy in relation to the latter. Drawing from Callon and Law (1982), we consider “enrollment” as a negotiation process in which highly mobilized actors (in this case, food company executives) try to encourage other actors (in this case, academics) to take an interest in their organizational project. We will not therefore be analyzing the content of the FFN’s policies and public output in any detail. We assume that in order to understand the scope of such content, one must first understand the social relations in which it was developed.

A Counter-​mobilization by the Agri-​food Industry The Foundation’s creation stemmed from the mobilization of certain large companies in the agri-​food sector, in reaction to the rise of the consumerist movement. As David S. Meyer and Suzanne Staggenborg (1996) observed, one of the common characteristics of counter-​movements is that they borrow certain features from the movements they oppose. This isomorphic process can be seen here. The mobilized executives wanted

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86  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet to create an organization that shared two features with consumer associations. Firstly, it had to produce analyses perceived as objective and disinterested, and the best guarantee of this would be the reputation of the researchers who participated in its work. Secondly, its analyses must be widely disseminated in the public arena. The creation of the Foundation was thus part of a broadening of the food companies’ repertoire of actions, a broadening that led not only to the use of new strategies to defend economic interests but also to the invention of new organizational forms. An Industry on Thin Ice The rise of consumerist mobilizations in the 1970s was the result of several developments that affected Western societies during the postwar period. The second half of the 20th century was marked by an unprecedented increase in the worldwide production of chemical substances and by their penetration into a growing number of economic sectors (Boudia and Jas 2019). This process primarily concerned food and agriculture. Following the Second World War, there was a very rapid increase in the use of chemical products by farmers and stockbreeders (synthetic fertilizers, phytosanitary products, veterinary drugs, growth hormones, etc.) and by food-​processing industries, particularly through the use of additives. This unprecedented development, supported by public authorities who promoted the production of cheap and abundant food, led to the industrialization of many foodstuffs (cheeses, cured meats, ice cream, bakery products, etc.) and to the arrival on the market of so-​called new products (ready-​made meals, powdered soups, commercially prepared desserts, etc.). These changes went hand in hand with a decrease in the time spent on shopping for food and preparing meals and an increase in the proportion of processed foods in total food spending (Besson 2008). Finally, food was more frequently sold in the form of self-​service products in the supermarkets that appeared in the 1950s (Daumas 2006). Due to poor packaging regulations, buyers had to rely on the scarce information provided by labels in these new retail outlets. These developments, which were not unique to France, were criticized by consumer associations and academics in industrialized societies as of the 1950s (Belasco 1989; Degreef 2019). They denounced the presence of an increasing number of new substances in foods sold commercially, the absence of information on labels, and potential health hazards. In France, this caused organizations to campaign for improved consumer information and to carry out comparative tests on retail products (Depecker and Déplaude 2017; Pinto 2018). Initially supported by public authorities, these organizations underwent significant change in the early 1970s, marked by a more critical stance toward industrial society and its consequences on health and the environment and by greater use of the mainstream media to force public authorities and manufacturers to take action. This development was to a large extent

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  87 rooted in the powerful protest movements –​environmental movements in particular –​that developed in Western societies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was especially pronounced in France within the Union fédérale des consommateurs (Federal Consumers Union or UFC), which publishes the Que Choisir ? magazine, the monthly circulation of which rose from 35,000 to 300,000 copies between 1971 and 1974. Inspired by the reflections put forward by American activist Ralph Nader,2 it regularly published articles denouncing the industrialization of agriculture and food processing. Many of the tests carried out for Que Choisir ? related to food and were designed to identify the presence of additives (preservatives, antiseptics, antioxidants, colorants, flavor enhancers, etc.) and contaminants (pesticide or drug residues, heavy metals, asbestos, solvents, etc.) (see Table 4.1). Such substances were found in a wide range of products from cured meats to baby food. For UFC, “our food has become a poisoned feast. […] We have been reduced to varying our poisons.3” The magazine’s message to consumers was clear: “Beware of industrial products.4” The organization of the first Salon des consommateurs (Consumer Trade Show) in Paris in October 1972, to which Ralph Nader was invited, was seen by many commentators as the expression of a new power with which food companies would have to come to terms. In the early 1970s, certain French food companies were caught up in a fierce controversy that had a significant impact on their understanding of this new power: the canola oil controversy (Bonneuil and Thomas 2009). Indeed, as from the 1960s, French producers decided to replace peanuts with canola in cooking oils, generally without informing consumers, using generic names such as “table oil” or “superior oil”, etc. At the same time, however, scientific studies were suggesting that oil from the variety of canola cultivated at that time might present cardiovascular risk factors. Faced with the government’s refusal to bring the results of this research to the attention of the general public, several academics and consumer associations seized upon the issue, which received extensive media coverage between April 1971 and July 1972. Sales of oils likely to contain canola fell. In June 1972, the company Lesieur & Cotelle, which represented Table 4.1 Food tests published by the Que choisir ? magazine between 1961 and 1980

Additives Contaminants Bacteriological analyses Total

1961–​1970

1971–​1980

14 0 4 18

20 20 9 49

Interpretation: between 1961 and 1970, fourteen tests consisted in detecting and/​or measuring the presence of additives in food.

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88  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet 50% of the cooking oil market in France, finally agreed with other oil companies to ban canola oil from their “superior oils”. It was not until 1973, with the development of a new variety of canola, that the controversy finally died down, albeit not without serious economic and regulatory consequences concerning labeling. Indeed, the damage was already done. In 1972, a decree enforcing food companies to label the composition of foodstuffs, including additives, was promulgated. The “Foundation”: An Institutional Formula In April 1972, when the canola oil controversy was still making the headlines, Lesieur & Cotelle’s Director of External Relations intervened at the general assembly of the Institut de liaisons et d’études des industries de consommation (Institute for Liaison and Studies of Consumer Industries, ILEC), an association of consumer goods manufacturers.5 He suggested creating a “joint laboratory that would make it possible to analyze products and thus respond to the comparative tests carried out by consumer unions”. Five months later, he sent ILEC’s General Manager, a former Unilever executive, a memorandum from Bernard Lesieur, scientific advisor to Lesieur & Cotelle, sketching the outlines of a future “French Food Institute”. In this note, Bernard Lesieur clarified and amended the initial project. He used the following observation as his starting point: Today, we are seeing growing consumer awareness of health problems in general, and food-​related in particular. Given this state of affairs, food manufacturers must study, with even greater care, the ever-​ increasing number of medical issues relating to their products. To achieve this, the food companies needed studies produced by “official research organizations, recognized as such”. Yet the field of nutritional sciences was then occupied by several rival “schools”, none of which carried “sufficient weight to provide an undisputed opinion on nutrition”, which was deemed “quite regrettable”. On the basis of discussions with the leaders of two of these “schools”, Lesieur defended the idea that the future institute should “federate” the top academic research centers in the field of nutrition and coordinate their research programs. It would have two missions: firstly to define the programs and divide them among existing laboratories and secondly to “interpret the results [of these studies] in such a way as to be able to give an opinion that is as unquestionable as possible and that can, more particularly, stand up to consumer associations and the press”. These activities would be mainly financed by membership fees paid by the Institute’s member companies. For an additional fee, it could also carry out “confidential research” for companies. Based on this memorandum, ILEC’s Deputy General Manager set up a working group of executives from major agri-​food and cosmetics

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  89 companies (see Table 4.2). In total, eleven companies took part, most of them very large.6 Four were multinationals (Unilever, Nestlé, CPC International, and Pillsbury) represented by their French subsidiaries, and two were French conglomerates producing a wide range of products (BSN–​Gervais-​Danone and Générale alimentaire). They were represented by senior executives: of the twenty-​seven executives attending (or invited to attend) the working group meetings, six were CEOs and at least thirteen others held senior management positions. In addition to these company executives, there were representatives from three professional organizations: ILEC, the Chambre syndicale de la conserve (French Canning Industry Union), and, above all, the Association nationale des Table 4.2 The companies that attended the working group meetings that led to the creation of the FFN (1972–​1974) Group

Country of origin

Nestlé

Area of activity

Number of meetings

Switzerland SOPAD, Guigoz France

Diversified food products and infant food

8

BSN–​Gervais-​ Danone*

France

Diversified food products, dairy products, and infant food

7

Lesieur

France

Cooking oil and margarine

7

Unilever

Netherlands Astra-​Calvé, and UK Thibaud-​ Gibbs

Diversified food products, cooking oil, margarine, and cosmetics

6

Bel

France

Dairy products

6

Biscuiterie nantaise

France

Bakery products

6

Société des Corn and starch produits du products maïs

4

Diversified food products

1

Diversified food products and bakery products

1

Cosmetics

1

CPC USA International Générale alimentaire

France

Pillsbury

United States

L’Oréal

France

Subsidiaries represented

Evian-​Fali, Diépal

Gringoire

Interpretation: between 1972 and 1974, the Nestlé group was represented at or invited to seven working group meetings. Source: FFAS archives. *BSN and Gervais-​Danone merged in 1973.

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90  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet industries agricoles et alimentaires (National Association of Agricultural and Food Industries, ANIAA), representing all French agri-​food companies in their dealings with public authorities. Robert Féron, Scientific Director for Astra-​Calvé, a Unilever subsidiary producing oils and margarines, was put in charge of the group’s work. Approximately ten meetings were held between October 1972 and March 1974. During these meetings, the companies agreed that the future organization should have a certain degree of operational autonomy from the funders. This was seen as an indispensable condition if academics were to agree to join. The fact that academics were to be fully involved in the activities and management of the organization was considered to be a matter of vital importance, for two reasons. Firstly, as stated in a memorandum presented to the working group in March 1973, “endorsement from scientific communities ensures [the] credibility [of the future organization] among opinion leaders –​practitioners, the press, teachers, consumer organizations … and public opinion itself”. Secondly, the organization would also be a means, as stated in the same memorandum, of socializing academics into “the concerns of food companies, because researchers are often unaware of the latter’s needs and constraints, despite the fact that they are often at the origin of legal and regulatory requirements”. In other words, the support of academics would enable them to counterbalance the positions taken by consumer associations while at the same time making experts more sensitive to their interests when they were called upon to give their opinion on draft regulations brought about by the mobilization of these same associations. To this end, the members of the working group agreed on “a formula: [that of the] foundation7”. The institutional formula of the nonprofit foundation made it possible to clearly distinguish between the future organization and other outlets that were explicitly designed to defend the food industry’s economic interests.8 Officially, the foundation’s mission would be to support academic research in nutrition and not to attack consumer associations. A memorandum drafted at the beginning of 1973 states this very explicitly (underlined in the original text): The idea of creating a foundation comprised of both food companies and academics is making headway. […] Official objective: to encourage nutrition research by providing the world of research with the funding it currently lacks and ensuring a close working relationship between industry and science. Hidden objective: to be able to respond to pseudo-​scientific attacks from consumerists with works of research carried out by an unchallengeable foundation (which must therefore be of sound reputation). The decision to set up a foundation was undoubtedly influenced by the existence of similar organizations abroad: certain food companies were indeed aware of the existence of the British Nutrition Foundation, created

19

From Research Funding to Public Relations  91 in 1967, from which they drew inspiration when drafting their articles of association. The autonomy of the future organization also needed to be established through the creation of two bodies: the Foundation’s Board of Directors, composed of equal numbers of academics from the public sector and food company representatives, and its Scientific Committee, also made up of equal numbers of academics from the public sector and executives from the food companies’ research and development (R&D) departments. These bodies were also to be chaired by leading academics.

Enrolling Academics From this point on, the major challenges for the members of the working group were to convince academics to join the Board of Directors and the Scientific Committee of the Foundation and to contribute to its activities (symposia, publications, etc.). Food companies needed academics recognized by their peers and, if possible, by wider audiences. In this section, we will examine the enrollment strategies that the food companies employed, along with the negotiations that ensued. Finally, in the last section, we will show how, with the support of certain academics, the senior executives gradually gained the upper hand in steering the Foundation’s activities. This process might be characterized as a process of alignment (Blumer 1962) at the end of which some of the academics were forced to comply with the food company executives or else give way to other colleagues who better shared the latter’s positions.9 A Two-​Stage Enrollment Process The manufacturers chose to contact a small number of academics in important institutional positions in the field of nutritional sciences, in the hope that if they joined the project, their colleagues would be more inclined to follow suit. This was Robert Féron’s main task. As the scientific director of a major subsidiary of the Unilever multinational, Féron had access to a vast network of contacts within the field of food research, particularly in relation to lipids. First of all, he contacted two academics. The first was Henri Bour, professor of medicine and head of department at Hôtel-​Dieu, a major Parisian university hospital. The second, Jean Trémolières, was professor of biology at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (National Conservatory for Arts and Crafts, CNAM), a prestigious establishment for the training of engineers and technicians for industry, created during the French Revolution. Both men had devoted their careers to the institutionalization and recognition of nutrition as a scientific discipline, the former in a university hospital environment and the latter in public research. Henri Bour was the first Parisian doctor to hold a university chair in “human nutrition”. With one of his students, he turned his hospital department into a leading center for the treatment of obesity and nutritional disorders. Before joining CNAM, Jean Trémolières

29

92  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet had been in charge of the “nutrition” department at the Institut national d’hygiène (National Institute of Hygiene10) and of the body responsible for defining the French government’s research policy in this field. In addition to these positions of power, Henri Bour and Jean Trémolières both helped create bodies defending and representing the interests of their discipline. In 1963, they cofounded a learned society in the field of nutrition and dietetics. They were also involved in activities of popularization: Bour in partnership with a major Parisian science museum and Trémolières by publishing books for the general public and making regular appearances on radio and television. Having obtained their agreement to join the Foundation, Robert Féron then contacted other academics, using his preexisting networks: of the eight academics who were members of the foundation’s scientific committee as of 1974, five were members of the Groupe lipides et nutrition (Lipids and Nutrition Group, GLN), an association created in 1963 on the initiative of Unilever and other margarine manufacturers with the aim of supporting research on lipids, and of which Féron was a member.11 When necessary, Féron pulled out all the stops: no less than four people, including Féron himself and the CEO of the French subsidiary of the Guigoz group (owned by Nestlé since 1971), visited the home of Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel, to rally him to the cause. Considered by the food company executives as a “great name in research12”, Gounelle de Pontanel was a member of the French academy of medicine and President of the Conseil supérieur d’hygiène publique de France (French Higher Council of Public Hygiene), two bodies that the government was obliged to consult in relation to any new regulations concerning food products. The food company executives’ efforts were highly successful. In total, they managed to convince fifteen academics to sit on the Foundation’s Board of Directors and on its Scientific Committee. With an average age of fifty-​seven, most of them were well known and held important positions of institutional power. The majority ran research laboratories, hospital departments, or even major higher education and research institutions. They were recognized experts in their respective fields (nutritional sciences, pharmacology, and toxicology) and were solicited in regulatory arenas. The Foundation had thus enrolled members or managers from the “Food” section of the French Higher Council of Public Hygiene, such as Yves Raoul and Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel. Some of them were internationally recognized experts, such as toxicologist René Truhaut, who invented the notion of “acceptable daily intakes”, which was adopted by international organizations responsible for the regulation of toxic substances. Four of the most elderly were also members of the French academies of sciences, medicine, and pharmacy. The people chosen to lead the Foundation or its bodies had received many such marks of recognition. The Foundation and its Board of Directors were chaired by Georges Champetier, a recognized specialist in polymer chemistry, director of a prestigious engineering school, and a member

39

From Research Funding to Public Relations  93 of the French academy of cciences. He was assisted by Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel, the Foundation’s Vice President, and Jean Trémolières, Chairman of the Scientific Committee. This success came at a price: as courtesy and networking were often not enough to persuade the scientists they needed, food company executives had to engage in lengthy negotiations concerning the original project. Negotiated Enrollment Some academics went through tough negotiations with the food companies as soon as the future Foundation’s draft articles of association were drawn up. In April 1973, ILEC and ANIAA put an initial version before the working group headed by Robert Féron. This document was sent to Jean Trémolières, who asked for several changes to be made. The most important of these related to the budget of the future organization which, according to ILEC and ANIAA’s draft articles of association, should not exceed 250,000 francs per year. This is what Trémolières wrote to them in June 1973: Human nutrition will disappear within ten years if we maintain the present system of recruitment by [public research organizations]. The  current number of “public” academics in human nutrition is in the region of 60. Public recruitment of technicians has been zero for the past five years and that of academics stands at less than one per year. The sine qua non condition, i.e., the primary imperative for research groups to make an informed decision to accept cooperation [with the future Foundation], is that the initial funding serves to ensure the salaries of four researchers at an increasing rate of 25% per year for six years. […] Groups that are not initially assigned a researcher will receive an allocation for the additional intellectual work that will be requested of them. […] The first instalment needed at the outset is therefore 300,000 francs, with a forecast increase of 25% per year for three years. Jean Trémolières pointed out that additional costs, in the order of 80,000 francs per year, would have to be provided for the day-​to-​day operation of the Foundation (salaries of the director and a secretary and sundry expenses). Within three years, the Foundation’s scientific budget would be in the region of 500,000 francs per year, plus operating costs. Yet Trémolières did not ask solely for a significant increase in the future Foundation’s resources. He also demanded that, excluding operating costs (reduced to a minimum), the money the food companies paid should only be used to finance research and not to fund other actions, particularly in the fields of information and communication. These demands led

49

94  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet to “serious objections” from ANIAA’s chairman. Henri Bour also had serious misgivings, as handwritten notes taken at a meeting of the ILEC working group reveal: [Bour] willingly accepts to participate but does not wish the Foundation to merely be a means of financing certain research centers […]. The Foundation’s action should be extended to other areas relating to nutrition: teaching, information, documentation, regulation. […] He strongly criticizes Trémolières’ current attitude. Nevertheless the food company executives accepted Trémolières’ demands, in part: the future Foundation’s provisional budget was increased to 500,000 francs per year, 300,000 francs of which was to be used to fund research and postdoctoral fellowships and 200,000 francs for operating costs. This was less than the amount Trémolières had been requesting, but far more than what the executives had initially planned to spend. Moreover, no specific budget was set aside to finance information and communication activities. How might we explain the adoption of this compromise in Jean Trémolières’ favor? First and foremost, even after the increase, the Foundation’s budget remained modest compared to the resources available to the companies associated with the ILEC working group. Secondly, his wish that the Foundation’s activities should focus on supporting research and not on information and communication activities was supported by other researchers contacted by the food company executives. Finally, Jean Trémolières not only held a central position in the field of nutritional sciences in France, but his reputation in the media and the general public was far greater than that of Henri Bour, his main competitor. In other words, food companies would have found it difficult to do without Jean Trémolières’ support, which also probably conditioned that of other important medical or scientific figures, such as Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel. However, these tensions should not lead us to underestimate the fact that for a large proportion of the academics contacted by Robert Féron, the Foundation’s project was embedded in the continuity of their previous collaborations with food companies and even vital to the realization of some of their research. Furthermore, several of the academics, such as Henri Bour and André François, shared the view that consumer associations and the media tended to exaggerate the dangers that the industrialization of food production would pose to health and to underestimate its benefits. They believed it was therefore the duty of academics to intervene in the public arena to rectify these erroneous discourses, which were likely to create unnecessary concerns among consumers, who were considered to be credulous. This scientistic stance was perfectly consistent with the food executives’ project, which was indeed to use scientific and academic

59

From Research Funding to Public Relations  95 authority to challenge the supposedly dubious or misleading allegations of consumer associations.

The Industry’s Ascendency We will now look at how the Foundation was set up, from its official creation in 1974 through to the beginning of the 1980s. This was a period of trial and error, during which the Foundation’s activities were reoriented: while they initially consisted exclusively in funding research, from 1978 onward they diversified in favor of activities oriented toward public relations. This evolution was the result of repeated discussions among members of the Foundation’s bodies, which turned to the advantage of the food company executives and of the academics who supported their views. Supporting Research For the most part, the Foundation’s actions initially consisted in funding research on nutrition. Between 1974 and 1976, the Foundation paid out 900,000 francs to research centers. The first approved funding was above all used to reward scientists who had agreed to join the Foundation’s bodies. However, the level of funding was modest. Grants paid to postdoctoral researchers (50,000 francs per year per researcher) used up approximately half of the scientific budget. Subsidies for research projects were between 5,000 and 60,000 francs, which was little and mainly intended to supplement the financing of ongoing research paid for with public funds. Without greater financial resources, it therefore appeared that the Foundation had a limited capacity to influence the choice of research subjects in a way that could be useful to the food companies. The search for new resources was a recurring concern for the Foundation’s President. The Foundation’s operating resources essentially relied on the fees paid by its industrial members.13 Contrary to what the food companies had initially hoped, the Foundation was not eligible for a recognition of “public utility”, which would have enabled it to benefit from substantial tax advantages. Membership fees were gradually increased from 30,000 to 80,000 francs per year for the largest companies. Robert Féron did his utmost to persuade new companies to join the Foundation. At the time of its creation, the Foundation had a total of ten members. In 1976, eight additional companies joined the Foundation. Their numbers stagnated over the following years, with new memberships merely making up for defections. In constant francs, the Foundation’s total budget remained small: it stabilized at approximately 500,000 francs per year at the end of the 1970s, compared to 407,000 francs in the year it was founded (see Table 4.3). The increase in the amount of fees received did not therefore make it possible to significantly increase its

69

96  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet Table 4.3 Evolution in the Foundation’s budget between 1975 and 1982 Year

1975

Operation Public relations Research subsidies and scholarships Symposia Foundation’s award Documentation Sundry Total budget (in 1975 francs)

27.4%

1977

72.6%

36.8% 21.1% 42.1%

407,000

791,600

1980 34.9% 21.7% 17.6% 12.7% 3.5% 1.3% 8.3% 517,100

1982 37.1% 18.4% 29.1% 10.3% 3.7% 1.4% 514,000

Interpretation: 1980 aside, these budgets were provisional and do not represent actual expenditure.

scientific budget. Deeming the research funded by the Foundation to be costly, with limited returns, the food company executives decided to support a reorientation of its activities. A Turning Point in Communication A discussion on “the future of the Foundation” was put on the agenda of the Board of Directors meeting in April 1975. The President of the Foundation introduced the item as follows: Should the foundation’s activity be limited to research? However important and desirable it may be to aid research, it would seem necessary for it to be extended to activities of information. At present, such activities are carried out by people who are sometimes poorly qualified and not always well-​intentioned. A working group was put in charge of making more specific recommendations. During the first meeting of this group, Robert Féron presented the activities of the British Nutrition Foundation and the American Nutrition Foundation. Both had significant communication activities targeting the general public, including the organization of radio and television debates. For Féron, the Foundation needed to become a “central information point” capable of providing “a critical analysis of contemporary scientific matters relating to nutrition”, while at the same time taking care to “never become involved in the controversies” raised by consumer associations.14 In January 1976, the working group submitted a memorandum setting out the actions it proposed: the creation of a monthly newsletter for members, the introduction of working groups on themes of interest to members, and finally the organization of information meetings and symposia open to an outside public. These proposals were supported by the food companies, who wanted the Foundation to help them anticipate the issues that might be taken up

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  97 by consumer associations and provide them with ready-​made responses –​ and the greater the pressure from the UFC, the stronger their support. In 1976, the UFC published a guide on food additives and advised consumers to avoid “processed” foodstuffs that contained colorants, preservatives, antioxidants, or flavor enhancers.15 It especially targeted colorants, deeming them to be unnecessary and calling for them to be boycotted. Conversely, the academics were divided. Some of them maintained a scientistic stance: in the name of science, the Foundation’s mission should be to fight misconceptions and exaggerations such as those supposedly propagated by consumer associations in relation to food additives. This was the position held by Henri Bour, who felt that the Foundation should combat the “untruths” that were appearing on a daily basis “in the press and on the airwaves” and “impose itself on public opinion and opinion-​makers”. Other academics such as Jean Trémolières and Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel were more hesitant on the issue of public relations: the Foundation’s mission had to be to fund research and should not intervene in the public arena, especially on matters that were the object of scientific debate. Initially, the position defended by Jean Trémolières and Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel prevailed. In April 1976, the only decision made was that of creating a monthly newsletter for members. However, three factors led to the balance of power evolving in favor of the food companies and of the academics who supported them. First of all, the food companies refined their arguments: actions of communication would not impede support for research, as they would contribute toward the emergence of new areas of research and encourage public authorities to finance them. In May 1977, during a meeting of the Board of Directors, René Jenny, CEO of Nestlé’s subsidiary in France, explained that the aim of the Foundation should be “to encourage new research through public relations activities” and warned to not “put the cart before the horse”. Secondly, Jean Trémolières died unexpectedly in July 1976: with his passing, Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel found himself isolated against the academics and food company executives who defended a scientistic line, leading him to express his desire to leave the Foundation. Finally, due to the increase in the number of members and the rise of membership fees, the Foundation’s budget almost doubled between 1975 and 1977 (see Table 4.3). This initially made it possible to finance new activities without having to appropriate the funds earmarked for research support. The shift toward a policy more in line with the expectations of the food companies was confirmed during the discussions that took place following a request from the Secretary of State for consumer affairs. In February 1975, she suggested that under her patronage, the Foundation should organize “a symposium bringing together consumers, academics, and food companies, in order to jointly examine, and where necessary demystify, a certain number of problems that were causing considerable

89

98  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet commotion in the press16”. Although she abandoned this project, the CEO of Nestlé France and the Deputy Director of ILEC felt that the Foundation should organize this symposium, as it “corresponds precisely to what the manufacturers expect from the Foundation”. In order to avoid the symposium turning into a confrontation between the food companies and consumer representatives, the Foundation’s President proposed that consumers’ opinions be collected by means of a survey. He asked one of France’s biggest opinion poll companies, SOFRES, for a quote. The cost of the survey frightened both the academics and the food company executives, leading ILEC’s Deputy Director to ask, for example, “whether there is not a disproportion between the 220,000 francs given to an opinion poll organization that will work for three months and the Foundation’s research budget of 330,000 francs”. The CEO of Nestlé France nevertheless supported this initiative, reasoning that since the symposium was a “public relations operation”, it was vital that the survey be carried out by a reputable organization. The financing of this survey set an important precedent: as of 1977, the Board of Directors voted that every year a sum of 200,000 francs would be allocated to public relations actions. As stated in the minutes of a meeting of the Board of Directors in May 1977, this was in keeping “with the framework of the Foundation’s realigned policy”, which was not only to fund research but also to take part in public debate. This realignment caused major tensions among the academics, as Gérard Debry, Chairman of the Foundation’s Scientific Committee since Trémolières’ death, explained in a letter to the President in June 1977: “The academics have the impression that the orientation [of the Foundation’s activity] is increasingly turned towards using scientists to cover up the industry’s wrongdoings”. Some among them decided to distance themselves. In 1978 and 1979, Gérard Debry and Hugues Gounelle de Pontanel (then Vice President of the Foundation) resigned. They were replaced by leading figures who supported the directions the Foundation was taking: nutritionist Henri Dupin, who had taken Jean Trémolières’ chair at the CNAM after his death, became Chairman of the Scientific Committee, and Henri Bour was appointed Vice President of the Foundation. Implementation of a “Realigned Policy” The Foundation’s “realigned policy” was implemented by a new committee, the “Communication Group”, formed in April 1978. Although it was made up equally of industry representatives and academics, there was clearly greater commitment from the former than from the latter. Only two academics regularly attended the meetings: Henri Dupin and Henri Bour. The main activities developed by the Foundation between 1978 and 1982 were designed to increase its visibility, to extend and support its networks, and to influence the nutritional knowledge disseminated

9

From Research Funding to Public Relations  99 to certain professionals. As far as the first objective was concerned, the Communication Group’s first initiative was to organize “mini-​ communication symposia”, the main purpose of which was to encourage food companies to join the Foundation. Seven of these were organized before being cancelled due to a lack of participants. Another initiative was more successful. In 1978, the Foundation’s new President, a pediatrician and professor of medicine, suggested the creation of an annual award, to be presented by a high-​profile personality in front of an assembly of journalists and a carefully selected audience, in order to “seek maximum promotional action in favor of the foundation”. The first year was considered a success. One hundred and fifty people attended the ceremony, in the presence of the Secretary of State for research, to whom the President of the Foundation was at that time an advisor. Not only did the award ceremony increase the Foundation’s visibility, but it also made it possible to reward or even recruit academics, executives from research organizations, and senior civil servants into its bodies at a modest cost. Since 1979, the Foundation had also been organizing events aimed at bringing academics and food companies together on targeted subjects. These “scientific” symposia, which covered subjects that were a matter of controversy at that time (such as fats, sweeteners, additives, dietary guidelines, etc.) were more successful than the “communication” symposia. In 1981, the Foundation decided to devote more resources to these events. In 1982, two scientific symposia were organized, lasting two and three days, respectively, and involving both presentations by academics and round tables with food companies. As the Communication Group focused on the issue of the Foundation’s reputation and on the organization of exchanges between academics and food companies, the work of informing and raising the awareness of “intermediary circles” became secondary. As of 1981, the members of the Communication Group were to repeatedly discuss this issue. Unlike its British and American counterparts, the Foundation did not have the resources to carry out large-​scale communication operations. The decision was therefore taken to focus on “relay” professions, i.e., on professional groups capable of relaying the Foundation’s messages on the safety and the nutritional soundness of industrial foodstuffs to a wider audience. Not only would this be less expensive, but such groups were considered to be more credible to the public than the food companies and more receptive to science-​based messages. They would therefore permit a more effective dissemination of the Foundation’s messages. At a symposium organized by the Foundation in 1980, Henri Dupin explained: It is obvious that there is a huge interest in nutrition. We have to see which group of people is best placed to provide information. Some groups have been mentioned today: teachers and social workers. These groups must obviously be credible. As things stand, manufacturers cannot fill this role because people do not trust them.

01

100  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet The Foundation initially decided to focus on three professions: social and family counseling, pharmacy, and journalism. It abandoned the idea of producing and disseminating content for teachers, partly due to the cost of such an operation and partly because another organization funded by the agri-​food industry had already begun to do this. However, it did not cease all actions targeting educational circles: in 1982, the Communication Group defended the idea that “the role of the FFN could be to give an opinion on the various documents and books published on nutrition and food”, including school and university textbooks –​given that nutrition education had become compulsory in medical schools in 1980. The reorientation of the Foundation’s activities in 1977–​1978 had a very clear impact on its budget (see Table 4.3). Operating and public relations expenditure amounted to more than half of the Foundation’s budget –​more than two thirds if one includes expenditure relating to the organization of symposia and the cost of the Foundation’s award, which were for communication purposes. On the other hand, the level of subsidies paid to research teams fell sharply: in constant francs, it fell by half between 1975 and 1982. In 1978, the Foundation even decided to stop awarding grants (considered to be too costly) to young researchers and to only allow funding for research teams. This led to disappointment among the academics, who felt that public funds for nutrition research were insufficient and that the Foundation should do more to support research. But given the Foundation’s reduced resources and the now significant level of operating and public relations expenses, this remained no more than wishful thinking.

Conclusion: Capturing and Neutralizing Matters of Public Debate The French Nutrition Foundation, as it operated from the early 1980s onward, was the result of a process that can be broken down into three stages. The first (1972–​1973) was the mobilization of a small number of large agri-​food companies to create an organization ready to fight consumer associations on their own ground, that of information. To this end, although it was dependent on corporate funding, this new organization had to appear to be formally independent of the companies involved. The food company executives who created the Foundation felt that they could not themselves intervene on public health issues, as they would not be credible and would come across as simply wanting to defend their products. Only recognized academics could develop positions that would be authoritative and disqualify what were deemed to be the “irrational” positions of consumer associations. A specific socio-​historical context, marked by major protests against corporations and a strengthening of regulations protecting consumers, led some food companies to believe they could no longer defend themselves on their own, nor do so in their own name.

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  101 This context has benefited the academics that these manufacturers wished to enroll, with some of them attempting to negotiate their support. This second stage (1973–​1976) was initiated by Jean Trémolières, who took advantage of his central position in the field of nutrition in France and of his popularity with the general public. He succeeded in obtaining an increase in the Foundation’s budget, which was mainly used to fund research projects and grants. His death triggered a third stage (1976–​ 1982): the food company executives took advantage of the existing dissensions between academics and the attachment of several among them to a scientistic conception according to which the Foundation should intervene in the public arena to counter misconceptions about food and refocused the Foundation’s activity on scientific monitoring and public relations. Between 1972 and 1982, the Foundation’s missions evolved. At first, they were essentially oriented toward the funding of research, and it was thus seen as a philanthropic organization. But as of 1976, its activities became more like those of a think tank, designed to influence public debate. The French Nutrition Foundation can therefore be analyzed as a negotiated order, in as much as it was the result of successive negotiations, the outcome of which depended both on the power relationship between the protagonists and on their commitment. In this case, business circles ended up imposing the rules of the game. The only academics to remain loyal to the FFN were those who agreed to play by these rules and accept their consequences, giving up a certain amount of their professional autonomy in the hope of a greater public impact or of accessing the food companies’ data. While early on some academics voiced their concerns about the FFN’s independence from the food companies, most of the others followed an exit strategy. Once it was clear the FFN would not operate primarily as a funding agency, the risk of compromising their independence exceeded the benefits to be gained from their participation. These negotiations illustrate the complicated arrangements between academics and corporate funders, which cannot be described simply in terms of “selling out” and “buying” science but must be assessed in each case according to specific professional and institutional parameters. The case of the FFN testifies to the protean mobilization of business circles in the 1970s, which resulted in the creation of new organizations that aim to promote corporate interests under the guise of science and expertise (Plehwe 2014; Miller and Dinan 2015). Unlike the definitions often used to characterize think tanks, their action is not necessarily directed toward public authorities but can also target other audiences: academics, journalists, teachers, health-​care professionals, social workers, etc. Even more than the content of public policies, it is the social world and its materiality that they aim to transform over the long term, by attempting to modify the categories through which we perceive and analyze it. These

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102  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet organizations operate under a wide range of legal statutes or names (institute, foundation, observatory, research center, etc.) which sometimes change over the course of their existence: in 1990, the FFN thus became an “institute”, before presenting itself as an endowment “fund” in 2010, and as a “foundation” again in 2021. Therefore, while these organizations have certain features in common, as far as their articles of association are concerned, they are characterized by a “structural blurriness” which makes them all the less identifiable by the public (Medvetz 2012). Considering its small budget, modest size, and the few staff assigned to it, one might wonder about the point of studying an organization such as the FFN and the influence it might have had. Yet more than forty-​five years after its creation, it still exists and has had a range of legal statuses as it has grown and diversified its activities –​carrying out studies at the government’s request, for example. Taken in isolation, the FFN has probably not had any decisive impact on food-​ related debates and public policies. But at the same time, FFN member companies have founded or supported other similar organizations in France and other Western countries, that sometimes operate on a global scale –​such as the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). For example, Nestlé has not only played an active role in the FFN; it also created its own corporate foundation –​the Nestlé Foundation (in 1966) –​and its own research center, the Nestlé Nutrition Institute (established in 1981). It also participates as a sustaining member in the British Nutrition Foundation (1967), the ILSI (1978), the International Food Information Council (1985), and the European Food Information Council (1995). Just like the FFN, and with the exception of the largest among them, these organizations operate with modest resources and essentially focus on media and scientific monitoring, communication activities, or the organization of events that help them to maintain their networks. In other words, think tanks in the food industry help to disseminate knowledge that reduces food problems to their technical dimensions, capturing and neutralizing matters of public debate. The moderate stance they take against the “alarmist” discourse of consumer associations or the media makes it possible to pass off the indecision and neutralization of critics as the apparent objectivity of a science of synthesis, which is reminiscent of the production of ignorance strategies implemented in other industrial sectors (Markowitz and Rosner 2002; Proctor 2011; Vogel 2013). Taking advantage of or even fueling scientific controversies, they can prolong uncertainty on the most sensitive subjects and oppose attempts to regulate their activities. To understand the influence exerted through them by agri-​food companies, it is the combined work of all of these organizations that needs to be studied, so as to grasp the entire field (Medvetz 2012) or network (Plehwe 2014) of relationships that they cover and which make them effective over the long term.

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  103

Notes 1 The research on which this chapter is based was funded by the Agence nationale de la recherche (French National Research Agency, ANR-​ 18-​ CE26-​ 0016). Thanks to Christopher Hinton for his translating assistance. 2 In 1970, Ralph Nader published The Chemical Feast, a report which denounced the harmful consequences of industrializing food production. It was translated and published in French in 1972. 3 Que Choisir ?, no. 78, July 1973. 4 Ibid. 5 ILEC was founded in 1959 on the initiative of the CEO of Astra, a subsidiary of the Unilever group in the field of cooking oils and margarines. Initially, the companies that were members of ILEC essentially belonged to the food, toiletries, and cosmetics sectors (Bulletin de l’ILEC, no. 403, 2009). 6 Subsidiaries of the same group are considered here to be part of the same company. 7 Handwritten notes, October 1972. 8 At the time, use of the term “foundation” was not regulated in France. The only regulated term was “foundation recognized of public utility”, which gave rise to special tax advantages. 9 Except where indicated, all of the quotes in this chapter are taken from FFAS archives. 10 The Institut national d’hygiène, a leading institution for public research in the field of medicine and public health, became the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM) in 1964. 11 According to an undated GLN memorandum. 12 According to a 1973 ILEC memorandum. 13 The Foundation was provided with free premises by ILEC. 14 According to the minutes of the working group’s first meeting in October 1975. 15 Que Choisir ?, no. 106, April 1976. 16 Lettre d’information from the Foundation, May 1976.

References Abbott, Andrew Delano. 2001. Time Matters: On Theory and Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Belasco, Warren James. 1989. Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 1966–​1988. New York: Pantheon Books. Besson, Danielle. 2008. “Le repas depuis 45 ans: moins de produits frais, plus de plats préparés”. INSEE Première 1208. www.epsilon.insee.fr/​jspui/​handle/​1/​ 41. Blumer, Herbert. 1962. “Society as Symbolic Interaction”. In Human Behavior and Social Processes, edited by Arnold M. Rose, 179–​ 192. Boston: Houghton-​Mifflin. Bonneuil, Christophe, and Thomas Frédéric. 2009. Gènes, pouvoirs et profits. Recherche publique et régimes de production des savoirs de Mendel aux OGM. Versailles: Quae. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas. 2019. Gouverner un monde toxique. Versailles: Quae.

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104  Depecker, Déplaude, and Larchet Callon, Michel, and John Law. 1982. “On Interests and Their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-​enrolment”. Social Studies of Science 12: 615–​625. Caré, Sébastien. 2010. Les libertariens aux États-​Unis. Sociologie d’un mouvement asocial. Rennes: Presses Universitaire de Rennes. Chamayou, Grégoire. 2018. La société ingouvernable. Une généalogie du libéralisme autoritaire. Paris: La Fabrique Éditions. Chatriot, Alain. 2006. “Consumers’ Association and the State: Protection and Defense of the Consumer in France, 1950–​2000”. In The Expert Consumer: Associations and Professionals in Consumer Society, edited by Alain Chatriot, Marie-​Emmanuelle Chessel, and Matthew Hilton, 123–​136. London: Ashgate. Daumas, Jean-​Claude. 2006. “Consommation de masse et grande distribution. Une révolution permanente (1957–​2005)”. Vingtième Siècle. Revue D’histoire 91(3): 57–​76. https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​ving.091.76. Degreef, Filip. 2019. “What’s the Deal with These Strange Substances in Our Food? The Representation of Food Additives by Belgian Consumer Organizations, 1960–​1995”. Food and Foodways 27(1–​2): 144–​163. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 07409710.2019.1591625. Denord, François. 2002. “Le prophète, le pèlerin et le missionnaire. La circulation internationale du néo-​libéralisme et ses acteurs”. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 145: 9–​20. https://​doi.org/​10.3406/​arss.2002.2794. Depecker, Thomas, and Marc-​ Olivier Déplaude. 2017. “Information et désinformation des consommateurs. La constitution d’un répertoire d’action consumériste dans les années 1960”. Terrains & Travaux 31: 21–​44. https://​ doi.org/​10.3917/​tt.031.0021. Fine, Gary Alan. 1984. “Negotiated Orders and Organizational Cultures”. Annual Review of Sociology 10(1): 239–​262. https://​doi.org/​10.1146/​annurev. so.10.080184.001323. James, Simon. 1993. “The Idea Brokers: The Impact of Think Tanks on British Government”. Public Administration 71(4): 491–​506. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ j.1467-​9299.1993.tb00988.x. Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. 2002. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution. Berkeley: University of California Press. McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2003. “Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative Movement’s Impact on U.S. Climate Change Policy”. Social Problems 50(3): 348–​373. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​sp.2003.50.3.348. McLevey, John. 2015. “Understanding Policy Research in Liminal Spaces: Think Tank Responses to Diverging Principles of Legitimacy”. Social Studies of Science 45(2): 270–​293. https://​doi.org/​10.1177%2F0306312715575054. Medvetz, Thomas. 2012. Think Tanks in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meyer, David S., and Suzanne Staggenborg. 1996. “Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity”. American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1628–​1660. https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​230869. Miller, David, and William Dinan. 2015. “Resisting Meaningful Action on Climate Change: Think Tanks, ‘Merchants of Doubt’ and the ‘Corporate Capture’ of Sustainable Development”. In The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, edited by Anders Hansen and J. Robert Cox, 96–​110. London: Routledge. https://​doi.org/​10.4324/​9781315887586.ch7. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury.

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From Research Funding to Public Relations  105 Pautz, Hartwig. 2012. Think-​ Tanks, Social Democracy and Social Policy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pinto, Louis. 2018. L’invention du consommateur. Sur la légitimité d’un marché. Paris: PUF. Plehwe, Dieter. 2014. “Think Tank Networks and the Knowledge–​Interest Nexus: The Case of Climate Change”. Critical Policy Studies 8(1): 101–​115. https://​ doi.org/​10.1080/​19460171.2014.883859. Plehwe, Dieter. 2015. “The Politics of Policy Think-​Tanks: Organizing Expertise, Legitimacy and Counter-​ Expertise in Policy Networks”. In Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, edited by Frank Fischer, Douglas Torgerson, Anna Durnová, and Michael Orsini, 358–​379. Cheltenham: Edward Elgard. https://​ doi.org/​10.4337/​9781783472352.00028. Plehwe, Dieter, Quinn Slobodian, and Philip Mirowski (eds). 2020. Nine Lives of Neoliberalism. London, New York: Verso. Proctor, Robert N. 2011. Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schlesinger, Philip, and Frédéric Junqua. 2012. “Expertise, politiques publiques et économie créative : le cas britannique”. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 193: 80–​95. https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​arss.193.0080. Schwartz, Antoine. 2010. “Les think tanks et la consolidation d’une vision économique du social”. Informations Sociales 157: 60–​68. https://​doi.org/​ 10.3917/​inso.157.0060. Shaw, Sara E., Jill Russell, Wayne Parsons, and Trisha Greenhalgh. 2015. “The View from Nowhere? How Think Tanks Work to Shape Health Policy”. Critical Policy Studies 9(1): 58–​77. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​19460171.2014.964278. Stahl, Jason. 2016. Right Moves: The Conservative Think Tank in American Political Culture since 1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Stone, Diane. 1996. Capturing the Political Imagination: Think Tanks and the Policy Process. London: Frank Cass. Stone, Diane. 2007. “Recycling Bins, Garbage Cans or Think Tanks? Three Myths Regarding Policy Analysis Institutes”. Public Administration 85(2): 259–​278. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1467-​9299.2007.00649.x. Stone, Diane. 2015. “Think Tanks”. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, second edition, edited by James D. Wright, 294–​299. Oxford: Elsevier. Strauss, Anselm, Leonard Schatzman, Danuta Ehrlich, Rue Bucher, and Melvin Sabshin. 1963. “The Hospital and Its Negotiated Order”. In The Hospital in Modern Society, edited by Eliot Freidson, 147–​169. New York: Free Press. Tchilingirian, Jordan Soukias. 2018. “Producing Knowledge, Producing Credibility: British Think-​Tank Researchers and the Construction of Policy Reports”. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 31(2): 161–​ 178. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s10767-​018-​9280-​3. Vogel, David. 1983. “The Power of Business in America: A Re-​ appraisal”. British Journal of Political Science 13(1): 19–​43. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ S0007123400003124. Vogel, Sarah A. 2013. Is It Safe? BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weaver, Kent R. 1989. “The Changing World of Think Tanks”. PS: Political Science & Politics 22(3): 563–​578. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​419623.

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5  From Public Problem to Quiet Politics? When US Insurers Mobilized for Automobile Safety Regulation(1959–​1974) Stève Bernardin

Introduction Traffic safety is a textbook case for the analysis of public problems in the United States.1 Most significantly, scholars have used it to shed light on the processes through which a private, primarily personal issue (such as drinking at home), becomes public, widely shared, and visible to a large audience, with specific public policy programs dedicated to its treatment (as in the case of drinking and driving). Joseph Gusfield has stressed the significant efforts that were made to depersonalize and universalize the issue, through science and the law (Gusfield 1981). In my PhD thesis, I shifted the focus away from scientists and legal experts, to instead pay attention to corporate actors, namely car manufacturers and insurers (Bernardin 2014). Were they crucial to the construction of accidents as a public problem in the United States? Did they perform intense lobbying, work with activists, or invest in scientific investigation, for instance, to promote their own definition of traffic safety? Did their practices change significantly over time, or did they remain the same over the years? These questions led me beyond the traditional scope of the sociology of public issues, to learn from other analytical currents interested in the study of economic interest groups (Courty 2006). This allowed me to critically examine the conditions that make it possible for corporate actors to publicize their demands and the political ends that this publicization can serve, as compared to what they stand to gain from discreet forms of lobbying and quiet politics (Culpepper 2011). This approach broadened the scope of analysis of corporate action, to include practices by economic actors that are usually neglected, which play out in highly visible media or political forums (Offerlé 1998 [1994]; Bernardin 2014; Déplaude 2014; Bernardin and Neveu 2018). It also led me to pay attention to some possible competition among interest groups and thus to go beyond the usual assumption of unity of corporate leaders making their claims public (Smith 2000; Baudrin 2018). Finally, the approach helped me DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-6

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  107 to analyze the degree of professional specialization of actors seeking to express themselves publicly, as well as the knowledge available to them to do so (Bartley 2007; Walker 2014). That was how I decided to combine the study of interest groups with the sociology of public problems. In this chapter, I chose to study the history of the public problem of traffic safety across many social spaces, placing equal emphasis on media exposure and bureaucratic discretion (Gilbert and Henry 2012). I focus more specifically on the role of insurers in the history of the problem, from the late 1950s to the mid-​1970s, when they pushed the issue of automobile safety regulation in the United States. The analysis is based on archival sources and documents obtained from public and private organizations. I consulted the archives at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park (Maryland), which afforded me a textured viewpoint on the mechanisms behind the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the mid-​1960s. I also obtained open access to a large number of unpublished technical reports and administrative memoranda at the main library of the US Department of Transportation in Washington, DC. I collected additional sources from a national association of insurers specialized in road safety, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), based in Arlington (Virginia). My analysis is organized into two main sections. The first section shows how insurers’ mobilization shifted from public spaces to private arenas during the 1960s, thus affording them indirect control of the administrative body that regulated automobile safety in the United States. The analysis highlights the measures that allowed corporate actors to become central to certain advisory committees which proved to be crucial in the regulatory process. It also reveals the resources invested by these actors to develop an organization responsible for the scientific and legal monitoring of automobile regulation. The second section of the analysis sheds light on an important change in the remobilization of economic elites, when they switched from technical and specialized forums to more visible media and political arenas. Insurers thus mobilized against automobile safety deregulation in the 1970s, first through the courtrooms, where automobile manufacturers challenged regulators, and then through the press, together with consumer organizations. This analysis, in sum, shows a broad spectrum of possible actions for insurers to mobilize. It also underlines their capacity to adapt to ever-​changing criticism and ultimately to master the terms of the debate on traffic safety and automobile regulation.

From Public Problem to Quiet Politics: Paving the Road for Vehicle Regulation The first part of the analysis looks back on a major scandal related to the denunciation of safety risks inherent to all vehicles manufactured and

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108 Bernardin sold in the United States in the 1960s. A large number of sociologists and political scientists have examined the rationale that drove activists to criticize the safety of automobiles in the name of consumer protection, several decades before the obligation to install seatbelts or airbags in vehicles became a standard practice. This scandal was all the more remarkable that it opposed –​apparently –​isolated consumer spokespersons to – supposedly –​powerful automobile manufacturers, which were very quickly destabilized by the intensity of the criticism leveled at them. The narrative is well known to anyone interested in the social history of automobile regulation in the United States. It does not, however, fully take into account the broader economic and political configuration that led not only consumer spokespersons but also insurers to mobilize in favor of automobile safety after the Second World War. The section above is an attempt to shed light on this part of the story. It shows that initially insurers tried in vain to persuade automobile manufacturers to change their practices. This led them to support large-​scale public protest by consumer spokespersons in the United States. The result was a new public issue to be addressed by the federal government, namely, automobile safety, which insurers subsequently sought to promote and defend against criticism over the long term, even when media coverage faded. Promoting Change in Political Arenas: From Traffic Safety to Auto Safety Ralph Nader is often presented as a mythical figure in the political and social life of the United States. Many people know him as the Green Party candidate for the presidential elections in 1996 and 2000 and later as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Nader was the youngest of four children, born in 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, who were Lebanese immigrants, owned a neighborhood restaurant when he received a scholarship to study at Princeton University. He studied Eastern languages and the critical thinking of Herbert Marcuse and Charles W. Mills. Nader became interested in automobile safety shortly afterward, as he began studying law at Harvard University in 1958. At the time, the country was experiencing its golden age of mass automobility. At the end of the war, almost one worker out of six was employed by an automobile company or by one of their subcontractors. General Motors was the global leader in terms of profits. Automobiles were therefore at the core of the country’s economic and social activity (Seiler 2008). Nader started to openly criticize the lack of safety of vehicles manufactured in the United States in the late 1950s. His first public papers appeared in the back pages of weekly magazines. They built on technical reports to insist on manufacturers’ indifference to the research carried out on vehicle safety at Cornell and Harvard. The young lawyer’s fight followed a long tradition of investigative journalism focusing on the uncovering of manipulations of consumers by the economic elites.

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  109 His research culminated in the publication of his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which decried the opacity of manufacturing practices with regard to automobile safety. In-​depth research allowed him to compare the studies carried out by automobile manufacturers with those initiated by researchers at Cornell and Harvard, following some early work by pioneers Hugh DeHaven and Ross A. McFarland.2 Nader concluded that manufacturers had tried to conceal safety issues, to focus rather on style, design, or production costs of the vehicles (Nader 1965, 171–​188). To him, university research was a crucial source of information to move away from the myopic view that drivers alone –​whether under the influence of alcohol or not –​were the main cause of accidents. Nader shared this conclusion in several press articles, even before the publication of his 1965 book.3 His words quickly found an unexpected echo, primarily as the result of a discovery that contributed to the explosion of the media scandal: the young lawyer surprised a detective hired to follow him and investigate his personal life. It turned out that the detective was employed by one of the senior executives of the country’s leading automobile company, General Motors. This discovery caused an outcry among journalists in the national press. The young lawyer came to embody the fight of an isolated man against an industrial giant, like a modern David versus Goliath. In 1965 and 1966, the members of Congress took up the issue to enact an unprecedented law to strictly regulate automobile safety and make it compulsory for all manufacturers. This story appears quite simple and straightforward. It assigns some clear and unambiguous roles to each of the actors of the debate, while echoing the founding myth of the weak opposing the powerful. Yet a more detailed analysis reveals a different reality, as explained in my thesis (Bernardin 2014, 170–​ 265). While Nader did certainly contribute to some degree to putting the issue on the political agenda, this was not exclusively due to his investigative talents or to the blunder of a detective. He did in fact benefit from some insurers’ long-​ standing efforts to improve automobile safety. These corporate actors, trained as scientists and engineers most often, had attended some of the leading US universities. As an example, Francis J. Crandell was an engineer who graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1927. He worked in mining and highway tunnel construction before joining one of the country’s largest insurance companies, Liberty Mutual, in 1935. Despite his innovative mind and sound reputation, he remained an outsider in the insurance industry, where lawyers and actuaries usually took the lead. New players in the insurance domain, such as Crandell, sought to distinguish themselves from their colleagues and competitors alike by exploring new scientific methods aimed, above all, at reducing the compensation paid to the victims of accidents and more specifically the most serious accidents. Their mobilization did not prove simple. To make it clear, it is necessary to briefly review the state of the insurance market in

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110 Bernardin the United States. The very few papers dealing with this topic describe a sector that was relatively prosperous and profitable from the 1920s until the 1930s. At the time, there were agreements between the country’s main insurers to limit competition by establishing high premiums. Their directors were given an exemption from antitrust laws, to try to stabilize a market deemed excessively unstable (O’Connell 1971, 74). Limited competition thus ensured significant profits for insurers, of which several dozens existed during the 1930s. This situation changed in the postwar period: the end of petroleum and gas rationing was accompanied by an unprecedented enthusiasm for driving vehicles (Rae 1984, 161). The prospect of new profits started to gain attraction among insurers in the automobile sector. As a result, some of the companies’ leaders that until then had been secondary in terms of profits came up with the idea of breaking “out of the old non-​competitive mold and began to compete on the basis of lower prices” (O’Connell 1971, 74–​75). It was at this precise moment in time and in this very specific configuration that the mobilization of outsiders in the insurance world, like Francis Crandell, took shape. Indeed, Crandell encouraged university research aimed at reducing the severity of the injuries caused by collisions. The aim was to reduce the duration of disability as well as the amount of compensation paid to the seriously injured, for whom treatment and care typically took several years, or even several decades, covered by insurers. Instead of reducing the occurrence of accidents themselves (through education or awareness campaigns), the primary goal therefore became to reduce the occurrence of the most serious accidents, both for drivers and for passengers (through projects to overhaul the design of the vehicles at the time, by installing safety equipment and by using new automobile manufacturing materials). A new public health approach thus emerged, removed from previous road safety priorities (Gangloff 2006). This approach spawned concrete proposals submitted to vehicle manufacturers at meetings and professional talks. Yet instead of follow-​ up, there was often indifference or even disdain directed at the university researchers who dared to explore topics that had until then been the exclusive domain of vehicle manufacturers. A change in position among insurers was also apparent at the time, with the creation in 1959 of a key organization financed by the three main insurance industry associations: the IIHS. This organization initially had a limited workforce. However, its management committee included the representatives of the country’s main insurance companies. These companies provided it with a large budget that allowed it to make significant investments in academic research, both at Cornell and at Harvard. The results were then passed on to institutional officials and consumer spokespersons. The insurers of the IIHS thus contributed to producing and disseminating new knowledge that was easy to appropriate and was taken up by spokespersons such as Nader, who were able to bring these companies’ recommendations to public attention.

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  111 This is significant, for it highlights the relatively early mobilization of insurers to reframe the public issue of automobile safety, before the development of large-​scale media coverage brought the issue of road safety into the public eye in the United States. During the Congressional Hearings starting in 1965, participants highlighted university research that tended to demonstrate that safety improvements were possible, at the expense of an in-​depth overhaul of the manufacturing processes of automobiles sold on the North American market (Halpern 1972). They also stressed the shortcomings in the decisions made by the public authorities up until then, which had made changes in driving behavior a top priority, despite the fact that government officials were not capable of demonstrating the scientific validity of the education or repression programs that they had been offering for several decades. This was how, and when, “traffic” safety changed into “automobile” safety at the federal level. From this perspective, the Nader “moment” became the tipping point of a large-​ scale mobilization organized over the long term by insurers who had recognized the failure of their initial attempts to establish a dialogue with automobile manufacturers. Shaping Rules Through Advisory Committees: Technical Standards as the Priority Insurers’ mobilization changed with the creation, in 1966, of a federal vehicle regulation department, the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB).4 Media coverage subsided. Nader and consumer associations left the debates, satisfied with the government’s decision to create a public body dedicated to creating new automobile safety standards. However, IIHS insurers remained mobilized to confront resistance that they had not anticipated within the government itself. To understand how they mobilized here, we need to first consider the specific configuration that accompanied the creation of the NHSB. This is where the magnitude of the task to be carried out by new government employees becomes apparent, as well as the extent of the task falling on insurers themselves. They were faced with the imperative of creating a bureaucratic clean slate as a result of discreet yet burdensome internal opposition at the bureau. Everything appeared to point to the conclusion of the public debate on automobile safety in the mid-​1960s. Following the decision by Congress to create a new government body, a renowned scientist, William Haddon Jr., was appointed as its director. Haddon was born on 24 May 1926 in Orange, New Jersey. In 1966, he had gained scientific credibility, as well as bureaucratic ability to handle political issues. Haddon had studied science at the MIT, before he graduated from Harvard with a Doctorate in Medicine in 1953 and Master of Public Health in 1957. Trained alongside a pioneer in the epidemiological approach to the issue of accidents, Ross A. McFarland, Haddon worked as a microbiology research assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1955 to 1956 before taking

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112 Bernardin up an internship at the New York State Health Department from 1957 to 1961. He was later appointed director of the state’s epidemiological research program. At the time, he published the results of his research in leading scientific journals and enjoyed undeniable recognition. At the announcement of his appointment as the director of NHSB, however, many expressed misgivings. Some bureaucrats were anxious about a newcomer developing new traffic safety perspectives within the federal administration. The engineers of the Bureau of Public Roads in particular had been responsible for building and maintaining the country’s main roads for more than a century. At the time of the creation of the NHSB, the engineers enjoyed a legitimacy that the Second World War had reaffirmed. The war had highlighted the need for political leaders to always have well-​maintained roadways to swiftly transport their troops to the country’s seaports and airports (Seely 1987). These engineers feared, however, that significant changes in their duties would be made with the redefinition of traffic safety priorities, which could specifically lead to a reduction in funding for building and maintaining roads. Their fears seemed altogether reasonable, considering that they were soon criticized by Haddon’s close associates, who wrote them off as “more a matter of armchair expertise and local option than of scientific study” (Mosher 1967, 77). Faced with the engineers, Haddon, the new head of NHSB, proposed a review of all present, past, and future traffic safety programs undertaken at the federal level. In 1967, he thus called for streamlining public policy to allow for an effective evaluation of alternative proposals for allocating resources.5 His aim was to compare the effectiveness of existing programs with those envisaged for the future, with a view to ranking current priorities and definitively legitimizing the development of vehicle regulation activities. This was at the expense of the decisions of previous governments that had prioritized road construction or investment in raising drivers’ awareness and accountability. The approach did not go against the specific goals of insurers; on the contrary, it conveyed a desire to institutionalize a public health approach that was dear to them, as noted above. The NHSB was, however, largely understaffed, especially during the first months of its existence, which prevented the implementation of Haddon’s program. Haddon drew on legislation to impose his approach. More specifically, he organized the establishment of advisory committees to the NHSB, which were officially created to help guide automobile safety policies by representing the main stakeholders concerned by future regulations. Manufacturers and insurers in particular were present and invited to express their opinion on the subject. The predominant basis of their arguments was neither manufacturing constraints nor financial issues, but rather science and, more specifically, public health advocated by automobile safety reformers following the 1965 and 1966 hearings. Insurers furthermore made their claims through Thomas F. Malone, president of the

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  113 IIHS research committee. Like Haddon, Malone had studied at MIT after receiving his engineering degree at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He was awarded his PhD in 1946 before working as a researcher for several years, later accepting the position of vice president of research at one of the country’s main insurance companies, Travelers Insurance, in 1955. Immediately afterward, he became a member of the IIHS’ board of directors, before being invited to sit alongside Haddon at the NHSB.6 Reformers essentially surrounded themselves with people won over to their cause, who shared the same conception of science in the service of government action. The insurers of the IIHS, through people like Malone, thus contributed to eliminating powerful bureaucratic resistance, no longer by financing university research, like in the immediate postwar period, but by controlling the advisory committees established by law. This process captures the first transformation in the mobilization of these companies, which transitioned from seeking visibility to far more discreet efforts. It allows us to understand how a symbiosis formed between certain economic elites (represented by IIHS insurers) and certain bureaucrats (like Haddon), who shared the same initial career path –​in this case scientific as opposed to financial or legal –​which had begun at the country’s most prestigious universities, such as Harvard or MIT. This atypical symbiosis can ultimately be understood at the crossroads of two spaces: the economic arena (with insurers facing off against manufacturers) and the bureaucratic arena (with safety reformers opposing incumbent bureaucrats). Protecting Regulation from Political Dissent: When Evaluation Means Delegation The symbiosis between certain insurers and certain bureaucrats was consolidated at the end of the 1960s. It also changed substantially with a call for the more exclusive delegation of the issue of automobile safety to public health specialists. At the time, the prevailing rationale was very different from that presiding over the construction of the public issue of the danger of vehicles a few years earlier, which had essentially taken place in the media. Revisiting the political configuration of the period in question sheds light on this. At the time, automobile regulation appeared to be threatened by the shift in political power that brought Republican Richard Nixon to the presidency, following the two Democratic presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Discreet agreements against established practices could thus ensue. Haddon himself, the director of NHSB, anticipated this change by leaving the federal government before President Nixon appointed his successor. His fears did appear to be grounded, for at the time of his appointment, Douglas W. Toms announced that he would prioritize education and repression at the expense of vehicle regulation.7

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114 Bernardin The career path of the new NHSB director explains how his stance differed from Haddon’s recommendations. In short, Toms had no academic prestige, unlike the scientist that he was replacing, and had not been educated at a renowned university. Born in 1930 in a small town near Detroit, the cradle of the automotive industry in the United States, he worked as a primary schoolteacher from 1949 to 1958 before signing up for a bachelor’s degree in economics at Central Michigan University. He later obtained a master’s degree in management at Michigan State University, at the same time as working as a driving instructor to finance his studies, before becoming a lecturer at California State College in Los Angeles from 1960 to 1964. He then developed activities as a consultant specialized in traffic analysis and later held the position of Director of Motor Vehicles of the State of Washington four years prior to being appointed director of the NHSB by President Nixon. The different career paths of the former NHSB director and his successor are very significant, showing how a candidate with a management and financial background replaced a senior official primarily recognized for his scientific legitimacy in the domain of public health. Haddon’s emphasis on science was replaced with Toms’ emphasis on morality, which initially prioritized education and repression as opposed to regulating vehicle safety. After leaving the Bureau, the former NHSB director nevertheless found an ideal position from which to criticize his successor’s decisions. In exchange for complete freedom of speech as well as significant grants for university research, Haddon accepted the position of president of the IIHS in 1969. Malone was one of the first to support his candidacy with the group of insurers. As a member of the board of directors of the IIHS, Malone considered Haddon to be a guarantee of the organization’s enhanced credibility. Furthermore, he knew that the former senior official shared the goal of increasing rather than decreasing the NHSB’s regulatory efforts. When he took up the position as head of the IIHS, in addition to being recognized as a leading scientist, Haddon also had thorough knowledge of the institutional inner workings of the field. He moreover endeavored to recruit his former government coworkers to the organization financed by the insurers. At the time, his goal was to turn the IIHS into “an independent, non-​ governmental force working for highway safety.”8 To do so, Haddon chose to increase funding for academic research. More precisely, he chose to increase the funding for university public health research that shared his theoretical and empirical beliefs. He furthermore worked on the controlled dissemination of the results of studies conducted in this sector, targeting Congress members sitting on federal transportation and traffic safety policy committees in the United States. Therefore, following Toms’ nomination, he particularly insisted on the importance of the scientific evaluation of the NHSB’s decisions, “in the public interest,” to combat any possibility “of bureaucratic encirclement, resource starvation, and an antiquated notion reflected in government

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  115 priority setting that nothing should or can be done to reduce the nation’s appalling highway losses.”9 The targeted appeal to Congress members proved to be particularly well aligned with the national priorities of the time. It urged Congress members to have a clear and rational view of the past, present, and future activities in the administration of automobile safety, following the same direction as the more general goal of rationalizing budget decisions put forward shortly beforehand by President Johnson (Wildavsky 1966, 293). Haddon therefore reminded actors outside of the NHSB –​namely Congress members –​of their legal obligations, inviting them to pay attention to the practices in effect within the institution. Moreover, he did so opportunely, insisting on the reaffirmed goal of rationalizing public decision making, to stress that only the scientific and technical evaluation of bureaucratic decisions was capable of guaranteeing the wise spending of public funds. By doing so, he tacitly defended the rationalization that he himself had contributed to developing at the heart of the NHSB, all the while calling for the controlled delegation of regulatory work to scientists, epidemiologists, and public health specialists, who in turn were capable of providing clarification to Congress. Haddon therefore worked to close the black box of the NHSB around his own priorities, which he henceforth explicitly shared with the insurers of the IIHS. The reaction of Toms, his successor as director of the NHSB, is in itself evidence of the success of the approach. Following Haddon’s proposals and against his own initial declarations, Toms eventually came to explicitly and totally discard the project to deregulate automobile safety. The case of the airbag is particularly interesting in this respect. At the beginning of the 1970s, and contrary to his own initial declarations on the subject, Toms supported their development, at a time when their installation was harshly criticized by the country’s automobile manufacturers. He thus came around to the academic arguments of Haddon and the insurers, to protect the consumers in the name of science.10 The new NHSB director effectively turned against auto manufacturers publicly by endorsing the constraint of evaluation established by his predecessor. Following a significant shift in the insurers’ positioning, from a search for media visibility to bureaucratic control, the black box of institutional work appeared to have been permanently closed around the priorities initially set by IIHS leaders. The process, however, did not prove so simple over the long run for automobile insurers.

From Quiet Politics to Public Problem: Resisting the Deregulation of Auto Safety The second section of my analysis reveals a reversal in the process studied above. In the 1970s, the goal of insurers was no longer to leave the most visible forums, and the media most notably, for the discreet inner workings of bureaucracy. On the contrary, they wanted to move

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116 Bernardin away from the specialized management of the issue of accidents to once again turn it into a large and collective issue receiving attention, and political attention in particular, to prevent automobile safety deregulation. Shedding light on this shift puts the emphasis on insurers’ potential forms of mobilization under constraint, which led them to mobilize no longer in favor of new public policies but rather to preserve a “status quo” that was equally difficult to defend (Henry 2005). It also reveals a sort of oscillation in insurers’ mobilization, between different forums of debate on automobile safety, which were either open to laypersons or reserved to recognized specialists of the subject. In sum, the analysis highlights the pendulum that IIHS insurers were never fully capable of controlling, from public problems to quiet politics and back again. It also underscores these insurers’ capacity to reposition themselves in line with political resistance or social reconfigurations that were potentially new to them, thanks to specific resources they were able to deploy in order to efficiently adapt to criticisms of automobile regulation at the federal level. I evidence this through an extended analysis of national traffic safety policies during the 1970s in the United States. This allows me to identify the emergence of new constraints imposed on insurers, through court cases that challenged the regulatory efforts that they had defended until then. A significant change in position thus took place, in favor of reopening the public debate, no longer in support of any specific regulation but to fight deregulation. Facing Legal Criticism: A Side Effect of Bureaucratic Isolation It is relevant to take a close look at the legal configuration of the mobilization of insurers to understand how they came to act strategically in the early 1970s. Indeed, a revision of bureaucratic rulemaking ensued from an unprecedented intervention of the courts in automobile regulation at the beginning of the decade. Some judges took the requirement of scientific and technical assessment of traffic safety policies at face value, demanding an increasing amount of evidence from bureaucrats. The threat of a long-​ lasting freeze in regulatory activities followed, unraveling the insurers’ earlier work. They consequently attempted once again to shift the forum of legitimate debate on accidents. In order to precisely understand how this repositioning occurred, it is necessary to revisit early attacks on automobile regulation through the courts, where car manufacturers demanded more time to adapt to the new regulatory requirements. In the early 1970s, in sum, manufacturers dissatisfied with vehicle regulations took legal action against the federal administration in charge of traffic safety. The law did indeed authorize them to call upon the courts for specific reasons, particularly with regard to a founding US legal text, the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. This law provided for plaintiffs’ right to appeal in the event of an incomplete

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  117 or invalid decision-​making process by federal bureaucrats. Therefore, manufacturers were able to appeal to the courts to repeal regulations if they considered the official motives to be “arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion” or as lacking “substantial evidence” (Jasanoff 1994 [1990], 54). They leveraged this legal provision against the NHSB, later renamed the NHTSA (in 1970). At the beginning of the decade, lawsuits multiplied against the requirement for automobile manufacturers to install “passive” safety devices, such as the airbag, not requiring the prior agreement of the driver in all of their vehicles (Vinsel 2011). Research by legal scholars and political scientists has already shown the strategies implemented by the various stakeholders in these court cases, whether they were government specialists or experts from the automotive sector (Graham 1989, 36–​87; Mashaw and Harfst, 1990). It is important here to note that manufacturers primarily denounced federal bureaucrats’ lack of consideration of the economic and industrial constraints characterizing their situation regarding passive safety devices. They considered that it was impossible for them to comply with the new regulations within the time frame they had been given and pointed to unachievable objectives set by institutional directors –​all in a legal tradition peculiar to the United States, where “performance” standards prevailed over “design” standards. Manufacturers had to produce vehicles capable of protecting an occupant from serious injuries during a head-​on collision at a given speed, for instance, all the while being free to choose the technical option most suited to this goal, which they saw as a real challenge (Wetmore 2004). They were initially given two years to implement passive safety standards, with the deadline of 1 January 1972. This deadline appeared, however, to be too soon to enable the development of a technology that was not only technically adequate but also and above all financially viable. This argument convinced the judges gathered together to rule on the issue. Yet, they went beyond simply extending the deadlines established by bureaucrats; they also suspended all of the NHTSA’s regulatory efforts for an indefinite period. In the grounds for their decision, the judges insisted on the importance of having scientific studies prior to enacting new regulations. They emphasized the need, in their opinion, for new research to be carried out on the protection of automobile users, in order to come to definitive conclusions with regard to the suitability of the regulations proposed, based on readings taken with measurement instruments and not subjective opinions.11 The decision by no means disqualified bureaucratic practices, in principle, as they were essentially based on research; it nonetheless had a significant practical effect on regulation.12 This ruling ultimately suggested that regulations should not be proposed until all potential uncertainties, including both technical and scientific ones, had been openly and definitively ruled out. While this decision may appear perfectly realistic and reasonable at face value, it failed to address the existence of the uncertainty

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118 Bernardin inherent to all scientific research on subjects or topics still in the process of emerging. Social science research has precisely identified the process at stake here, as in many other industrial domains, with the entities most concerned by the regulatory work –​most often manufacturers –​ pointing a finger at the tiniest scrap of uncertainty that could invalidate the regulations affecting them (Jas 2015; Henry 2017; Jouzel 2019). The production of doubt, in other words, became a way to slow down the rulemaking process, discreetly, in the name of a scientific ideal that could not exist. In the case of automobile safety regulation, a form of scientism embodied by the judges themselves set the scene for an effective suspension of regulatory activities. It led also to a re-​examination of all the standards already enacted with regard to the new constraints for producing scientific evidence that would not be subject to any doubt or uncertainty. The standardized installation of airbags, for instance, was delayed for several years. The argument of scientific specialization and the struggle against uncertainty or discretionary practices, in sum, became a threat to the regular pace of automobile safety regulation. It is even more important to note that quite the opposite initially prevailed, with IIHS insurers upholding science to fend off any attack on vehicle regulation by the late 1960s. This shows that they could never totally master the terms of the debate. Most strikingly, however, they were once again able to adapt quickly and efficiently to the new deal, to prevent automobile safety deregulation at the federal level. Framing Counterarguments: Regulation Beyond a Reasonable Doubt The insurers of the IIHS quickly sought to position themselves to adapt to the new bureaucratic and legal rules. They developed their scientific and technical monitoring activities and invested in the creation of a sister organization for the IIHS, the Highway Loss Data Institute. Founded in 1972, this organization’s goal was to collect data from insurance companies on traffic accidents. Key figures thus became accessible, for instance, on the types and severity of injuries observed or the amount of compensation paid out to the insured. Quantitative information was also available on the frequency of accidents among the different makes and models of vehicles manufactured in the United States. The analysis of these elements, along with data collected from university researchers, was intended to eliminate the uncertainty pointed out by the judges. As I shall now show, the information gathered by insurers was therefore not distributed or sent at random. The insurers collaborated first and foremost with federal bureaucrats to respond to the lawsuits filed by automobile manufacturers. The heads of the IIHS came therefore to take part in legal debates that were largely imposed on them. Unlike their automobile industry counterparts, they

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  119 turned to judges not to put a stop to regulatory activity but on the contrary to accelerate it, highlighting the data already available in support of rulemaking. They worked to present certainty to judges who remained to be convinced as to the scientific grounding of bureaucratic decisions. They did not stop there: IIHS insurers also worked in parallel to mobilize other allies for their cause. They more specifically targeted consumer associations, seeking to raise the latter’s awareness of the difficulties encountered by NHTSA bureaucrats. The insurers thus worked to give visibility to a problem which had become subject to specialized management within the space of a few years, around debates that were initially bureaucratic and then legal in essence. As a priority, they sought to mobilize spokespersons that they considered “informed,” capable of conveying a scientific message publicly. The leaders of the IIHS highlighted the existence of regulations in jeopardy, stressing the imperative for their civil society counterparts to urgently mobilize. That was how they came to use public communication expertise to support their recommendations. They thus revealed what they presented not only as political and scientific inner workings but also as the legal machinery of regulatory activity and the potential for calling it into question. By wording it in those terms, their message did not address a broader public of potential support but rather a social elite capable of understanding both the scientific dimension of the issue and the legal expectations of the critics of the time. IIHS insurers had considerable resources to sound the alert, no longer around the specific issue of vehicle regulation but rather that of the administration of vehicle regulation. They relied specifically on the distribution of a periodical addressed to political and civil society leaders identified based on their interest in the topic of automobile safety. Tens of thousands of copies were printed, with approximately 20 issues a year, each approximately ten pages long. Status Report was presented as a report on the latest developments in studies and research carried out on the fight against accidents, as well as on the regulatory activities in this field. Its authors, permanent employees of the IIHS, were scientists by training, familiar with public health approaches, and able to summarize in a few lines the results of the research that they considered particularly relevant and essential in this field. Their focus was mainly on research studying injury factors and the features of the vehicles involved, to support the regulatory work initiated at the federal level. Numerous articles and special reports focused specifically on the expected impact of installing airbags or seatbelts in vehicles manufactured and sold in the United States. IIHS insurers thus worked to present the scientific literature in a way that supported their technical recommendations, even though regulatory activity in this field had been suspended since 1972. Conversely, they rejected conflicting views from both manufacturers and scientists as doxa that they deemed unsuitable for guiding political decision making. For example, a 1974 issue of the

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120 Bernardin IIHS periodical detailed different critical opinions on the supposed effectiveness of passive safety systems, such as the airbag, ultimately refuting all of them and instead proposing a detailed breakdown of the only studies that insurers considered valid from a public health perspective.13 IIHS insurers thus visibly presented themselves as neutral and unbiased information communicators to an informed public. Their role, however, did not stop there. They also monitored bureaucratic work and legal battles, paying particular attention to that which they presented as threats to the past, present, and future of automobile regulation in the United States. Their monitoring thus moved beyond the exclusive framework of science to cover explicitly legal issues regarding the creation of vehicle safety standards. For example, the IIHS insurers very specifically stated the conditions of the possibility of a multisided debate on each draft regulation presented by NHTSA bureaucrats. Adopting an eminently educational stance, they first described a procedure governed by the law, guaranteeing that the different stakeholders involved would be heard. They then stressed the fact that this procedure would be open to anyone who wished to express themselves regarding a draft regulation. No constraints were therefore effectively formally imposed regarding the substance or form of claims, whether in support of or against proposed regulations. Their work to clarify the rules of legal debate aimed to make it easier to mobilize actors or social groups that would otherwise have been left out of the regulatory process. It was supposed to help them to confront those actors –​mostly car manufacturers –​with the resources to understand the rules of the game and engage in it effectively, in a language that was juridically receivable and scientifically credible. In 1974, in the IIHS periodical, insurers indeed emphasized the stranglehold of manufacturers over the official process. They argued that “with few exceptions, most comments and suggestions on agency proposals come from auto makers, are opposed to tough rule proposals, and are at least partly technical in nature.”14 This description implied an absence of public opposition to manufacturers, presented as being particularly detrimental to regulatory activity, with a view to rallying consumer associations in the fight against deregulation.15 Enrolling Disinterested Allies: Consumers as Vocal Sentinels IIHS insurers were successful in rallying allies to their causes. More specifically, they rallied targeted spokespersons who had already proven themselves as public advocates of vehicle safety and seemed not to have any direct economic interest in the struggle for safer cars. Nader, for example, joined the insurers in their fight against sector deregulation in the 1970s. A lawyer by training, he was familiar with the law. He could also leverage a set of scientific and technical arguments to defend his cause. His remobilization ten years after the hearings of 1965 and 1966

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  121 therefore played into the hands of insurers. The debate could reopen to the public, beyond the muffled forums of legal proceedings. Consumer protection spokespersons, such as Nader, thus came to advocate not only the imperative of vehicle safety, as they had in the past, but also the necessity to maintain institutional regulation by the federal administration, against any possibilities of discreet deregulation of the sector. This analysis does not point to consumer associations being manipulated in a certain way. The latter were by no means a defenseless social group contrasting with the resources of insurers. They had significant means to defend their cause, with several hundred thousand members enabling them to finance numerous independent tests in particular. Moreover, their staff had studied law in some of the country’s most prestigious universities and worked with leading scientists. Their alliance with the IIHS insurers was therefore mutually beneficial, rather than the product of the pure and simple manipulation of civil society by corporate leaders. These economic actors’ activity nevertheless assisted their civil society counterparts in their discovery of the legal issues of the time (Walker 2009; Laurens 2015). In 1974, for instance, multiple special reports in the IIHS periodical detailed the regulatory process surrounding vehicle safety, “to assist Status Report readers in understanding –​and participating in –​the agency’s rulemaking activities.”16 The insurers stressed that the procedure should not only serve the interests of plaintiffs dissatisfied with regulation –​essentially manufacturers –​but that it could also give a voice to the proponents of the technical standards at stake. They thus addressed the organizations which they called the final beneficiaries of regulatory production, namely, “consumer groups and individual consumers.”17 Their spokespersons were invited to take part in the debate to prevent the rampant deregulation of vehicle safety. This advocated involvement was even presented as a civic imperative, with a variety of potential forms of expression: “Comments on an agency proposal may, but need not, contain technical information; they may be no more than an expression of general views and arguments.”18 In 1975, the insurers thus worked to remobilize a public of informed supporters capable of respecting the legal constraints for speaking up, to support the long-​term success of their own regulatory demands.19 Nader was the first to support the IIHS initiative. He wrote to the competent authorities to request the immediate entry into effect of the regulations hitherto suspended. As he had done in 1966, he thus lent his own legitimacy, as a spokesperson for consumer protection, to the cause advocated by the heads of the IIHS. This allowed the latter to present a united front, beyond the sole interests of insurers, in favor of technical standards calling for the mass installation of airbags in vehicles in circulation in the United States. In 1976, their cause became that of the consumer representatives once again mobilized at their side. All of them leveraged existing research to support their claims. In a situation

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122 Bernardin of scientific uncertainty, the insurers thus armed themselves with studies to be taken into account in the name of consumer protection, primarily “to overwhelmingly demonstrate the feasability, practicability, and effectiveness of passive protection systems.”20 In so doing, IIHS insurers embodied and legitimized a credible opposition to the detractors of NHTSA bureaucrats, politically and in the media. Thus, in 1977, regulatory activity resumed. The mass installation of airbags became a clear and indisputable priority, as Haddon confirmed at the time on behalf of the IIHS: “we may finally be reaching the end of a process that began years ago with the technological development and perfection of simple, low-​cost systems to provide greatly increased levels of passive –​automatic –​protection for people in cars.”21 As I have just shown, insurers proved essential to the process. Specifically, they contributed to making the discreet threats to regulatory activity at the time visible and accessible to the spokespersons of a public that endorsed their cause. They thus participated in organizing a form of long-​lasting control for their recommendations, through particularly visible and audible sentinels on the fringes of the administration, familiar with both scientific research and skilled legal argumentation. Understanding this sheds light on insurers’ efforts to recompose mobilization, to no longer support the institutionalization of new public policy priorities, but to defend them over the long term, at the cost of scientific and legal monitoring by the IIHS. The insurers did more actually than point to a significant threat to regulatory activity: they revealed the administrative and legal workings of the production of the standards that they specifically sought to preserve. In so doing, they contributed to shaping the mobilization of consumer spokespersons like Nader, attentive to technical data and well versed in the law, ten years after the hearings of the 1960s. A few years later, in 1977, their efforts even exceeded their expectations, with the appointment of Joan Claybrook as head of the NHTSA. Claybrook was a close associate of Nader and had supported him from his very first consumer protection battles. Having studied law at Georgetown University, she had a lasting impact on the organization, in particular by vigorously opposing any potential form of sector deregulation, and thus ultimately aligning with IIHS insurers until she left the administration, in 1981.

Conclusion This analysis ultimately reveals the mobilization of insurers who were able to take action both in the spotlight of political or media forums (in the 1960s, most notably, first to get the NHSB created and then to protect it from bureaucratic discretion) and in technical and legal spaces where their actions were more discreet (in the 1970s, for instance, when they had to struggle against deregulation through the courts and invest in scientific research). Furthermore, it shows that the actors in a position

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  123 to mobilize shared particular characteristics. Seeking to stand out in the postwar period, they leveraged their scientific dispositions to invest in university public health research, with a view to overhauling automobile safety policy. The goal for insurers was no longer to prevent any potential form of debate once their regulatory priorities had been entrenched at the heart of public policy. On the contrary, it was to ensure that they maintained long-​ term control, preserving their ability to define that which was debatable, when, how, and ultimately by whom. Their power therefore appeared to be reinforced by its fluidity: it materialized through forms of mobilization that were both evolving and varied, and which they were able to use effectively and adequately in a timely manner. Beyond the study case that has just been discussed, several findings appear to emerge. Most significantly, the analysis demonstrates the importance of not exclusively focusing on the in-​depth study of a single type of actors in order to understand their motivations. The mobilization of insurers around automobile safety could not be described without taking into account the concomitant action of automobile manufacturers, for instance. Shedding light on this action invites a processual and relational analysis of the actions undertaken by the economic elites, studying the potential forms of competition or agreement that can bring them together or pit them against one another around a specific issue. In this respect, the study of public issues is a particularly fruitful starting point. It affords an understanding of how distinct actors come to clash or join forces to ground their definition of an issue to be addressed at the heart of public intervention (Offerlé 1998 [1994]; Schneiberg 1999). This approach entails not assuming the unity of economic actors faced with the perception of an institutional threat and seeking instead to understand how some actors attempt to join or oppose others, moving beyond the dynamics of the economic sphere to enter legal, media, or political forums (Bernardin 2014; Baudrin 2018). This entails another methodological principle: that of not limiting research to a single type of forum in which economic actors may participate. Specifically, this analysis has shown that it is important to take into account these actors’ capacity not only to engage in diverse spaces of collective action but also to adapt and move from one to another, often within very short time frames (Déplaude 2014). This presents social scientists with a particularly difficult task, as they must understand both the dynamics peculiar to each of the arenas of action studied and the way in which they are appropriated by actors who have sometimes been involved for decades –​like Haddon –​seeking to make these dynamics compatible with their own interests and practices. The difficulty is not only theoretical; it also necessitates collecting information from a variety of sources, ranging from government archives or the archives of the administration concerned, to documentation from the general or specialized press, the archives of the companies or groups of companies mobilized, or even the minutes of past and current legal

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124 Bernardin rulings (Le Roux 2011). Such investigation therefore requires that researchers move beyond the specialized domains to which they are often confined, so as not to risk losing track of the mobilizations of shape-​shifting actors capable of leveraging their multiple resources successively to file a lawsuit, support a civil society organization, or take part in a public consultation. Finally, this approach also involves taking into account a possible form of technicity of debates, in legal or scientific terms in particular. Social scientists must look beyond the strategies of the top leaders of the companies involved, in order to understand that apparently abstruse issues are in fact essential for the economic actors (Yates 2005; Angeli Aguiton 2018). Discussing the cost of developing airbag technology or the detail of its technical characteristics is by no means anecdotal for car manufacturers, for example, when hundreds of thousands of these have to be produced within the space of a few months. The same goes for controversies around the maximum height of vehicle bumpers to prevent serious knee injuries to pedestrians, to take another example, and avoid long-​term disability and compensation for the insured. It is of course impossible to debate all of these issues in the general press or during high-​ profile Congressional hearings. Nevertheless, it is crucial for researchers to take them into account, as they are part and parcel of the range of possible mobilizations by corporate actors, between public problems and quiet politics.

Notes 1 The author is most grateful to Nathalie Jas and Nicolas Larchet for their comments on the first version of this chapter. The author also thanks Liz Carey Libbrecht, who translated this text from French into English. 2 For instance, Haven, Hugh. 1952. “Accident Survival –​Airplane and Passenger Automobile.” Crash Injury Research Project N60NR 264-​ 12, Cornell University Medical College; McFarland, Ross A., and Alfred L. Moseley. 1954. “Human Factors in Highway Transport Safety.” Harvard School of Public Health. 3 For instance, Nader, Ralph. 1959. “The Safe Car You Can’t Buy.” The Nation, 11 April 1959; Nader, Ralph. “Detroit Makes Your Choice. Fashion or Safety.” The Nation, 12 October 1963. 4 The National Highway Safety Bureau was the result of the merger between two independent administrative bodies (Executive Order 11357 of 6 June 1967), the National Traffic Safety Agency (officially responsible for creating new vehicle safety standards) and the National Highway Safety Agency (responsible for developing the country’s main highways), which were created following the Congressional Hearings of 1966 (Public Laws 89-​563 and 89-​564). 5 Walter W. Mosher, Jr., “Cost Effectiveness Countermeasures,” Washington, 20 April 1967, p. 13-​1. (National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 416, Records of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA Historical File 1967. Box 4. Folder “Research Contract Status Notebook B-​II Dr. Brenner.”)

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  125 6 Letter from the US Secretary of Commerce to the President of the United States of America, 18 November 1966, Annex 3 –​National Motor Vehicle Safety Advisory Council. Statement of Responsibilities, p. 1. (NARA. RG 416, Records of the NHTSA, NHSB Director’s Subject Files 1966–​ 1968. Box 5. Folder “1.4 Nat’l. Motor Vehicle Safety Adv. Council Nov.–​ Dec. 1967–​1966.”) 7 “… and Nixon May Name Safety Task Force.” Status Report, 84, 6 September 1969, 2–​3, 2. 8 “Dr. Haddon Named President of IIHS.” Status Report, 74, 27 February 1969, 1–​2, 1. 9 “Divergent Safety Views Aired.” Status Report, 80, 7 July 1969, 1–​4, 3. 10 “ ‘Air Bag’: State of the Argument.” Status Report, V, 14, 17 August 1970, 1–​7, 4. 11 Chrysler Corporation, Petitioner, v. Department of Transportation et al., Respondents, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, Cincinnati, 472 F.2d, 5 December 1972, 659–​681, p. 676. 12 “No Clear Victory in Air Bag Verdict.” Status Report, VII, 23, 18 December 1972, 1–​3, 2. 13 “Passive vs. Active Approaches to Reducing Human Wastage,” Status Report, IX, 16, 9 September 1974, 9–​9, p. 9. 14 “Guide to NHTSA Rulemaking.” Status Report, IX, 11, 23 May 1974, 3–​5, 4. 15 “Experts Attack Detroit Air Bag Stance.” Status Report, IX, 18, 11 October 1974, 2–​3; “Auto Makers, AAA Attack NHTSA Air Bag Study.” Status Report, IX, 22, 10 December 1974, 6–​8. 16 “Guide to NHTSA Rulemaking.” art. cit., 4. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 “ ‘Passive’ Requirement Urged for All Safety Standards.” Status Report, X, 7, 31 March 1975, 8–​9. 20 “DOT’s Restraint Case: Final Arguments.” Status Report, XI, 16, 12 October 1976, 1–​12, 5. 21 “Haddon Tells Adams: ‘Stop The Carnage.’ ” Status Report, XII, 7, 9 May 1977, 1–​3, 2.

References Angeli Aguiton, Sara. 2018. “Fortune de l’infortune. Financiarisation des catastrophes naturelles par l’assurance.” Zilsel 2(4): 21–​57. Bartley, Tim. 2007. “How Foundations Shape Social Movements: The Construction of an Organizational Field and the Rise of Forest Certification.” Social Problems 54(3): 229–​255. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​sp.2007.54.3.229. Baudrin, Mathieu. 2018. “Maintenir la technologie aérosol et son industrie: une enquête sur les collectifs industriels (1958–​2017).” PhD diss., PSL Research University. Bernardin, Stève. 2014. “La fabrique privée d’un problème public. La sécurité routière entre industriels et assureurs aux Etats-​Unis (années 1920 à 2000).” PhD diss., Université Paris I Panthéon-​Sorbonne. Bernardin, Stève, and Erik Neveu. 2018. “Construction des problèmes publics.” In Rencontres avec Michel Offerlé, edited by Michel Hélène, Levêque

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126 Bernardin Sandrine, and Contamin Jean-​ Gabriel, 123–​ 131. Editions du Croquant: Bellecombe-​en-​Bauges. Courty, Guillaume. 2006. Les groupe d’intérêt. La Découverte: Paris. Culpepper, Pepper D. 2011. Quiet Politics and Business Power. Corporate Control in Europe and Japan. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Déplaude, Marc-​ Olivier. 2014. “Les infortunes de la vertu. Sociologie d’un répertoire d’action patronal.” Sociologie du Travail 56(4): 411–​434. https://​ doi.org/​10.4000/​sdt.1971. Gangloff, Amy. 2006. “Medicalizing the Automobile: Public Health, Safety, and American Culture, 1920–​1967.” PhD diss., Stony Brook University. Gilbert, Claude, and Emmanuel Henry. 2012. “La définition des problèmes publics: entre publicité et discrétion.” Revue Française de Sociologie 53(1): 35–​59. Graham, John D. 1989. Auto Safety. Assessing America’s Performance. Auburn House Publishing Company: Dover. Gusfield, Joseph. 1981. The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking Driving and the Symbolic Order. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Halpern, Paul Joseph. 1972. “Consumer Politics and Corporate Behavior: The Case of Automobile Safety.” PhD diss., Harvard University. Henry, Emmanuel. 2005. “Militer pour le statu quo. Le Comité permanent amiante ou l’imposition réussie d’un consensus.” Politix 70(2): 29–​50. Henry, Emmanuel. 2017. Ignorance scientifique et inaction publique. Les politiques de santé au travail. Presses de Sciences Po: Paris. Jas, Nathalie. 2015. “Agnotologie.” In Dictionnaire critique de l’expertise, edited by Emmanuel Henry, Claude Gilbert, Jean-​Noël Jouzel, and Pascal Marichalar, 33–​40. Presses de Sciences Po: Paris. Jasanoff, Sheila. 1994 [1990]. The Fifth Branch. Science Advisers as Policymakers. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. Jouzel, Jean-​Noël. 2019. Pesticides. Comment ignorer ce que l’on sait. Presses de Sciences Po: Paris. Laurens, Sylvain. 2015. “Astroturfs et ONG de consommateurs téléguidés à Bruxelles. Quand le business se crée une légitimité ‘par en bas.’ ” Critique Internationale 67(2): 83–​99. Le Roux, Thomas. 2011. Le Laboratoire des pollutions industrielles. Paris, 1770–​1830. Albin Michel: Paris. Mashaw, Jerry L., and David L. Harfst. 1990. The Struggle for Auto Safety. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. Mosher, Walter W. 1967. “The Highway Environment and Safety.” In Traffic Safety, A National Problem, 69–​88. Payne & Lane: New Haven. Nader, Ralph. 1965. Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-​In Dangers of the American Automobile. Grossman Publishers: New York. O’Connell, Jeffrey. 1971. The Injury Industry and the Remedy of No-​ Fault Insurance. University of Illinois Press: Urbana, Chicago and London. Offerlé, Michel. 1998 [1994]. Sociologie des groupes d’intérêt. Montchrestien: Paris. Rae, John B. 1984. The American Automobile Industry. Twayne Publishers: Boston. Schneiberg, Marc. 1999. “Political and Institutional Conditions for Governance by Association: Private Order and Price Controls in American Fire Insurance.” Politics & Society 27(1): 67–​103. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 0032329299027001004.

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From Public Problem to Quiet Politics?  127 Seely, Bruce E. 1987. Building the American Highway System. Engineers as Policy Makers. Temple University Press: Philadelphia. Seiler, Cotten. 2008. Republic of Drivers. A Cultural History of Automobility in America. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. Smith, Mark A. 2000. American Business and Political Power. Public Opinion, Elections, and Democracy. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. Vinsel, Lee. 2011. “Federal Regulatory Management of the Automobile in the United States, 1966–​1988.” PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University. Walker, Edward T. 2009. “Privatizing Participation: Civic Change and the Organizational Dynamics of Grassroots Lobbying Firms.” American Sociological Review 74: 83–​105. Walker, Edward T. 2014. Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge and New York. Wetmore, Jameson M. 2004. “Redefining Risks and Redistributing Responsibilities: Building Networks to Increase Automobile Safety.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 29(3): 377–​405. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 0162243904264486. Wildavsky, Aaron. 1966. “The Political Economy of Efficiency: Cost-​ Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis, and Program Budgeting.” Public Administration Review 26(4): 292–​310. Yates, JoAnne. 2005. Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore.

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6  Coproducing the Rules of the Game State, Insurance Companies, and Private Equity in 1990s France Marlène Benquet, Paul Lagneau Ymonet, and Fabien Foureault During the 2017 Annual Conference of France Invest, the French Association of Investors for Growth (Association Française des Investisseurs en Capital, AFIC), a partner from one of the leading consulting firms, looked back on how far they had come: “In the 1980s, you were the ‘barbarians at the gates’; now you are at its heart. Be careful not to be overtaken by new barbarians!” The “you” referred to the managers and executives of private equity firms. They collect money from insurance companies, banks, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, or wealthy individuals; invest it in the capital of companies; and actively participate in their management. After a number of years, these funds sell their holdings and share any capital gains made on the sale with the institutional investors who initially financed them and with the managers of the companies sold. The private equity sector, nonexistent in France in the 1970s, is now the third largest in the world in terms of amounts invested, after its American and British counterparts.1 This chapter concerns a tax rule which, at the end of the 20th century in France, oriented a fraction of the savings collected by insurance companies toward private equity funds and thus supported their development. Life insurance policies known as “DSKs”, after the initials of the Minister of the Economy, Finance, and Industry, Dominique Strauss-​ Kahn, gave policyholders tax rebates to invest a portion of their savings in unlisted companies through private equity funds. The Strauss-​Kahn ministry (1997–​1999) represents a key moment in the development of private equity, leading to a whole new order of magnitude. Between 1997 and 1998, the capital raised by AFIC’s 167 members increased fourfold (from 870 million to 3.4 billion euros). This increase, which occurred during a period of “financial euphoria” (Kindelberger 2005) dissipated by the bursting of the Internet bubble in the spring of 2000, cannot be explained only by the introduction of DSKs. However, their implementation highlighted the position that AFIC had conquered in the Paris financial center, on behalf of the private equity sector. This episode offers a close-​up view of a phenomenon that has been more widespread since the 1970s: the transition of French capitalism from an “economy of debt” to an “economy of equity” (Plihon 2016). Widely DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-7

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  129 administered since the Second World War, the financial system had left stock exchanges and private placement with no more than a minor role to play. In the first half of the 1980s, successive governments precipitated its overhaul: promotion of equity savings (1982), creation of a stock exchange dedicated to medium-​sized companies (“Second marché” in 1983), consolidation of credit and investment activities within “universal banks” (1984 French banking law), development of derivatives markets (1986 and 1987), and the first systematic corporate privatization plan (1986–​1988). In this context, a fraction of the financial sector, namely, the private equity firms’ partners, succeeded in imposing a new form of financial intermediation between institutional investors, the stock exchange and its brokers, banks and insurance companies, on the one hand, and companies seeking funding, on the other hand. These private equity firms drove their demands against those of the powerful insurance sector. Just like mutualized health-​insurance companies, insurance companies were somewhat reluctant to entrust part of their savings schemes to investment funds which carried out operations that most insurers considered to be very risky. How did the private equity firms, represented by AFIC, win their case with the government against the wishes of a particularly influential fraction of the financial sector? What does this case study tell us about the reconfiguration of power plays between the state and the financial industry? We consider corporate law to be an agonistic process of coproduction of rules and their uses (Reynaud 2004), by representatives of public authorities and private interests. Because of the interdependence between public agents who have the power to establish the rules, including those governing the accumulation of capital, and other agents who compete for the private means of its allocation, our approach is more satisfactory than one which sees the state as a kind of arbiter or as the mere instrument of the most powerful capitalists. To consider the state as a mere arbiter is to risk forgetting that it is also an economic agent, in as much as it participates in the production and exchange of goods and services and that its resources –​fiscal and financial in particular –​depend on these processes. Unless a capitalist “cunning of reason” is invoked, reducing government to “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (Marx and Engels 1998 [1848], 29) does not explain decisions or policies that sometimes harm the interests of even the most influential of the possessors. For this chapter, we looked at the links between public authorities and private economic actors from the standpoint of the latter and, more specifically, that of private equity representatives grouped within AFIC. This chapter consists in precisely recounting the negotiation of a right to accumulate from the little-​known point of view of financial actors who have become central to the recomposition of French capitalism. We compiled two original sources of information: the AFIC archives and interviews with 12 (out of 21) of its successive chairmen in office

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130  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault between 1984 and 2016. The archive holding is made up of 823 boxes covering the period from 1984 to 2015.2 In particular, the 3,000 or so documents that we inventoried, reclassified, and indexed –​letters, minutes of meetings, minutes of general meetings and of boards of directors’ meetings, sector studies, publications, etc. –​provide information on the lobbying of public authorities, on the internal training courses that the association offers to its members’ employees and on the sector studies that it conducts (Benquet et al. 2018). The second source (oral) concerns interviews conducted by the authors with former chairmen or founders of AFIC. These were semi-​directive interviews lasting at least one hour, during which we talked to the financiers about their career paths and professional practices, particularly in terms of company valuation. We also asked them to talk about their responsibilities when promoting and representing the interests of private equity to representatives of employers and public authorities –​ministers and their entourages, elected officials, central administrations, and regulators –​as well as to economics journalists. The use of AFIC’s original archives thus allowed us to contextualize the interviews, to retrace the decision-​making process, with the views of insurers, regulators, public authorities, and elected officials as interpreted by AFIC. The first section of this chapter sets out the theoretical framework that we used to report on the agonistic coproduction of business law. The second section presents the interests defended and the positions promoted by government authorities, representatives of insurance companies (via, in particular, the French Federation of Insurance Companies, FFSA) and of private equity (through AFIC), in relation to corporate financing. This explication of the forces at play constitutes the essential prerequisite for explaining, in the third section, the process of coproducing the legislation that led to the creation of DSK life insurance contracts: its preparation, voting, implementation, and publicity.

The Rules of the Economic Game: A Highly Conflictual Coproduction We propose to consider the state as neither the arbiter of rivalries between economic agents, nor the instrument of the most influential capitalists, but as a power that establishes the rules of the economic game and maintains asymmetrical relationships of interdependence with the holders or handlers of capital. Neither autonomous nor subordinate, the public power –​made up of parliamentarians, ministers and their cabinets, heads of central administrations and independent administrative authorities –​ enacts the rules of capital accumulation that consecrate private gain, in exchange for the financial means vital to the perpetuation of the form of government to which these elected officials and public agents are linked. This presentation of the links between state departments and economic agents may seem simplistic, but it aims above all to clarify the limits of

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  131 works that borrow from one or the other of these two conceptions of the state: they tend to skirt around the dynamics of the rules and their uses. On the one hand, the production of rules is inseparable from all economic activity. In other words, in business, establishing the rules of the game is part of the game itself. On the other hand, rules cannot be reduced to the regularities produced by power relations. In establishing the former, the state confers legitimacy on the latter. The Capture of the Arbiter State: A Normative Confusion The notion of an arbiter state above private parties and their individual interests is one of the preferred social science approaches to analyze the production of economic rules. Such a perspective can lead to confusion between analysis and prescription. In particular, this notion of an arbiter state has inspired works that use the expression “regulatory capture”, diverging uses of which has caused ambiguity (Novak 2013). At the beginning of the 20th century, in the context of the United States, it was a question of denouncing corruption and of demanding that the federal government contained the hold that “robber barons” had over public authorities. As of the 1950s, the same expression became a password to delegitimize federal agencies. Denouncing the capture of regulators by the most powerful regulators thus became a way of promoting deregulation (Stigler 1971). According to proponents of the Chicago School, as long as corporate practices do not overly undermine consumer welfare –​ approximated by prices –​it is better to leave them alone, and decisions made by regulators or judges should help to ensure the optimal allocation of resources and the compensation of externalities (Coase 1960). The “regulatory-​capture” formula has retained its ambivalence ever since. In The Neoliberal Republic (2021), France and Vauchez take up the meaning that the expression might have had during the American “progressive era”. For her part, Sophie Dubuisson-​Quellier (2017, 276) suggests reversing the Chicago meaning, “by showing that public actors can […] themselves capture these private interests or allow themselves to be captured, in order to direct regulation towards objectives of the common good”. Dubuisson-​Quellier thus analyzes the behavior of agents who implement public policy inspired by Laffont’s and Tirole’s regulatory economics (1993), i.e., regulators who obtain from regulated firms the information –​ on the costs and quality of the goods produced or services provided –​that is essential for developing rules that orient companies’ strategies toward the objectives that those regulators are trying to achieve. The Subjugated State: An Indeterminate Qualification The Marxist tradition substitutes the conception of a state as an instrument of capitalists for that of a state as an arbitrator of economic activities. The law then becomes just a sanction of the common interests of

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132  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault the members of the ruling class. Many sociologists have taken up this conception of the state, including with the intention of criticizing it. One approach looks at the systems of effective relationships between individuals or organizations, most especially to trace the networks of influence or financing that unite them (Murray 2017). Other studies examine the trajectories of individuals who occupy prominent positions in politics and business. Among other things, this research documents the similarity of family origins, education, and careers and the proximity of lifestyles. Those in power in the main fields of activity share dispositions and interests that allow them to be considered as constituting a dominant class wrought by too-​often underestimated rivalries (Denord et al. 2011). Another approach focuses on lobbying activities and on the considerable resources they mobilize to rally elected officials or civil servants to a particular cause. Hacker and Pierson (2011) thus suggest approaching public policymaking as an organized struggle between coalitions of interests, through pressure groups, think tanks, or social networks. These approaches, which base the instrumentalization of the state on the social characteristics of crucial agents or on the resources of the pressure groups that represent them, have the merit of being empirically substantiated and of making it possible to assess the degree of autonomy of public authorities in the production and implementation of a given rule. A third body of research focuses on the issue of the state’s links with private interest groups, by examining their respective structural powers. This relates to the capacity of changing the world of possibilities of other individuals without using coercion (Mintz and Schwartz 1987). In finance, the rise of truly multinational and interconnected giants has forced the governments and central banks of the major countries in which they operate to provide them, de facto, with a lender-​of-​last-​resort guarantee. The public authorities’ challenge is to secure the financial system on which states and local communities, businesses, and households depend when it comes to borrowing, saving, or settling transactions (Culpepper 2010). The most important challenge for those who use this approach is the myriad of bodies, agencies, and agents that make up state bureaucracy. This multiplicity avoids the state being seen as a machine that mechanically enforces political decisions. Furthermore, the subordination of public authorities to the specific interests of influential economic agents is inseparable from the dependence of these private agents on public authorities. The latter are the only ones to confer upon specific prescriptions a general dimension that makes them rules of law, with which the state can impose compliance (Colliot-​Thélène 2003). Interdependence Between State and Capitalists The view of the state that we are promoting is institutional and agonistic. By converting the regularities of the modes of accumulation and circulation of capital into official rules, the state establishes institutional

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  133 arrangements that sanction asymmetrical economic power relationships. The rules laid down by the state serve not only the interests of the most powerful economic agents, but they must also guarantee its perpetuation, its territorial integrity, as well as the stability of its political regime. To stand up to a rival state that wishes to destroy or subdue the power that the state exercises and to contain the threat of social unrest that might overthrow it –​these are the other two objectives with which those who exercise public authority must come to terms and on which depends the content of the rules (economic rules included) that they promulgate. The conception of the state as the institutionalization of social relationships supports the description of the links between the public authorities and groups of agents in a position to appropriate surplus value, as asymmetrical relationships of interdependence. The state depends on those who hold, invest, and appropriate capital to issue public debt (Lemoine 2016). It also depends on their investment decisions, which contribute toward the level of economic activity in the country (Kalecki 1943). Equity holders thus have the power to prioritize activities and jurisdictions (Tørsløv et al. 2018) based on what they will earn. This privilege affects all aspects of our lives: work, health, and education, as well as politics. Those who control capital depend on the state to enshrine the principles and modalities of their right to accumulate (Pistor 2019). Public authorities, capitalists, and their authorized representatives thus have their own respective resources –​the establishment of rules and the handling of capital –​which only become power over places, individuals, or organizations when they work in combination. This interdependence implies that there is no exteriority relationship between economic rules and practices. The law regulates the practices that reconfigure it, so it is not possible to separate the legal rule from the economic game in order to assess how one affects the other. The attention paid to individual room for maneuver and to collective action might give the impression that the study of forms of “joint regulation” would downplay power struggles (Huault and Richard 2012). Yet these power plays determine agents’ capacities to assert their interests in the development and use of the rules that organize their activities. That is why we propose to explain the balance of power between the French government, the representatives of private equity, and those of insurers, so that we may then analyze the conflicting coproduction of a legal rule that favored the growth of private equity in France in the late 1990s. The explanation of the interests of the three groups of actors involved in this process must first make it possible to explain why, before explaining how and by whom this piece of legislation was coproduced.

Unequal Parties In 1997, with regard to the financing of French companies, what were the common interests and disagreements between public authorities,

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134  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault representatives of the insurance sector, and those of the private equity industry? The equity capital sector and the insurance sector were disproportionate: the former consisted of between 2,000 and 3,000 people managing approximately 17 billion francs (3.4 billion euros), while the latter concerned over 120,000 jobs and more than 1,000 billion francs collected annually in premiums (202.3 billion francs by 2018) and occupied a crucial position in the recomposition of French capitalism (Morin 1998), following the privatizations of state-​ owned companies by the governments of Jacques Chirac (1986–​ 88), Édouard Balladur (1993–​ 1995), and Lionel Jospin (1997–​2002). From the standpoint of their respective professional associations, AFIC had been in existence since 1984 and had 167 members, while the Fédération française des sociétés d’assurances (FFSA) had, since its creation in the 1930s, held a key position among employers’ organizations. Yet it was the representatives of private equity that obtained from public authorities access to the capital collected by insurers through life insurance contracts, against the federation’s advice. Most of its members were wary of private transactions that were carried out by intermediaries that the insurance companies did not control. Private Equity Investors Getting Their Hands on Insurers’ Money In 1984, five corporate finance professionals founded AFIC: Maurice Tchénio, Dominique Nouvellet, Michel Knibbeler, Hervé Hamon, and Christian Cleiftie (who, at that time, chaired the brand new European Venture Capital Association). As specialists in direct investment in the capital of companies that were newly created, who were ailing or looking for new management, they wanted to promote these practices to public authorities, who were looking for all kinds of alternatives to public loans to companies: stock exchanges for public offerings, private equity in the wake of the overhaul of bankruptcy procedures, and industrial restructuring (Audibert 2018). These alternatives to credit differed, depending on the duration of the investments and the forms of corporate control. In the United States, private equity has proven to be a crucial weapon against the “establishment” –​executives of banks and listed companies –​ during hostile takeovers such as that of the RJR Nabisco conglomerate by the KKR fund, as told in Barbarians at the Gate (Burrough and Helyar 1990). In France, the sector’s pioneers developed their activities within public or recently privatized financial institutions and with the support of industrial and commercial dynasties. AFIC’s founders, some of whom, when they were not related to or associated with industrial families, learned their trade from North American colleagues and built their careers in parapublic institutions (Crédit national, Institut de développement industriel) and conglomerates (Rhône Poulenc). Dominique Nouvellet, son of a business executive, ENA graduate, and

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  135 Raymond Barre collaborator founded the private equity firm Siparex in 1977 with prominent businessmen of the Lyon region, including Lucien Gattaz (Radiall) and Émile Véron (Majorette), after managing a department of the French state bank (Caisse des Dépôts et des Consignations). The reshaping of French capitalism brought about by nationalizations, privatizations, the unwinding of cross-​shareholdings, and the restructuring of entire segments of the national economy, created increasing opportunities for independent funds, dedicated subsidiaries of banks or entrepreneurial individuals. While it is true that insurance companies had diversified shareholding portfolios, most insurers, as collectors of savings through life insurance, did not wish to expose themselves to the risks inherent in assets that cannot easily be resold and transactions that are carried out by intermediaries that insurers did not control. Insurers were not against risk capital as such, but they did not want to be forced to accept types of investment that were incompatible with their prudential obligations –​in particular provisions for capital losses on non-​ amortizable investments –​which made them prefer real-​estate and bond investments, which were less risky than shares, and shares in unlisted companies in particular: These people, those working in life insurance, need […] to remain unblocked for twenty years. So they say: “If we invest with you, things have to keep moving […]. We are prepared to wait four or five years, but we don’t want to wait ten”. (AFIC chairman during the 2010s) As early as 1983, Jacques Delors, Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance, had created the Société financière des assurances (Sofindas), backed by insurance companies and mutualized health-​insurance companies to the tune of 1 billion francs. But no one was satisfied with Sofindas. Insurance company bosses felt that the government had forced their hand and they did not want the latter to oblige them, for political reasons, to save “lame ducks”. At the same time, independent fund managers disapproved of this hybrid competitor. They wanted to benefit from the manna that insurers were providing, while keeping control of the investment strategies that determined the conditions of their accumulation of wealth: Jacques Delors told them [the insurers]: “The party is over, now you’re going to put money in the pot, and to that end I’m going to create a public venture capital fund and […] all you insurers will contribute 0.3 to 0.5 percent of your equity […]”. So 150 insurance companies were pressured and forced to pay their share into the public venture capital fund. (AFIC chairman during the 1980s)

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136  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault Following the privatizations made by the Chirac government (1986–​ 1988), the main demand of the FFSA, in which AFIC had a keen interest, became the introduction of funded pension schemes. To lead this lobbying campaign, the insurers elected Denis Kessler, president of their federation. A brilliant economist, he was recognized for his work on savings with André Masson and Dominique Strauss-​Kahn and for becoming, the promoter of a “financial services industry” that combines credit, insurance, and investment. In 1990, Kessler (1990) published a resounding plea for pension funds in the flagship journal of the national institute of statistics and economic studies. The efforts of the FFSA appeared to be bearing fruit. As part of the “social security financial recovery plan”, the Juppé government (1995–​ 1997) announced the creation of pension funds. Henceforth, discussions between the FFSA and the Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, Jean Arthuis, only concerned the tax incentives that would accompany their implementation. The defeat of the conservative Juppé government in the 1997 legislative elections postponed the creation of pension funds. For insurers, it became unlikely that such a measure would be obtained from the newly elected left-​leaning government. For AFIC, this meant abandoning the “American dream” of private equity funded by pension schemes and finding another way to drain a portion of household savings into private equity: It’s not normal that French insurers only get zero point I-​don’t-​know-​ what percent in private equity. In the USA, the top pension funds have ten percents in alternative assets, be they hedge funds or private equity. (AFIC chairman during the 2000s) For want of anything better, insurers would therefore be collecting life insurance, and this would take place in the name of financing recent or small-​and medium-​sized companies. They had suffered from the recession caused by the rise in interest rates triggered by the monetary consequences of German reunification and the collapse of banks entangled in the real-​ estate crash of the first part of the decade. We can see why equity capital was looking for resources, but the favorable provisions for this capital of a large section of the administration need to be clarified. The Government’s Objectives: To Promote an Equity-​Based Economy European Union (EU) competition, the end of dollar convertibility to gold, and the consequent fluctuations of European currencies, along with inflation and unemployment which pointed to the disintegration of the accumulation regime set up after the Second World War, precipitated a change in economic policy. This took place between 1976, when for the

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  137 first time in France the government claimed to be “neo-​liberal”, and the second half of the 1990s. The change in economic policy led to a change in the national financial system. Formalized between 1978 and 1982 by ad hoc commissions, the transformation of the French financial system was implemented at the end of 1982 by a left-​wing government. The goal was to replace the subsidized public loans granted by nationalized banks with capital that their holders would invest in the capital of companies, whether listed or not. In July 1979, René Monory, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, entrusted Maurice Pérouse, General Manager of the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, with the task of devising and organizing “the modernization of the securities market’s methods for listing, exchange and custody”. At the same time, Prime Minister Raymond Barre mandated Dominique Nouvellet to make recommendations in favor of private equity. As of September 1981, Jacques Delors, Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, and Laurent Fabius, Secretary of State for the Budget, appointed David Dautresme, a former member of the Pérouse Commission and General Manager of Crédit du Nord, to set up a new commission. The report begins as follows: “The first [challenge] is, without excessive monetary creation, to deal with the financing needs that are growing or that must grow if the economic policy is to succeed” (Dautresme 1982, R1). To this end, the commission had, according to D. Dautresme, “robbed bare all the cupboards of everyone who had concrete proposals for change” (Torrès and Borderie 1996, 36). The conclusions of the Pérouse commission and the Nouvellet report quickly resurfaced, particularly the one relating to the creation of a stock market for intermediate-​sized companies and the acclimatization of private equity techniques in France (Dautresme 1982, R29–​30, and R61–​65). The government echoed these recommendations. It developed new tax-​effective mechanisms (such as the equity savings account) and in 1983 created a new investment vehicle, the Fonds commun de placement à risque (FCPR are mutual funds), to encourage institutional investors to entrust their capital to private equity funds. While restructuring and/​ or privatizing public companies, elected officials and senior civil servants announced that they were giving up direct control over the means of production and funding of companies. For the civil servants in charge of these matters, these were all opportunities to assimilate the working methods of private business leaders and investment bankers. These operations were also opportunities for investment funds to buy out the subsidiaries of groups in difficulty or privatized. However, private equity representatives, and AFIC executives in particular, had to constantly ensure that the profits generated by private placement did not escape its professionals: that either the government deployed hybrid bodies that diverted a share of the profit (such as Sofindas) or that other intermediaries able to provide equity capital to

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138  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault companies –​the stock exchange and investment banks (whether independent or subsidiaries of credit institutions) –​diverted them from the private equity sector. Above all, private equity representatives knew that the sector’s development depended on the volume of savings to which they would have access. After the appointment of the leader of the Socialist Party, Lionel Jospin, as Prime Minister on 3 June 1997, the association had to redirect its demands toward life insurance instead of pension funds. Left-​Wing MPs: Kindling the Flame of the “New Economy” The new government stated that it wished to “allow new capital, new entrepreneurs and new technologies to emerge”. This was an opportunity for AFIC to push the interests of its members. The association thus began an intense effort to reformulate and communicate what became its main objective: to obtain tax incentives that would channel savings toward investment in newly created and mid-​sized companies. At the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industry, the appointment of Dominique Strauss-​Kahn was a godsend for AFIC. Not only was the Minister an economist by trade, specializing in savings, but by way of industrial policy he had already promoted public support for private enterprise without interference in the conduct of business when he was Minister of Industry and Foreign Trade (1991–​1993) and again as co-​ founder and vice-​ chairman of the Cercle de l’industrie (1993–​ 1997) which represents the interests of major French groups to public authorities and European institutions: Strauss-​Kahn was a game-​changer. Anyway, the Strauss-​Kahn era was extremely beneficial to the development of private equity, with at long last someone who understood what we were doing and who was open to both the idea of applying private equity methods and to the impact that it could have. (AFIC chairman during the 2000s) Strauss-​Kahn wanted to change the direction of the socialist party doctrine by criticizing rents and promoting equal opportunities and risk-​ taking. Government bodies should encourage these strategies rather than restricting themselves to redistributive palliatives (Strauss-​Kahn 2002). This aggiornamento suited AFIC. The association was representing professionals in an industry that was still young, professionals looking to assert their position among other, well-​established financial activities: In our country with its market-​economy and tax-​free savings […], savings must be oriented towards corporate investment, not just towards financing the budget deficit. That is the difference between rentier’s capitalism and capitalism for investors. We are all free to

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  139 think whatever we want about capitalism. Maybe we don’t all share the same view, but I prefer investors to rentiers. (D. Strauss-​Kahn, addressing right-​wing members of parliament) (Journal Officiel de la République Française, second session, 15 October 1997, pp. 35–​363) Despite having fewer resources than insurers, during the 1980s and 1990s, private equity representatives obtained government support for their demand to take part in the development of rules that transformed the country’s financial system and changed the conditions for capital accumulation.

Interests in Motion: Coproducing a New Rule of the Game In the second half of 1997, representatives of private equity, insurers, and public authorities began the disputed coproduction of a new tax exemption for life insurance policies partially invested in recent or small companies. DSK life insurance contracts were not the product of “capture”, because far from being independent of one another, the government and financiers maintained relationships that were both formal and informal, official and unofficial, thus facilitating their cooperation and understanding. Nor were they the result of collective action by a class united by common interests. In this particular case, the investors were divided, because they were competing for control of the profits generated by the handling of capital. Private Equity Having Its Say at the Negotiating Table The promotion of an equity-​based economy did not reduce the rivalry between financiers when it came to coproducing rules that would make them richer. Private equity representatives had to be recognized as legitimate interlocutors by public authorities. AFIC first sought to increase the number of its members and, through the status of “associate members”, bring together other professionals involved in the buyout or sale of companies, such as lawyers, consultants, and auditors.4 Between 1990 and 1997, AFIC’s membership grew from 87 to 167. At the same time, it attempted to make a place for itself among employers’ organizations and the principal bodies of the financial marketplace. In 1991, it joined the Finance Commission of the Conseil national du patronat français (CNPF, the main business association in France). The Chairman of AFIC believed that “AFIC’s membership of this organization signifies the recognition of a specific profession among the other financial professions already represented and will allow access to the lobbying potential and competence of the CNPF”.5 In 1996, AFIC joined Europlace, which especially in Europe and the United States promotes financial activities taking place in Paris. In addition, it created the Lettre du capital-​risque (the main

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140  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault publication in the sector) and initiated a communication plan coordinated by a subsidiary of Havas group to increase the association’s visibility in economic circles among senior civil servants and political personnel. AFIC launched a range of both regular and one-​ time events that provided opportunities for people to meet. In the 1980s, the “AFIC entrepreneurial spirit award” (Prix A FI C de l’esprit d’entreprise) was an opportunity to invite a government representative. In 1986, the guest was Alain Madelin, Minister of Industry and Tourism; in 1988, Alain Juppé, minister for the budget; and in 1989, Édith Cresson, minister for European affairs. When this award became the “entrepreneur’s award” in 1993, it was once again presented by Madelin, this time as minister for economic development. Such patronage indicates that AFIC was henceforth in a position to invite members of the government, albeit not necessarily those with the most prominent portfolios. As of 1994, the association also began organizing monthly lunches: “The future guests of the monthly luncheons will be leaders from the worlds of politics, business, the stock market or the financial press”.6 Among the French MPs and senators, the most sought-​after by AFIC were those sitting on finance committees, whatever their party affiliations. Finally, AFIC benefited from its members’ personal relationships: Stéphane Frydman was in charge of industrial development and innovation in [DSK’s] cabinet. He was a “Mines” [École nationale supérieure des Mines de Paris] alumnus whom I later recruited here … And I was very much used by AFIC […] for lobbying purposes, I don’t know if that is the exact word for it, but to go and chat about the Charrasse amendments for example. I don’t remember exactly, we were a group of 4, there was [X]‌the boss of LBO France, [Y] who ran Apax, [Z] who managed Astorg and myself, all going to see the “government” as it were. And that’s when we saw the director of Michel Charasse’s office, Robert Daussun, who is [now] in charge of LBO France and who was recruited by [X] after. (AFIC chairman, 1998–​1999) As of the mid-​ 1990s, AFIC’s efforts came to fruition. Governments henceforth recognized the association as a legitimate interlocutor when enacting rules relating to the financing of French companies. Legislative Work: Codrafting the Rule With the 1998 finance act, AFIC gained the right for life insurance policyholders to be given tax incentives to invest a portion of their savings in unlisted companies through private equity funds. This was a clear political success: the association received support from the Minister of Economic Affairs and his office, from the treasury department, and from the majority of members of parliament to counter the reticence of the

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  141 tax legislation department and the French stock exchange commission (Commission des opérations de bourse). But it came under fire from right-​wing members of parliament and senators who were against the creation of a restricted tax niche, in addition to the standard opposition from FFSA. However, when the parliamentary debates and the production of implementing legislation came to an end, this second coalition managed to contain AFIC’s success. In accordance with ministerial direction, Frédéric Lavenir, Deputy Chief of Staff to Strauss-​Kahn, invited AFIC to business meetings in the summer of 1997. The agenda included “developing financing for young businesses” and getting around “the related tax problems”.7 AFIC and the minister’s advisors agreed to limit the total exemption from income tax to life insurance policies where a portion of the proceeds would be assets invested in small-​and medium-​sized businesses. The measure would make the tax benefit conditional upon the participation of investors in public support for recent and mid-​tier businesses and their managers. While this economic policy was acceptable to the treasury department, its cost for the budget was an embarrassment for the tax legislation department. Its senior civil servants found it hard to accept that a tax niche was being reserved for transactions that they considered to be downright risky for private individuals who were not experienced financiers: The main point is that there is one, in fact two, places at Bercy [the ministry of Finance] and that’s where it all happens. In France there are two people who make decisions. That’s the tax legislation department and the Treasury. […] So the topics we had, which were regulatory matters, were to say that we needed to encourage insurers to put money into unlisted companies, that was the Treasury point of view. But the real issue was the impact on taxation. (AFIC chairman, 1997–​2000) Yet on 24 September 1997, clause 17 of the 1998 finance bill presented to parliamentarians granted AFIC’s requests. It amended article 125-​0 A of the general tax code. It put an end to the income tax exemption for the proceeds of life insurance contracts older than eight years, except for those whose reference assets are constituted in a continuous manner for at least fifty percent of: a) units of venture capital funds, innovation mutual funds, shares in venture capital companies or innovation finance companies; b) securities admitted to trading on the new market; c) shares issued by companies […] whose securities are not admitted to trading on a regulated market.8 For AFIC, this was a huge success. If passed, this article of the bill would give investment funds access to half of the amounts invested in life insurance, which in 1997 amounted to almost 225 billion francs per year.

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142  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault When the law was being examined in Parliament, the wording of article 17 changed under pressure from insurers and from elected representatives from the right and center, making it less favorable to private equity. In October 1997, AFIC contacted Didier Migaud, French MP and general rapporteur of the Finance Commission, to provide him with argumentations and to discuss the proposed amendments. At the same time, the association organized a meeting at the Senate with Chairman Monory and a dozen elected officials to “present the outlines of the profession and its most important current difficulties (stock options, innovation mutual funds, foreign funds, and creation)”. The arguments were now well established: to promote private equity was to support recent or mid-​tier companies that provided innovation and jobs. On 20 November 1997, AFIC organized a “highly technical [internal] lunch to present the main points of the finance act relating to the businesses and activities of the Association’s members” and “to question tax lawyers” on the amendments to be defended or rejected. Opponents of article 17 were virulent in both Chambers. For conservative MP François d’Aubert, the abolition of tax exemption for all life insurance contracts would be an attack on the “middle classes”, “families”, and “savers” who “are not all capitalists!”.9 On 25 November 1997, in the Senate controlled by the conservatives, senators led by Philippe Marini, rapporteur for the Finance Commission, removed article 17, in as much as it would make the existing “tax niche” conditional upon certain types of investments. The National Assembly’s Finance Committee proposed a newly worded compromise. It reintegrated the securities of listed companies into the 50 percent of life insurance products giving rise to tax exemption. Most importantly, the new article limited the proportion invested in securities of unlisted companies or companies admitted to the Nouveau Marché (a newly created stock exchange for startups) to 5 percent of this 50 percent. Although the new version was far less beneficial to private equity, which might at the very best expect to recover just 2.5 billion francs, it was nonetheless AFIC’s first legislative victory. Despite the reluctance of the FFSA, the private equity firms obtained an article of legislation that granted them a privileged access to savings collected through life insurance. The text was definitively adopted by the Assembly on 18 December 1997. The Administrative Task: Implementing the Rule Parallel to the parliamentary debates, meetings were held at the Treasury to draw up implementing legislation. Approximately 30 representatives from the financial community were invited by François Pérol, head of the financial markets office at the French Treasury. The initial FFSA representative was Dominique Sénéquier, director and founder of Axa Private Equity. She was quickly replaced by another FFSA director who could

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  143 defend the traditional concerns of insurers. The French Asset Management Association (Association française de gestion) was also represented. Among public officials, the Treasury and the Minister’s office, represented by its technical advisor Stéphane Boujnah, a business lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions, were in conflict with the tax legislation department represented at the time by Véronique Bied-​Charreton and the representatives of the French stock exchange commission. The Caisse des dépôts et des consignations was also represented on occasion. The insurers’ strategy to counter AFIC’s objectives was evidence of their know-​how; it consisted in joining the misgivings of the stock exchange commission and those of the tax legislation department, without disregarding the decision of either the Treasury or the minister. FFSA therefore insisted on reconciling savers’ protection (the mandate of the stock exchange commission) and support for recent, small or innovative companies (the government’s policy). The representatives of insurers and portfolio management companies then tried to broaden the list of investments making up the 5 percent threshold in such a way that the insurers and management companies they mandated did not have to make too many changes to their investment strategies and could invest throughout the EU (this was an important issue, both for French subsidiaries of foreign insurers and for French companies in the middle of international expansion, such as AXA). Their proposal to recognize the same tax advantages on the Nouveau marché for their European counterparts was successful. At that time, stock prices were rising, the internet bubble was growing, and it was not possible to attack these NASDAQ epigones. As the AFIC chairman pointed out in the margin of a handwritten note from AFIC’s general secretary, “you can’t attack the Nouveau marché”. Finally, FFSA tried to introduce “funds of funds” into the decree: a fund could hold shares in other private equity funds, which would make it possible to reduce exposure to the inherent risks and costs pertaining to direct investment in the capital of unlisted and little-​known companies. AFIC deplored the attitude of insurance companies who were reluctant to “[shift] from a saver culture to a culture of investors and entrepreneurs” and took exception to what it considered to be a misrepresentation of the spirit of the law. The decree and instruction were issued on 28 and 29 May 1998. Their wording clarified what each party had lost or gained. The vigilance of AFIC and its members had paid off, as they had thwarted the maneuver by the insurers who wanted the 5 percent quota of “at risk” assets to be assessed at the moment the shares were paid up and not at the time of subscription. On the other hand, the FFSA won its case regarding “funds of funds”. In its article 13, the 1999 amending finance law opened up the tax advantage to investments in securities listed on the analogues of the Nouveau marché in other countries of the European Economic Area. Although the insurers had contained the effects of the law, by diluting the sums directly transferred to private equity, AFIC, for its part, had

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144  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault succeeded in becoming one of the coproducers of the law, on a par with well-​established financial lobbies. The Political Work: Legitimizing the Rule Among the General Public The coproduction of rules cannot be reduced to the promulgation of legal texts negotiated between representatives of private interests and government authorities; it also means convincing their principals of the contribution that these rules make to the general interest. In parallel with parliamentary debates and post-​legislative negotiations, AFIC intensified its press campaign. Working with the editorial team at Les Echos magazine, it published a special “Startup” report on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship to gain acceptance of public subsidy for renewed forms of private gain. An article titled “Recherche investisseurs français” (“Looking for French Investors”) in La Tribune of 17 November 1997 summarizes the arguments. In the absence of pension funds, French private equity funds would be able to finance innovation, support growth, and restrict the number of companies coming under foreign control. The government pushed its policy of public incentives for private initiative, particularly in the commercial applications of cutting-​edge technologies, all the more vigorously as new privatizations reduced its grip on production resources. D. Strauss-​Kahn told Le Monde newspaper that “the government wants to encourage the creation of high-​tech companies”. To this end, on top of the tax incentives being negotiated in parliament, the government added 600 million francs from the partial privatization of France Telecom”. In the Minister’s remarks, we find AFIC’s reticence concerning public interventions that might compete with its members: These 600 million francs will make it possible to create a public venture capital fund that will be managed by the Caisse des dépôts. It will be a fund for funds that will not compete with private venture capital companies, but which will serve as a support to enable them to heavily increase the number of operations they decide to carry out. (Le Monde, 19 November 1997) Economic policy henceforth consisted of delegating the pursuit of the objective they had set themselves to private agents who were subsidized by the government. In the first half of 1998, the press campaign focused less on support for small-​and medium-​sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-​tier companies, particularly innovative, and more on the launch of DSK life insurance policies. According to Option Finance, the latter would constitute “a godsend for companies”. More unexpectedly, Alternatives Economiques (a left-​leaning monthly) also praised them, to make up for France’s “delay” compared to the United States:

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  145 Technological innovation is at a standstill in Europe, and in France in particular. To revive it, we need to reduce unemployment while encouraging the emergence of innovative SMEs. A complex mechanism whereby specialized financial markets, such as the NASDAQ, will play a central role. […] Thanks to these markets [i.e., the Nouveau Marché] and these measures [DSK life insurance], the financing of start-​ups, which has led to the success of American high technology, should finally take off in Europe. (Alternatives Economiques, 1 May 1998) AFIC provided the press with its key figures on the sector’s activity and estimates of its contribution to employment in France. The interview with AFIC’s chairman in Les Echos on 31 March 1998 was the high point of this campaign: In addition to making up for this delay, we believe it is more significant to note that these measures are part of a global and coherent plan to promote venture capital and private equity. This sets a precedent and it is a source of satisfaction for our profession, which is seeing the fulfilment of a wish that we have been expressing for ten years now. (Les Echos, 31 March 1998) Finally, the business press published advertising inserts announcing the new savings product. In 1999, in recognition of his investment in the sector, AFIC made D. Strauss-​Kahn its guest of honor at its annual conference. It became regulatory practice for part of French people’s life insurance to be directed into private equity. In 2005, Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy created the so-​called NSK life insurance policies based on the DSK model. In the France of the “new economy”, the promotion of DSK life insurance policies and more generally that of the private equity that they fed into (albeit to a lesser extent than the AFIC had at one time hoped) took up and brought up to date the slogan formulated by the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and which his French epigones then took at face value: “Today’s profits are tomorrow’s investments and the jobs of the day after that”.

Conclusion The description of the way in which a fraction of the capital holders, the managers of investment funds, negotiated with government authorities one of the rules favoring their acquisition of wealth, documents the agonistic coproduction process of business law. On this occasion, the authorities did not behave as an arbiter of competitive relationships between representatives of the insurance and private equity sectors, nor, conversely,

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146  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault as a mere instrument for none of these fractions of the business world. They came across as a hierarchical set of administrative departments and elected officials creating coalitions of shifting interests with business representatives. Although they had a monopoly on enshrining de facto regularities in law, they nevertheless depended on economic agents and formed alliances with some of them, sometimes with unexpected effects. For example, during the legislative phase of drafting and voting on the 1998 finance act, the minister of the economy, his cabinet, the treasury department, and the majority of members of parliament made possible the vote for a tax incentive to invest in unlisted companies via investment funds. A godsend for them. Conversely, during the administrative phase of its implementation, another coalition, made up of the tax legislation department, the stock exchange commission, right-​wing members of parliament and senators, and representatives of the insurance sector, contained the potential effects of this incentive by reducing the volume of amounts actually transferred to private equity companies. This case study shows how, since its creation in 1984, AFIC and its members have made private equity one of the most important professions in the Paris financial center. They have become privileged interlocutors for governmental authorities. Because they had been able to convince them of the positive contribution that private equity made to productive investment, industry representatives obtained from them the advantages, tax advantages in particular, of channeling part of their savings into unlisted companies. The 1998 finance act thus ushered in a period of reshaping the balance of power among financiers, which saw investment funds become a major pole for capital accumulation in France. This text presents new perspectives to theorize and empirically study the relations between corporations and public authorities, as an agonistic process of coproduction of rules. In such approach, the recent history of French capitalism depends on the dynamics of the State, which is neither neutral arbiter nor a simple instrument of the dominant, but an actor in its own right, with economic as well as political interests to promote diverse forms of accumulation.

Notes 1 Private equity is the financing of a company with equity capital that a fund manages and decides to invest in the company. For companies, particularly those that are not listed and cannot issue shares on the financial markets so as to finance themselves, this method of financing represents an alternative to financing through bank credit. Some professionals in the sector and the majority of finance textbooks distinguish, within private equity, venture capital (for startups), buyout or expansion capital (for mature companies), and turnaround capital (for companies in difficulty). These distinctions, which relate to the type of companies in which the investment is made, are nevertheless based on the same method of financing. In this chapter, we do not make these distinctions, as the legislation in question concerns private equity as a whole.

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Coproducing the Rules of the Game  147 2 This article was produced as part of the “Histoire du capital-​investissement” project (PSL Research University, Paris-​Dauphine, IRISSO), funded by the Institut Louis Bachelier, the “Private Equity & Venture Capital” chair (under the direction of Serge Darolles), and the “Corporate Ethics and Governance” chair (under the direction of Nicolas Berland), as well as by the DFCG Foundation. Its principal investigator Marlène Benquet obtained, with Paul Lagneau-​Ymonet, access to the AFIC archives and the authorization to use them in exchange for their classification by Fabien Foureault, from October 2016 to June 2017. 3 The Journal Officiel de la République Française collects the minutes of parliamentary debates. 4 AFIC archives, minutes of the general meeting, 6 June 1990. 5 AFIC archives, minutes of the general meeting, 18 April 1991. 6 AFIC archives, minutes of the general meeting, 6 September 1994. 7 AFIC archives, fax from Paul-​Louis Santy to AFIC chairman, 1 September 1997. 8 Journal Officiel de la République Française, third session, 17 October 1997 (p. 36). 9 Journal Officiel de la République Française, third session, 21 October 1997 (p. 9).

References Audibert, Olivier. 2018. “De quoi le Comité Interministériel de restructuration industrielle (CIRI) est-​il un cas?” PhD diss., Université Paris-​Dauphine. Benquet, Marlène, Paul Lagneau-​Ymonet, and Fabien Foureault. 2018. “L’avenir du capital investissement a un riche passé”. Entreprises et histoire 92(3): 125–​130. Burrough, Bryan, and John Helyar. 1990. Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco. New York: HarperCollins. Coase, Ronald H. 1960. “The Problem of Social Cost”. The Journal of Law & Economics 3: 1–​44. Colliot-​Thélène, Catherine. 2003. “La fin du monopole de la violence légitime?” Revue D’études Comparatives Est-​Ouest 34(1): 5–​31. Culpepper, Pepper D. 2010. Quiet Politics and Business Power: Corporate Control in Europe and Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dautresme, D. 1982. Le Développement et la protection de l’épargne. Paris. La Documentation Française. Denord, François, Paul Lagneau-​Ymonet P., and S. Thine. 2011. “Le champ du pouvoir en France”. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 190: 24–​57. https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​arss.190.0024. Dubuisson-​Quellier, Sophie. 2017. “Capture as a Lever for Public Intervention in the Economy”. Revue Française de Sociologie 58(3): 475–​499. https://​doi.org/​ 10.3917/​rfs.583.0475. France, Pierre, and Antoine Vauchez. 2021. The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-​Private France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2011. Winner-​Take-​All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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148  Benquet, Ymonet, and Foureault Huault, Isabelle, and Chrystelle Richard. 2012. Finance: The Discreet Regulator. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Kalecki, Michal. 1943. “Political Aspects of Full Employment”. The Political Quarterly 14(4): 322–​330. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1467-​923X.1943. tb01016.x. Kessler, Denis. 1990. “Introduction générale”. Economie et Statistique 233: 3–​8. https://​doi.org/​10.3406/​estat.1990.5459. Kindelberger, Charles. 2005. Histoire mondiale de la spéculation financière. Paris: Valor Editions. Laffont, Jean-​ Jacques, and Jean Tirole. 1993. A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Lemoine, Benjamin. 2016. L’ordre de la dette: Enquête sur les infortunes de l’Etat et la prospérité du marché. Paris: La Découverte. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1998 [1848]. Le manifeste du Parti communiste. Paris: Flammarion. Mintz, Beth A., and Michael Schwartz. 1987. The Power Structure of American Business. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morin, François. 1998. Le modèle français de détention et de gestion du capital. Analyse, prospective et comparaisons internationales. Paris: Ministère de L’économie, des Finances et de L’industrie. Murray, Joshua 2017. “Interlock Globally, Act Domestically: Corporate Political Unity in the 21st Century”. American Journal of Sociology 122(6): 1617–​ 1663. https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​691603. Novak, William J. 2013. “A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture”. In Preventing Regulatory Capture, edited by Daniel P., Carpenter D., and David A. Moss. 25–​48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pistor, Katharina. 2019. The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Plihon, Dominique. 2016. Le nouveau capitalisme. Paris: La Découverte. Reynaud, Bénédicte. 2004. Les règles économiques et leurs usages. Paris: O. Jacob. Stigler, George J. 1971. “The Theory of Economic Regulation”. The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2(1): 3–​21. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​ 3003160. Strauss-​Kahn, Dominique. 2002. La flamme et la cendre. Paris: Grasset. Torrès, Félix, and Aalain Borderie. 1996. La révolution du marché financier français. Naissance d’un acteur. Fimagest: profession gestionnaire. Paris: Albin Michel. Tørsløv Thomas, Ludvig Wier, and Gabriel Zucman. 2018. “The Missing Profits of Nations”. NBER Working Paper 24701. https://​doi.org/​10.3386/​w24701.

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7  Transnational Professional Service Firms and the Corporatization of Infrastructure Procurement Chris Hurl, and Anne Vogelpohl

Introduction This chapter examines the growing influence of the so-​called Big Four professional service firms in public policymaking from a cross-​national perspective. Over the past three decades, KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, and EY have been increasingly taken up by governments around the world in advising on service delivery, infrastructure development, public procurement practices, and a range of other issues. In the process, we argue, these firms have facilitated the corporatization of public policymaking across the globe. By corporatization we mean a multifaceted process of governmental reform involving the interjection of distanciated forms of managerial control in the procurement and delivery of public services (Brownlee et al. 2018). Corporatization is usually understood in the organizational sense as the establishment of public agency at a distance from the realm of formal political deliberation. This involves creating “arm’s length enterprises with independent managers responsible solely for the operation of their own immediate organization, and where all costs and revenues are accounted as though it were a standalone company” (McDonald 2014, 1–​2). These enterprises typically have a separate legal status from other public agencies and an organizational structure similar to that of private sector companies –​including components such as a board of directors. According to McDonald (2014, 4), these corporatized entities now comprise “the bulk of the public sphere in many Western European countries,” and recent studies suggest that corporatization is becoming a dominant form of service delivery around the world (Valkama 2013; McDonald 2016; OECD 2018). In this chapter, we develop a broader understanding of corporatization as a process to account for how corporate models of procurement are generated, diffused, and become entrenched in public institutions. This includes a cultural transformation by which public services come to be reimagined through the interjection of private sector managerial models and modes of calculation. Through the application of new forms of management and accounting practices, senior managers in corporatized DOI: 10.4324/​9781003053873-8

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150  Hurl and Vogelpohl organizations are able to subject public services to “good financial housekeeping.” As Clarke and Newman (1997, 65) point out, “what services are to be provided to whom, and according to what order of priorities, become part of the business decisions of managers subject to the logics of strategic positioning and financial survival.” The needs of the public are thus subordinated to the economic bottom line, as managers try to increase efficiency and cut costs. Alongside the focus on business-​like forms of service delivery, corporatization involves the growing influence of private corporations on public decision making and service delivery. The appeal of “outside” business experts has been especially prominent over the past three decades, as political leaders have drawn inspiration from philosophies of New Public Management (NPM), emphasizing the importance of private sector ideas in reforming state agencies and problematizing the influence of in-​house professionals in manipulating the policymaking process for their own purposes. Scholars have also noted the deepening entrenchment of private actors in the day-​to-​day administration of public agencies (Raco 2013; Saint-​Martin 2013). In the process, the flow of policy information has been transformed, generating enduring channels of communication between public and private actors both within and across government jurisdictions. Drawing from a comparative case study of the UK, Canada, and Germany, we explore how the Big Four firms have contributed to the corporatization of infrastructure development through the promotion, management, and assessment of Public–​ Private Partnerships (PPPs) as a procurement model. A comparative approach allows us to identify national differences which are, in our case, mostly caused by historically variable relationships of cooperation and trust between private firms, external consultants, and public offices (see Kipping 1996). We trace the influence of Big Four firms on corporatization in three ways. First, through the diffusion of corporate business models –​organized around the principles of project finance (PF), risk allocation, and Value for Money (VfM) –​these firms have transformed the culture of infrastructure procurement, encouraging public agencies to imagine policymaking as a process of “deal-​making” ring-​fenced from the realm of formal political deliberation. Second, through the commodification of PPP advisory services, these firms have facilitated the packaging and rapid diffusion of policy ideas through what Cook and Ward (2012) call “policy-​pipelines,” drawing into proximity previously distant public and private sector actors. Third, through their entrenchment as third-​party advisors responsible for the assessment of deals, they have facilitated the growing integration of private firms and public agencies in generating policy priorities, bringing corporate and governmental power together in a public–​private policymaking complex. We conclude by discussing the implications for public policymaking. As decisions about infrastructure procurement come to be reframed as

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Big Four Firms  151 techno-​ managerial issues evaluated at a distance from public policymaking, the realm of political deliberation is at risk of being narrowed. Skillfully set apart from the demands articulated by local constituencies, needs come to be treated as managerial prerogatives. However, such tendencies to depoliticization are by no means uncontested as possibilities remain for critical engagement and resistance.

The Big Four, Infrastructure Development, and PPPs Much of the literature on corporatization has focused on its organizational dimensions, looking at how public utilities and services have been institutionally reconfigured under neoliberal governmental rationalities (for instance, see Bilodeau et al. 2007; Langen and Heij 2014; McDonald 2014). However, not as much research has been done on the role of private actors –​such as think tanks, consultants, and professional service firms –​ in packaging and promoting corporate models across jurisdictions. Over the past three decades, public agencies around the world have increasingly turned to private consultants for advice on new governance models. In 2018 alone, the revenue generated by management consultants in advising governments was estimated at over 85 billion dollars globally (IBISWorld 2019). And while the market for advice remains diverse, the Big Four firms have been growing their market share in recent years through scale advantages, changing procurement practices, and industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions (Brooks 2018). As of 2020, they employed over 1.1 million people and operated in 150 countries around the world (Statista 2021). They audit most of the world’s largest publicly traded companies and have played a central role in auditing many public agencies around the world (Brooks 2018). Infrastructure procurement has featured quite prominently as a growth area for these firms. Over the past two decades, dozens of Big Four reports have identified “the infrastructure gap” as a major challenge for governments, demanding out-​of-​the-​box thinking in governance and innovative financial models in the context of fiscal austerity and competitive international markets. A 2016 report by EY, Public Private Partnerships and the Global Infrastructure Challenge (2016), estimates that the global “infrastructure gap” will grow to US$40–​US$50 trillion by 2030 and identifies “fiscal and political obstacles,” such as revenue constraints and high levels of public scrutiny, that hinder development. In addressing these issues, Big Four firms have positioned themselves as key brokers in providing the requisite expertise and financial models for the procurement of new infrastructures, offering “techniques to analyze, prioritize, finance, and enable greater visibility into government infrastructure projects” (Deloitte 2021). To access the growing market, they have established separate infrastructure divisions. The capital projects and infrastructure practice at PwC (2020) advertises a global network of more than 1,700 professionals who include “financial, technology,

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152  Hurl and Vogelpohl project management, risk management and engineering specialists.” KPMG (2020a) boasts a global network of over 3,000 “infrastructure colleagues” in “multidisciplinary teams” that are customized “depending on the unique requirements and challenges of each project.” Drawing from these networks, these global firms have been able to quickly translate these ideas to different policy contexts. Indeed, they pride themselves on their scope and flexibility. In terms of impact, numerous studies have already noted the role of these firms in facilitating the normalization, routinization, and depoliticization of PPP policies around the world (Jooste and Scott 2012; Whiteside 2014). Since the early 1990s, they have emerged as influential actors in what Jooste and Scott (2012, 154) describe as the PPP enabling field, working to create “shared meanings and controls” that facilitate the entrenchment of PPPs as a preferred policy option –​though there has been some debate on their influence. While some historical accounts go so far as to argue that the Big Four firms have been the architects of these policies (Shaoul et al. 2007), others argue that they have simply served as “foot soldiers” (Hodge and Bowman 2006) or “intellectual mercenaries” (Leys 1999), providing a stamp of approval for policies already devised by the government. Thus, Hodge and Bowman (2006, 114) describe these firms as “more a lubricant in public sector reform than the policy reform machine itself.” However, while debates have revolved around the extent to which consultants are responsible for the generation of new policy ideas, not as much work has been done on how these firms are integrated into the governance process, and there is little research documenting their influence from a cross-​national perspective. Drawing from a case study of PPPs, this chapter explores the Big Four’s role in corporatizing infrastructure procurement. Our study is based on a discourse analysis of Big Four reports, policy documents, and VfM assessments available online via the firm’s websites as well as through government agencies themselves from 2000 to 2020. This was supplemented by expert interviews with public officials, industry actors, and private consultants. While we have undertaken a preliminary global survey of PPP practices, our focus is on three countries: the UK, Canada, and Germany. In the UK, Big Four firms played a central role in designing the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), the PPP prototype established in 1992 and later exported to other parts of the world (Shaoul et al. 2007; Hellowell 2010; Jupe and Funnell 2015). “[D]‌ue to their unique position inside government,” a UNISON (2003, 3) report notes, the Big Four helped “devise and develop” the UK’s policies on PFI “by providing secondees and sitting on government working groups.” PwC contributed to the founding of the Canadian Council for Public–​Private Partnerships (CCPPP) in 1993 and helped to spearhead a concerted campaign for PPPs in Canada through the 1990s, leading to the establishment of dedicated PPP units –​such as Partnerships BC and Infrastructure Ontario –​in several Canadian

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Big Four Firms  153 provinces by the early 2000s. In Germany, these firms worked with public officials inspired by the PFI to promote and advise on PPPs beginning in the early 2000s, contributing to the formation of the Bundesverband (Federal Association) Public Private Partnership (BPPP) in 2003 and Partnerschaft Deutschland (PD) in 2008. For each country, we compiled an inventory of relevant documents and in each case coded the documents according to three themes that we found pertinent for understanding corporatization. First, we comparatively investigated the professional discourses guiding these documents. Rather than seeking to understand the underlying ideological motivations of Big Four firms, we were more interested in how their texts play “an active conceptual role in setting the terms in which organizational activities can be thought, discussed and evaluated” (McCoy 1998, 396). We found that these firms make infrastructure procurement governable in new ways through the diffusion of their managerial models and modes of calculation. Through reimagining infrastructure projects as “deals” whose prospective risks can be assessed and allocated efficiently, with the aim of maximizing value, we note that these firms have been able to interject business-​like rationalities in the procurement process. Second, we traced the circulation of these models across jurisdictions. Rather than exercising authority within a specific institutional or professional domain, recent studies have noted the “post-​jurisdictional” power of transnational consultancy firms like the Big Four, exercised through their ability to forge associations and bridge connections between previously unconnected actors, such as public officials, institutional investors, and construction and engineering contractors (Osborne 2004; Sturdy et al. 2009; Davies 2017). Such firms, Allen (2010, 2901) notes, “do not actually ‘hold’ power; rather they produce it through associations formed at a distance over time and space.” Along these lines, power is generated through the capacity to circulate policy ideas across different institutional settings. Here, we chart the role of Big Four firms in packaging “fast policies,” enabling the quick circulation of ready-​made financial models across jurisdictions (Peck and Theodore 2015). Third, we looked at the institutional arrangements through which access to policy information is brokered in infrastructure procurement. We were interested here in the various ways in which Big Four firms became embedded in the policymaking process. We analyzed how personnel circulate between Big Four firms and public agencies, contributing to the formation of what Carroll and Carson (2003) describe as a “political-​ cultural community.” We also traced the institutional entrenchment of firms in governmental PPP agencies, made up of public and private personnel in overseeing the procurement process. We demonstrate that, while firms have generated influence transnationally, the way in which they are integrated into the policymaking process is variable and shaped, in part, by public contestation.

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154  Hurl and Vogelpohl In considering these three levels together, we demonstrate how infrastructure procurement becomes corporatized, positioned at a distance from formal political deliberation and transformed into an object of managerial discretion.

Procurement as Corporate Decision Making First, we explore how the Big Four firms have worked to create shared meanings and controls that facilitate the entrenchment of PPPs as a policy option. This has involved the “constitution of economic paradigms, identities and modes of calculation that justify claims about an ‘imagined community of entrepreneurial interest’ ” (Jessop and Sum 2000, 2291). A review of Big Four policy reports and assessments demonstrates a commitment to extend business-​like rationalities to the public sector, effectively reimagining infrastructure as an investment object to be governed through organizational models and modes of calculation borrowed from the private sector. Through popularizing organizational models like “project finance” and “special purpose entities,” and financial instruments and metrics like “risk transfer” and “value for money,” firms have worked to interject speculative financial rationalities into the procurement process, creating a sense that different components of a project can be broken down and traded as objects of investment. As Bordeleau (2014) notes, these ideas have a very specific history, building from the experience of the Big Four firms as financial advisors in packaging complex financial arrangements in the private sector. The conceptual framework for PPPs draws from financial models that had first been refined in high-​risk projects in the energy sector in the 1970s and 1980s, beginning with oil extraction in the North Sea (Yescombe 2011). In confronting the scale and risk of these projects, Big Four firms helped to formalize “private partnerships” that set out to mitigate investment risks through ring-​fencing investment in project-​ specific financing schemes, while at the same time distributing risks to various actors in complex contractual arrangements (Kleimeier and Megginson 1998). Through the adoption of PF, loans were determined by the projected cash flow generated by the project rather than the creditworthiness of the borrowers. This was premised on the idea that “the project creates revenues that can be captured directly by the lenders” (Bordeleau 2014, 50). They also employed special purpose entities (SPEs) for each project –​business entities formed for the purpose of conducting a specified activity –​“with multiple owners and complex schemes distributing insurance, loans, management, and project operations” (Marsh and Associates LLP 2012). Before turning to the public sector, Big Four firms played a central role in engineering private partnerships. This involved assembling business cases, assessing deals, and gauging expected returns against the risks posed by each project (Bordeleau 2014, 50). It was here that they developed the

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Big Four Firms  155 expertise and models that would later be taken up in developing and promoting PPPs to the public sector. Addressing growing concerns with sovereign debt, while at the same time warding off criticisms of privatization, firms began marketing PPPs in the early 1990s as “alternative” financing models capable of generating value in infrastructure procurement through the efficient allocation of risk (Bordeleau 2014; Whiteside 2014; Boardman et al. 2016b). As with private partnerships, this involved the creation of deal-​specific structures assembling a consortium of private companies –​including typically a bank or institutional lender, a construction and engineering company, and property management and facilities management firms –​in project-​specific special purpose entities (SPEs) and paying these actors in increments based on the performance of the asset over the course of its life. Through exporting such models and expertise to the public sector, Big Four firms have enabled the corporatization of infrastructure procurement, which has come to be broken down into a series of discrete deals to be negotiated by financial experts at one remove from political deliberation. In order to participate in the process, policymakers must be able to “see like a dealmaker,” skillfully applying speculative logics in negotiating the allocation of financial risk (Johns 2011). In helping them to develop the requisite expertise, the Big Four firms have positioned themselves as essential intermediaries, assisting governments and private firms to assess the quality of their deals. As PwC (2005, 64) notes, both public and private actors often “lack the experience to understand when an acceptable deal has been reached.” In providing advice to the public sector, Big Four firms have fabricated a number of financial modeling techniques that have stabilized their influence in infrastructure development. Most notably, they have popularized VfM assessments (Wirtschaftlichkeitsuntersuchung in German), which have become the chief form of assessment undertaken by governments in deciding on the best way to procure infrastructure, either through PPPs or public procurement. VfM is typically presented via standardized reports issued by Big Four firms for every project, with the chief metric being a bar graph comparing the anticipated value of a PPP project against a hypothetical “public sector comparator” (PSC). The assessment typically includes comparison according to “base costs” (the costs incurred in building and maintaining a project), “ancillary costs” (the costs incurred in managing a project), and drawing from private partnership models, Big Four firms have also introduced “risk retained” as a category of assessment that can be assigned value. According to this premise, the procurement process can generate value by contractually allocating risk to the party that is “best able” to manage it (Deloitte 2010, 9). To the extent that the state transfers responsibility for various design, construction, and financing risks to the private sector, it is argued that governments can generate value. Such models have reframed the way in which infrastructure procurement is evaluated by public officials. While PPPs might be dismissed for

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156  Hurl and Vogelpohl their higher base and ancillary costs (due, in part, to the higher cost of borrowing by private firms), through the interjection of “risk” as an object of valuation, accounting firms have been able to claim that PPPs are better value, as they purportedly transfer risk from the public to the private sector. In our survey of 90 VfM reports, all drafted by Big Four firms, in Ontario, Canada, between 2008 and 2020, we found that the PSC was cheaper in all but 4 of 90 cases in base and ancillary costs, before the risk transfer metric was applied. In fact, in 2014, the Auditor General of Ontario noted that projects undertaken through PPPs were $8 billion more expensive than if they had been undertaken through “traditional” public procurement (Auditor General 2014). In Germany, where only a comparably small number of infrastructure projects are realized through PPPs, it is still particularly challenging for Big Four firms to sustain their expertise on VfM. However, they have made inroads through drafting reports to different levels of government that advance “risk transfer” as a metric for assessing the value of infrastructure projects. For instance, PwC wrote an expert report for the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs proposing the establishment of an infrastructure agency at arm’s length from the ministry that would utilize these financial models in facilitating “useful risk transfer from municipalities to institutional investors” (PwC Legal 2016, 6). Through popularizing VfM as a metric, Big Four firms have worked to shift the focus of procurement to a speculative, market-​based rationality in which potential risks can be evaluated and traded by public and private sector actors, reinforcing the sense that these agreements exist as discrete deals to be undertaken by financial engineering specialists at a distance from the policymaking process. This is reflected in the procedures for calculating risk. Notably, policymakers do not draw from an established public database in determining the potential risks of projects or their value (Boardman et al. 2016a). Instead, “[t]‌he recognized procedure to identify and quantify risks relies on the application of professional judgment by experienced engineering and construction professionals” (MMM Group 2015). Through “risk workshops,” Big Four consultants draw together public officials with representatives from industry –​including senior executives from engineering and construction firms –​to subjectively determine the probability that various risks will materialize, and assess their financial impacts, which is ultimately translated into a monetary value. The risk workshops are closed to the public and the rationale for valuating risks in specific projects is never publicly disclosed. These claims to allocate and value risk have not gone uncontested. Alongside progressive think tanks and public sector labor unions –​such as UNISON in the UK, GiB or Ver.di in Germany, and CUPE in Canada –​ public accountants and auditors have challenged the credibility of VfM assessments. For instance, the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) has explicitly rejected the “risk & reward”

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Big Four Firms  157 framework. In their development of PPP standards, IPSASB “questioned whether sufficiently objective criteria could be established for addressing risks and rewards to enable consistent results to be determined” (2011, BC13). In her 2014 assessment of infrastructure procurement in Ontario, the Auditor General (2014, 20) noted “there is no empirical data supporting the key assumptions used … to assign costs to specific risks.” She noted that such metrics often relied on “the professional judgement and experience of external advisors … making them difficult to verify.” Moreover, she warned of potential bias toward PPPs, as “often the delivery of projects by the public sector was cast in a negative light, resulting in significant differences in the assumptions used to value risks between the public sector delivering projects and the AFP approach” (Auditor General 2014, 198). Likewise, in Germany, public accountants and auditors have challenged the credibility of these assessments. For instance, a 2016 VfM report, undertaken by KPMG for a proposed truck toll project, was harshly criticized by the Federal Court of Auditors, among others for not including external costs, like those for consultancies, or for miscalculating potential claims for compensation. The VfM needed to be recalculated in 2019 and now recommends public procurement. Another very prominent example is the unsuccessful introduction of a PPP to manage highway tolls. The costs were so high that several tenderers eventually did not submit their offer, and the single remaining tenderer received enormous concessions by the Federal Minister of Transport –​concessions whose legality is currently under review by the federal parliament (Rohrbeck and Tatje 2020). However, despite criticisms of opacity and inaccuracy from public accountants and auditors, VfM assessments have been widely taken up as a logic for gauging the relative success of PPPs (Hellowell 2010; Whiteside 2014). In many countries, the Big Four have assumed responsibility for both drafting and assessing the methodology through which VfM is determined. For instance, in Canada, KPMG played a central role in advising the federal government (Canada 1998) as well as the provinces of British Columbia (1996) and Nova Scotia on VfM methodologies (KPMG 2000), and Deloitte Canada (2007, 2015) drafted and revised the methodology for Ontario. In Germany, VfM analyses became obligatory for PPP projects in 2005 (Fischer and Schubert 2018, 362) in a law that was partly drafted by PwC. Along these lines, the practices of Big Four firms have contributed to the development of corporatized forms of management in infrastructure procurement by spearheading the application of private sector corporate models in the public sector. Through PF, deal-​specific structures are generated at arm’s length from the formal political realm, with deliberation restricted to a specialized group of experts, applying financial models whose methodologies are devised and applied by these firms with little public scrutiny.

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158  Hurl and Vogelpohl

Building Project Pipelines Moving beyond the content of professional discourses and modes of calculation, we can also look at how these firms facilitate corporatization through circulating these policy ideas in new ways. Bundling together the financial models and instruments discussed above, Big Four firms have packaged a suite of advisory services that can be sold to governments and private investors around the world. Promoting these services across jurisdictions, Big Four firms have been central in facilitating what Peck and Theodore (2015, 223) describe as “fast policy” or a policymaking condition that is characterized by “the intensified and instantaneous connectivity of sites, channels, arenas, and nodes of policy development, evolution, and reproduction.” Corporatization, thus, entails the commodification of policy knowledge, which is increasingly intermediated by Big Four firms, operating in partnership with the state and industry stakeholders. As Suddaby and Greenwood (2001, 934) note, Big Four firms have actively contributed to processes of knowledge commodification “by which managerial knowledge is abstracted from context and reduced to a transparent and generic format that can be more easily leveraged within [firms] and sold in the market place.” This is evident in surveying Big Four policy reports, over the past two decades, through which we can trace the diffusion of ideas on how to manage public infrastructure across Europe (PwC 2004; EY 2007), Australia (EY 2008; PwC 2017), Asia (PwC 2014), Africa (KPMG 2020b), and the Americas (Deloitte Canada 2010; PwC 2010). The reports all take up a common narrative: seeking to demonstrate the value of PPPs –​while promoting their PF advisory services and VfM assessment tools as instrumental for deal-​ making. At times, firms adapt their message to different contexts, often based on the perceived fiscal state of governments. For instance, a 2019 KPMG report for Kuwait notes how declining oil prices have affected government finances (KPMG 2019) and a PwC and Dubai Investment Development Agency (2016) report for Dubai frames PPPs as a means of “attracting Foreign Direct Investment.” However, despite references to specific circumstances, there is a high degree of uniformity to these reports which typically include one or two pages of specific historical and geographic context followed by a more or less generic definition of key terms and specific services available. Each report problematizes the “infrastructure gap” and offers a relatively standard suite of advisory services, which include assisting with the development of business cases for capital projects, identifying potential sources of funding, structuring transactions, managing the bidding process, and closing deals. Seeking to increase the speed at which policy information flows across jurisdictions, firms often emphasize the importance of “project pipelines” in their promotional materials, a concept which they have popularized in imagining the flow of infrastructure deals. For instance, PwC (2005,

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Big Four Firms  159 4) notes that, by 2005, the UK had established a mature market in the production of PPPs, with a “strong deal flow in the pipeline.” The notion of the pipeline here speaks to the way in which deals flow across time and space, with the aim of establishing a smooth, swift, and predictable flow of deals both within and across jurisdictions. With reference to the Canadian market, EY (2006, 10) notes, “a predictable deal flow or ‘pipeline’ of projects is essential so that both sides of the partnership, governments and their private sector partners, can build the expertise they need to create and manage these complex projects successfully.” The emphasis is on building up expertise in managing infrastructure through the steady implementation of projects. Through their significant organizational breadth, across time and space, and between sectors, Big Four firms promise consistency and continuity across the project pipeline (Shore and Wright 2018). Effective project pipelines are standardized, in order to minimize transaction costs and facilitate expedient deal-​making practice. As Deloitte (2006, 13) notes, the ultimate aim is “to bring consolidated knowledge, standardized processes and best practices to bear on each transaction.” Advancing the view that infrastructure development is best carried out through such standardized processes and “best practices,” firms have set out to promote their corporate models across jurisdictions. In generating a base of support, they have worked to establish broad-​ based coalitions connecting public officials at different levels of government, institutional investors, construction consortia, and building and trade organizations –​as well as legal, accounting, and engineering professionals –​that advance PF, SPEs, and VfM assessment as a superior mode of procuring infrastructure. In order to export PPP policies initially developed in the UK to other parts of the world, they worked within International Financial Services London (IFSL), a private sector lobby group, to market PPPs to other countries (Bordeleau 2014). As early as 2003, the chair of the PPP subcommittee, on secondment from KPMG, Tim Stone noted that IFSL is “taking a leading role in the promotion of PPP around the world” (2003, 2). The framing of expertise as applicable across contexts is evident in a report that set out to “show how firms based in the UK, be they consultants, law firms, banks or contractors have developed the expertise that can be applied to any situation” (IFSL 2003, 2). Expanding from their hub in the UK, Big Four firms backed the diffusion of new procurement standards by establishing lobby organizations in other parts of the world, including the National Council for Public–​ Private Partnerships (NCPPP) in the United States in 1991 and the CCPPP in Canada in 1993 (Bordeleau 2014, 170). Indeed, a PwC representative has been a member of the board of CCPPP since its inception (Savoie 1990). Big Four partners play a central role in Council events, serving as “gold sponsors” for their annual conferences and presenting the Council’s annual awards for the “deal of the year” (CCPPP 2019). In Germany, a

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160  Hurl and Vogelpohl member of Deloitte sat on the Board of the BPPP, which describes itself as a “forum for discussing the implementation of PPP projects,” during its inception in 2003, and each of the Big Four representatives has been listed as members of the organization ever since (BPPP 2020). Drawing together public officials and industry stakeholders in advocacy organizations, Big Four firms have fostered a policy movement in support of their procurement models. Operating through PPP advocacy groups, Big Four firms have cultivated such networks as a means of legitimizing their deal-​making expertise and corporate models as industry best practice. Through such networks, they have been able to popularize PF, VfM, and risk allocation as key referents for infrastructure procurement across jurisdictions. They have also provided the grounds for the growing integration of Big Four firms and public agencies in infrastructure development, which we turn to next.

Assembling a Public–​Private Policymaking Complex While circulating policy ideas in new ways, Big Four firms have become institutionally integrated in the procurement of infrastructures in many jurisdictions around the world. Along these lines, they have contributed to corporatization through thickening ties between public agencies and private sector actors, fostering the development of a public–​private policymaking complex that increasingly operates outside the bounds of formal political deliberation. This is most apparent in looking at the circulation of personnel, who often move in revolving door relationships between firms and public agencies. In the UK, where PPPs were first developed, firms have had direct access to government (UNISON 2002, 2003; Shaoul et al. 2007; Hellowell 2010; Brooks 2018). A 2002 government report noted that PwC and EY had both provided secondees to the Treasury, where they played a key role in developing PFI policies (UNISON 2002). Likewise, Tim Stone, from KPMG, chaired an advisory group to the UK government on PFI, while at the same time serving as chair of the PPP working group with IFSL (Bordeleau 2014). Through such networks, Big Four firms became integrated with political elites in what Carroll and Carson (2003, 70) describe as a “political-​cultural community.” We have identified similar patterns of integration in Canada and Germany. In Canada, we have noted numerous instances of personnel moving between Big Four firms and different levels of government. For instance, Saad Rafi –​who served as Deputy Minister for Infrastructure under the Government of Ontario –​went on to work as a partner for Deloitte. John Casola, the chief investment officer of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, was previously the managing partner for Infrastructure and Government Services with PwC, and prior to that worked as the vice president of corporate development of the office of privatization under the Government of Ontario. Likewise, in Germany,

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Big Four Firms  161 Wigand Grabner was a senior manager for PwC for almost a decade (2007–​2016), before heading to PD –​Germany’s foremost public agency advising on PPPs (see below) –​first as a senior manager and then as a director. However, beyond the “revolving doors” between the private and public sectors, which is a long-​standing pattern noted in studies from at least the 1970s onward (for instance, see Guttman and Willner 1976; Saint-​Martin 2000), the corporatization of infrastructure procurement has also entailed a shift from ad hoc relationships toward the consolidation of more enduring and regular ties. “Over time,” Saint-​Martin (2013, 173–​174) notes, “as they developed more intimate links with governments, large consulting firms mutated into somewhat less ‘private’ and more ‘public’ entities,” framing themselves “copilots in the steering of government organizations.” O’Reilly (2010, 198) has described this as a process of “state-​corporate symbiosis” as the public and private come to modify each other, highlighting “a melding and overlapping of strategies between state and non-​state agencies.” Beyond simply posing as occasional advisors, these firms now portray themselves as indispensable “partners in governance” whose services are required on an ongoing basis (Saint-Martin, 2013). Along these lines, Big Four firms have become increasingly embedded in regulatory regimes and a wave of new public institutions that have been established in different countries in rolling out new infrastructures and administering PPPs (Valentukeviciute, forthcoming). Along these lines, they have facilitated the corporatization of infrastructure in the organizational sense through fostering the development of standalone PPP units for the management of infrastructure procurement, which are themselves often framed as public–​private ventures to be managed by a Board of Directors operating independently from government. In the UK, these firms were central to the establishment of Partnerships UK (PUK) in 2003, which was itself a PPP under majority ownership by private firms and offering “a blend of public and private sector commercial expertise” on PPP projects (PUK 2011). As Bordeleau (2014, 113) notes, with PUK, the Big Four firms were “no longer in need of access to government structures, since they now had their own decision-​making center to be used for building and managing the PFI/​PPP pipeline.” They were able to sidestep traditional departmental processes through establishing an independent body organized outside of the established civil service. The World Bank notes that, as of 2020, PPP units are active in at least 66 countries around the world (Public–​Private Partnership Legal Resource Center [PPPLRC] 2020), though they are structured in different ways, leading to variable relationships between government and Big Four firms. In Canada, for instance, these firms have positioned themselves as key advisors to provincial PPP units, such as Partnerships BC (Murray 2006) and Infrastructure Ontario, an arm’s length “crown corporation” (or state-​owned enterprise) established in 2005, which describes itself as

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162  Hurl and Vogelpohl “a private sector company doing public service” (Infrastructure Ontario 2016). Building from this ethos, Infrastructure Ontario has outsourced assessment and advisory functions to Big Four firms. In addition to formulating (and reformulating) the chief methodology in assessing VfM (Deloitte Canada 2007, 2015), Big Four firms are also enlisted to perform VfM assessments for every infrastructure project that is rolled out. In Germany, PD was established in 2008. Framed as a partnership between federal institutions and private construction firms, the organization set out to stabilize PPPs as a policy option (Redlich and Unbehauen 2018). However, after being criticized for inappropriately privileging PPPs in ostensibly “neutral” assessments, the agency was restructured, brought under full public ownership, and renamed simply “PD.” Notably, today, PD itself competes with the Big Four firms in advising regions and municipalities on prospective PPP projects. While the degree to which Big Four firms have been integrated into the policymaking process is variable across jurisdictions, it is clear from our analysis that these firms have consolidated ties with state agencies in promoting PPPs as a procurement model. By outsourcing policy-​advice through such arrangements, state agencies are generating more enduring ties with corporations, while Big Four firms have concentrated their power in the consultancy market. This has contributed to the corporatization of public policymaking, which is increasingly undertaken through agencies at a distance from formal political deliberation.

Conclusion The corporatization of infrastructure procurement by Big Four firms has significant implications for politics. The refashioning of infrastructure procurement as “deal making,” the packaging and circulation of policy ideas through “pipelines,” and the integration of corporate and governmental power, all risk contributing to what some scholars describe as a deepening post-​political condition, in which the political aspects of infrastructure policy are displaced by techno-​ managerial prerogatives (Swyngedouw 2009; Beveridge 2012; Whiteside 2014; Wood and Flinders 2014; Willems and Van Dooren 2016). Through the diffusion of corporate managerial models and modes of calculation, Big Four firms have worked to channel political debates around infrastructure procurement into technical discussions of VfM. In the process, they have shifted the rationale through which infrastructure projects are assessed, contributing to the normalization of PPP policies as the “new traditional” model, while marginalizing public forms of infrastructure procurement (Whiteside 2015, 19). These firms have also worked to hive off government functions to actors at a distance from the formal political process. As firms increasingly assume responsibility for assessing infrastructure procurement for governments around the world, they have actively worked to privatize

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Big Four Firms  163 aspects of the policymaking process, transferring assessment functions from government to the private sector. This has created new barriers for the public engagement, as decisions around procurement are limited to a small group of professionals with expertise in financial engineering. By promoting public–​ private collaboration in infrastructure planning through dedicated PPP units, they have also channeled policymaking processes into agencies that are insulated from political accountability. Indeed, this form of state–​corporate symbiosis risks generating a path dependency through which public agencies have come to rely on Big Four firms for a growing range of different professional services, which include not only offering assessments on VfM but also expertise in brokering new contracts and developing new financial instruments. While these firms had previously been commissioned on an ad hoc basis, increasingly they are being imagined as “partners in governance,” providing the requisite expertise in the evaluation of different procurement models (Saint-Martin, 2013). Consequently, these firms have become positioned as powerful policy actors in negotiating the standards of procurement. The growing mediation of government decisions by private firms raises questions of accountability and transparency as the corporatized channels through which policy ideas are generated and shared become increasingly commodified and opaque. Through the maintenance of private archives and exclusive professional networks, firms effectively place the policymaking process out of reach from public service professionals, community groups, and citizens. While the process is ostensibly public, the metrics for evaluation are carefully guarded by accounting firms and governments under the auspices of commercial sensitivity. The corporatization of public policymaking through these kinds of programs might suggest that public participation is becoming more restricted; however, there is resistance. Our analysis has demonstrated several areas of contestation: First, critics have challenged the objectivity of the models deployed by these firms and their capacity to quantify and allocate risk. Indeed, there continues to be significant opposition to VfM assessments by public accountants and auditors around the world, who question the capacity of these firms to quantify risks. Many critics have contested the bias of such models in favoring PPPs over public procurement through the tendency to inflate the value of risk (Whiteside 2015). As one Canadian critic notes, such arrangements have simply amounted to “a very expensive insurance policy” (cited in Silversides 2008, 992). Second, the opacity of the assessment process has been challenged, as the public has access to very little information on how procurement decisions are made or how value is determined. Along these lines, such critics have challenged the closed-​door workshops through which value is determined, which are largely left to the discretion of specialists in PF. As Boardman et al. (2016b, 16) note, “data about the actual performance of PPPs are scarce and, even if they do exist, it is hard for disinterested analysts to access them.” Consequently, critics have called for

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164  Hurl and Vogelpohl the development of a public database through which project data can be collected and evaluated by analysts outside of the Big Four firms. Third, the impartiality of the process has been challenged as, it is argued, Big Four have a vested interest in promoting PPPs in order to expand their market as financial advisors. Critics have called attention to the fact that these firms are, at one and the same time, working to promote PPPs, via advocacy organizations, while assessing their value as advisors to governments. Moreover, through mapping the networks between these firms and public officials in revolving door relationships and governmental PPP units, they have questioned their relationship to government (UNISON 2002). In some cases, these groups have even managed to get governments to formally investigate these networks (Rohrbeck and Tatje 2020). Contrary to claims that PPPs have depoliticized infrastructure procurement, the persistent critique of infrastructure procurement policies at these levels suggests that the process remains highly political. However, as our cross-​national analysis demonstrates, the degree to which such processes are contested is variable across regions. While Big Four firms are deeply entrenched in governmental PPP units in Canada and the UK, their position in Germany is looser and less linked with federal PPP agencies, in part, as a consequence of public criticism. In understanding the degree to which such firms have contributed to corporatization, it is necessary to account for this unevenness. Very often, research on PPP policy networks is focused on specific national contexts. Through undertaking a cross-​national analysis of these firms and their influence, we can develop a better sense of how they adapt strategies across institutional settings and how these strategies can be successfully resisted.

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About the Contributors

Sara Angeli Aguiton is a sociologist investigating emerging technological and environmental risks, their political regulation, and their commodification. She is a permanent research fellow at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), based at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). Her monograph La Démocratie des chimères. Gouverner la biologie synthétique (Bord de l’eau, 2018) critically examines the “upstream regulations” of synthetic biology in the US and in France. She is now interested in insurance innovations which aim to make climate risks insurable, by studying financial engineering for natural disasters as well as agricultural insurance. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​9940-​1677 Marlène Benquet is a sociologist. She is a research fellow at the CNRS (Paris-​ Dauphine, PSL Research University, IRISSO). She teaches in the master’s program Institutions, Organizations, Economy and Society (EHESS, Paris-​ Dauphine, Mines ParisTech). She works on private equity, financialization, and their relations to environmental issues. Among other things, she is the author of Encaisser, enquête par immersion dans la grande distribution (2015), an ethnography of labor conditions in French supermarkets. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0003-​4516-​1839 Stève Bernardin is an associate professor of sociology at the Université Gustave Eiffel (UGE-​LATTS). His current research examines the concept of ownership of public problems from a socio-​ historical perspective, with particular focus on traffic safety and the development of autonomous vehicles. He is also currently working on an edited book about the sociological legacy of the late Joseph Gusfield. His most recent publications include “Controversies or Public Problems? Open questions and research proposals”, European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) Review, 38 (1), 2019.

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About the Contributors  171 José Ramón Bertomeu-​Sánchez is a professor of the history of science at the University of Valencia and director of the López Piñero Interuniversity Institute for Science Studies. His research focuses on the history of toxic products in France and Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His last book is a biography of the nineteenth-​century toxicologist Mateu Orfila (1787–​1853) (Entre el fiscal y el verdugo, València, PUV, 2019). His current research project is “Invisible Toxics: Chemistry, Agriculture, and Public Health (1940–​ 1990)” (PID2019-​106743GB-​C21). He is also the editor of the website “Saberes en acción”: https://​sabersenaccio.blogs.uv.es/​. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0003-​2040-​4507 Thomas Depecker, a sociologist, is a research fellow of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) and member of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CMH). He studies the measure and the reform of life conducts, particularly concerning food and economic practices. His current works focus on the controversies around palm oil, nutritional surveys in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the promotion of “virtuous capitalism”. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​8472-​3833 Marc-​Olivier Déplaude is an advanced researcher in sociology at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE). From a perspective of political sociology and  science and technology studies, he works on agri-​food industries and the way they address the health and environmental risks related to their activities or products. His main research focuses on the industrialization of pig farming in France. With Thomas Depecker and Nicolas Larchet, he also conducts research on the structuring and activities of think tanks funded by French and multinational food companies. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0003-​0847-​6014 Fabien Foureault is an economic sociologist. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Lausanne (UNIL). He is the author of Le capital en action (Presses des Mines, 2020), an in-​depth analysis of private equity firms and their professionals in contemporary France. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0003-​0309-​4850 Emmanuel Henry is a professor of sociology at Paris-​Dauphine University-​ PSL. He is the author of two books, Amiante. Un scandale improbable (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007) and Ignorance scientifique et inaction publique. Les politiques de santé au travail (Presses de Sciences Po, 2017). He also edited five volumes on the construction of social problems, scientific expertise, and public health including, with

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172  About the Contributors Soraya Boudia, La mondialisation des risques (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015). He is currently working on the links between scientific knowledge (and ignorance), expertise, and public policies, mostly in the fields of environmental and occupational health. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​9262-​4421 Chris Hurl is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec. His research, exploring the politics of expertise in urban governance and infrastructure development, has appeared in Environment and Planning A, Studies in Political Economy, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Labour/​Le travail, and the Journal of Canadian Studies. He is the coeditor of Corporatizing Canada (Between the Lines, 2018). https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​1374-​1241 Nathalie Jas is an advanced researcher at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE). As an STS scholar, she has been working extensively on issues related to toxicants, including pesticides. She is the author of Au Carrefour de la chimie et de l’agriculture. Les sciences agronomiques en Allemagne et en France 1840–​1914 (Les éditions des archives contemporaines, 2001) and, with Soraya Boudia, a socio-​history of the government of our toxic world, titled Gouverner un monde toxique (Quae, 2019). She has also coedited two special issues and three books, including Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945 (with Soraya Boudia, Pickering & Chatto, 2013). https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​9656-​2352 Paul Lagneau Ymonet is a social scientist. He is associate professor at Paris-​Dauphine (PSL Research University, IRISSO). He is the cohead of the master’s program Institutions, Organizations, Economy and Society (EHESS, Paris-​Dauphine, Mines ParisTech). He is the coauthor with Angelo Riva of Histoire de la Bourse (2011), a social history of the Paris stock exchange. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0003-​1338-​3744 Nicolas Larchet is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Normandy Le Havre and member of the research unit “Identité et différenciation de l’espace, de l’environnement et des sociétés” (IDEES UMR 6266 CNRS). His main research interests are in food and agricultural policies and urban and rural sociology. He is currently working on a research project on the liberalization of the European sugar market in its economic, environmental, and health effects. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0003-​1467-​4092

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About the Contributors  173 Valentin Thomas is a PhD candidate in sociology at Paris-​ Dauphine University-​ PSL. He is currently studying how the World Health Organization (WHO) and its specialized International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have framed the issues of carcinogens and carcinogenicity since the 1970s. His work is grounded in various subfields, including sociology and history of science, sociology of international organizations, and sociology of public policy. With other researchers from Science Po Lyon, he also works on the French yellow vests social movement in following up on how protestors joined the movement and what the movement did to their social trajectory. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0001-​6746-​2857 Anne Vogelpohl is an urban and economic geographer focusing on expertise and urban policies, precarious labor, and housing policies. She is cochair of the geographical Working Group “Feminist Geographies” in German-​speaking countries. She currently is a temporary professor for social policy at the Department of Social Work at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​4866-​9403

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Index

ABCD corporations 1–​3 academics: 5, 11, 83–​84, 87–​88, 90–​91, 97–​102; enrollment 6, 83, 85–​86, 91–​95; see also experts; expertise; science agnotology 33, 47, 51; see also ignorance agrifood industry 1–​3, 14; see also ABCD corporations; Cargill; food industry; pesticide industry Association française des investisseurs en capital (AFIC) 128–​130, 134–​146 Association nationale des industries agricoles et alimentaires (ANIAA) 90, 93–​94 autarky 35, 40, 42, 45, 51 authority 12, 15, 22, 48, 153; academic 94; delegate 12; entrepreneurial 12; rule-​making 12; see also corporate authority; hybrid authority; private authority; public authority automobile: companies 109; industry 118; insurers 106–​123; manufacturers 106–​109, 111, 115–​118, 120, 123–​124 the Big Four professional service firms 149–​163; see also Deloitte; EY; KPMG; PwC business 131, 140; big 3, 13; associations 4, 9, 11, 139; circles 101; community 4, 14, 24; entities 154; lawyers 11, 143; leaders 10, 84, 137; models 7, 150; representatives 146; world 10, 11, 14, 146; see also elites; experts; law; regulation

business-​like: instruments 21; forms of service delivery 150; rationalities 153, 154 Canadian Council for Public–​Private Partnerships (CCPPP) 152, 159 capitalism 9, 15, 139; French 128, 129, 134, 135, 146; investors 138; rentier’s 138 capture 11, 15, 19, 131, 139; regulatory 131 car see automobile Cargill 1–​3 Chambre Syndicale de Phytopharmacie 63–​65, 68, 73, 76 class: power 10; ruling 132; transnational capitalist 10; see also elites companies 12, 16, 23, 46, 146; boards 10, 18, 130; charter 14; construction and engineering 155; as organizations 18, 21; digital 20; energy 20; executives 5; financial 20; food 5, 14, 82–​102; joint stock 14; large 4, 10, 11, 13, 18, 20; major 10, 20; nationalized 21; pervasive 3; policies 11; state-​ owned 13, 134, 161; strategies 11, 17–​19, 22, 24, 124; specialist 18; standalone 149; see also automobile; insurance; power; powers; private equity consumer associations 6, 52, 83, 86–​89, 95, 97, 100, 102, 107, 111, 119, 121 consumers 4, 16, 35, 82, 94, 98, 108, 115, 120; of food 35, 37, 43, 48, 50; spokespersons of 108, 110, 121; vocal sentinels of 120–​122; see also consumer associations

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Index  175 coproduction: of regulations 6, 11; of rules 129–​130, 133, 139, 144–​146 corporate: action 106; actors 4, 6, 9–​11, 13–​17, 19, 22, 24–​25, 61–​62, 84, 106–​107, 109; conspiracy 34; control 134; decision making 154; financing 107; funding 100; interests 13, 101; interventions 20; law 129; leaders 106, 121, 124; models 7, 149–​151, 157, 159–​160, 162; needs 24; organizations 12–​13, 19, 24; practices 19, 131; privatization 129; public mobilization 23; state 21; strategies 5, 15, 18, 23; spheres 6; systemic ascendency 5, 60–​62, 77; see also corporate authority; corporate crimes; corporate power; elites; repertoire of action corporate authority 3–​4, 6, 9, 10, 13–​16, 19, 21–​24 corporate crime 9, 19, 24–​25 corporate power 10–​13, 21 corporations 3–​4, 6–​7, 10, 12–​13, 15, 18–​22, 24–​25, 58, 61, 83, 100, 146, 150, 162; global 9; state-​owned 161; strategies 4; transnational 9, 13, 77; see also power; powers; repertoire of action corporatization 149–​154; of infrastructure procurement 154–​164 Deloitte 149, 151, 155, 157–​160, 162 Delta & Pine Land 14 democracy 4, 9, 10, 21–​24, 33; see also corporate authority; corporate crime; illegality; state; violence deregulation: automobile safety 107, 115–​116, 118, 120–​122; neoliberal policies 17 economic actors 3, 11, 13, 15–​16, 106, 121, 123, 129 elites: business 84; corporate 10, 19; see also class equity based economy 136, 139 expertise 13–​14, 16, 21, 67, 82, 101, 151, 155–​156; armchair 112; commercial 161; deal-​making 160; financial 7; in financial engineering 163; public communication 119; technical 59 experts 7, ​22, 33, 48, 49, 73, 83, 90; agronomic 34, 36–​40; business 150,

152; financial 155, 157; legal 106; private transnational 15; see also academics; expertise; science EY 149, 151, 158–​160 fascism 33, 40 Federal Consumers Union see Union fédérale des consommateurs Fédération française des sociétés d’assurances (FFSA) 130, 134, 136, 141–​143 Fondation française pour la nutrition (FFN) 5, 82–​102 food industry 82–​83, 85–​87, 90, 95 foundations: 19; 82–​102; corporate-​ funded 14, 101; see also lobbying; think tanks the French Association of Investors for Growth see Association française des investisseurs en capital the French Federation of Insurance Companies see Fédération française des sociétés d’assurances French Nutrition Foundation see Fondation française pour la nutrition the French Society of Phytiatry and Phytopharmacy see Société française de phytiatrie et phytopharmacie General Motors 109 global governance 2, 4, 9, 10, 11–​13 government 9, 11; mode of 21; forms of 21; authoritarian forms of 24; democratic forms of 24; Francoist 41, 43–​44; see also state; public authorities government of conduct 15 governments 3, 9, 11, 16, 17; see also public authorities hybrid authority 12 ignorance 9, 16–​18, 19, 24, 36, 51; see also agnotology; science illegality 17–​18, 19; see also corporate crime; violence infrastructure 7, 16, 20, 24; see also corporatization; policy Institut de liaisons et d’études des industries de consommation (ILEC) 88–​89, 93–​94, 98 insurance: companies 6, 19, 109–​110, 118, 128–​130, 135, 143; contracts 130, 134, 139, 141–​142; domain

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176 Index 109; industry associations 110, 113; life 135–​136, 138–​142, 144–​145; policy 128, 141, 163; sector 129, 134, 145–​146. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) 107, 110–​111, 113–​122 intellectual suppression 17; see also ignorance; violence interdependence: between state and capitalists 132–​133; see also hybrid authority; public autority intermediation work: of consulting firms 7, 129 irreversibility 10, 19–​20; see also material; materiality KPMG 7, 149, 152, 157–​160 law 11, 17, 22, 50, 60, 82, 106, 132–​133, 157; antitrust 110; business 6, 129–​130, 140–​146; firms 4, 13, 18, 159; courts 14; automobile safety 109; systemic violations 24; see also corporate; illegality; regulation legitimacy 12, 64, 112, 131; democratic 24; political 9; scientific 114 Lesieur & Cotelle 87–​88, 89 lobbying 17–​18, 76, 84, 106, 130, 132, 136, 139, 159; political 6, 24, 58; professional grassroots 22; see also public relations material: arrangements 20; consequences 21; dimensions 4, 10, 15; orders 10; infrastructures 27; irreversibility 19 materiality: 14, 19–​21, 101 National Association of Agricultural and Food Industries see Association nationale des industries agricoles et alimentaires National Council for Public–​Private Partnerships (NCPPP) 159 National Highway Traffic Safety administration (NHTSA) 107, 117, 119, 120, 122 negotiation 2, 64, 73, 83, 85, 91, 93, 101, 129, 144; work 5; processes 85 Nestlé 89, 92, 97, 98, 102; Foundation 102; Research Institute 102

networks: business 10, 14, 98, 102, 152, 160, 163; computer 20; of influence 132; personal 11, 92; policy 164; sale 63; undersea 20 noneconomic actors 3 nongouvernmental organizations (NGOs) 2, 3, 12–​15, 22; see also business; consumer associations; foundations; lobbying; think tanks nonpublic actors 11 non-​state actors 12; 156 Péchiney 46, 64 pervasive powers 3–​4, 6, 9, 10, 14–​15, 21–​22 pesticide: conspiracy 33–​34, 58; mafia 33; Spanish Register of 42–​ 44; treadmill 33–​36, 51; see also regulation pesticide industry: business association 58, 60, 63–​65, 67–​68, 72; French 59, 62–​63; Spanish 5, 44–​47 philanthropy 2, 10, 13, 101 policy 97, 144; actors 163; economic 84, 137, 141, 144; foreign 84; infrastructure 162; ideas 150, 152, 153, 160, 162–​163; industrial 137; information 150, 153, 158; networks 164; reform machine 152; research 92 policymaking: condition 158; process 150, 153, 156, 163; public 7, 132, 149, 150–​151, 162; see also public-​ private policymaking complex power: acts of 18; asymmetries of 61, 133; citizen 22; balance of 7, 97, 146; of capitalists 133; of companies 11, 14, 19, 21, 87, 162; of corporate actors 25, 61–​62; of corporations 5, 9, 61; economic 3, 19, 132; governmental 150, 162; hegemonic 11; industry 5, 123, 129; institutional 92; legitimate 12, 14; media 83; post-​jurisdictional 153; political 3, 9–​10, 13, 16, 19, 113; of public agents 129; relations 6, 131; relationship 101, 133; social 10; of state 130, 133; of states 10–​11, 19; structural 13, 16; systemic 14; see also class; corporate power; elites powers: of companies 4, 14, 21; of corporations 9; regulatory

71

Index  177 2; dynamic and multi-​sited 14; strategic 13; structural 132 private: actors 3, 7, 10–​13, 72, 150–​151, 155–​156, 160; agents 132, 144; arenas 107; business leaders 137; institutions 33; logics 20; interests 129, 144; interest groups 132; nonregulatory arenas 18; operators 23; organizations 107; parties 131; transnational authority 15; transnational experts 15; transnational institutions 15; see also private authority; private sector; private standards private authority 3, 11–​12, 15 private equity 11, 128, 130, 133–​134, 136–​140, 142–​143, 145, 146; firms 128–​129, 142–​143, 146; economy 128; funds 6, 128, 137–​138, 140, 144; industry 134; methods 138; sector 6, 11, 128, 145; representatives 129, 133–​134, 137–​139, 145; techniques 137 Private Finance Initiative (PFI) 152–​153, 161 private sector 7, 21, 149, 155–​157, 163; actors 150, 160; corporate models 157; ideas 150; lobby group 159; managerial models 149; partners 159; modes of calculation 149, 154 private standards 12, 15–​16, 21, 72 public: actors 6–​7, 23, 72, 131, 155–​156; authorities 6–​7, 11, 14–​16, 21, 23, 82–​86, 90, 97, 101, 111, 129–​134, 138–​139, 146; policies 4–​5, 7, 11, 15, 101–​102, 116; policy 7, 22–​23, 59, 106, 112, 122–​123, 131, 149; problem 106–​107, 115–​116, 124; see also policy; policymaking; state public authority 42, 133; public authorities 6, 7, 11, 14–​16, 21, 23, 82, 84, 86, 90, 97, 101, 111, 129–​135, 138–​139, 146; see also government; state public private partnerships (PPP) 150–​162 public-​private policymaking complex 150, 160–​162 public relations 2, 24, 96, 98, 100; firms 13, 18, 76; see also lobbying PwC 149, 151–​152, 155, 156–​161

quiet politics 6, 18, 106–​107, 115, 116, 124 regulation: 9, 14, 16, 17; crafting process 6; environmental 19, 84; food 84, 86, 92, 94, 100; joint 133; road and automobile safety 6, 106–​127; pesticide 33–​38, 40, 43, 47–​50, 52, 58, 64–​77; see also coproduction; public regulatory: agencies 11; arenas 3, 14, 17; authorities 17; economics 131; framework 18; measures 17, 36; practice 145; regimes 161; systems 4; see also capture repertoire of actions: corporate 10, 16–​19, 22 Rhône-​Poulenc 63–​64, 134 science 97, 101, 106, 112–​115, 118, 120; agricultural 59, 67; nutritional 82, 88, 91–​92, 94; objectivity 102; sound 16; undone 47, 50; see also agnotology; expertise; ignorance Société française de phytiatrie et phytopharmacie 67–​73 standards: AFNOR 73; international 2; ISO 12, 73; national 2; private 12, 15–​16; procurement 7, 159, 163; public 15; technical 3, 21, 111–​113, 120–​122; voluntary 12; see also private standards state 4, 6–​7, 10, 24, 65–​66, 128–​130, 146, 155; actors 4, 10–​11; agencies 150, 161–​162; arbiter 131; authoritarian 42; Francoist 13, 51; norms 66; organizations 2, 11; participation 13; practices 19; subjugated 131; weakening 9; see also power state-​corporate symbiosis 161, 163; see also coproduction; hybrid authority, interdependence states 4, 9–​10, 12–​15, 22; democratic 21; see also power strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) 17; see also intellectual suppression; violence think tanks 11, 13–​14, 18–​19, 82–​83, 132, 151, 156; French food industry 82–​102; see also foundations; lobbying

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178 Index transnational professional service firms see the Big Four professional service firms Unilever 88–​92 Union Chamber of Phytopharmacy see Chambre syndicale de phytopharmacie

Union fédérale des consommateurs (UFC) 87, 97 violence 3–​5, 17, 18, 19–​22, 60; slow 51; see also corporate crime; illegality