De quelle façon et dans quelle mesure les institutions financières internationales (IFI) sont-elles le moteur des politiques publiques ? Plus précisément, quel est le rôle de la Banque interaméricaine de développement et de la Banque mondiale dans la formulation des programmes de lutte contre la pauvreté au Brésil et au Mexique, connus sous le nom de Conditional Cash Transfert Programs (CCTP) ? L’objectif est ici d’analyser le « rôle cognitif » de ces organisations, mais aussi de nuancer deux thèses courantes : celle de l’imposition des agendas par les IFI et celle de la délimitation marquée entre acteurs nationaux et internationaux. Cette étude révèle, d’une part, que les institutions financières internationales ont intégré une coalition d’acteurs nationaux et internationaux qui défendent la cause du capital humain, d’autre part, qu’en vue d’esquiver les critiques, d’anticiper les controverses susceptibles de naître dans l’opinion publique et d’assurer l’adoption des réformes et leur pérennité cette coalition pro-capital humain a adopté plusieurs stratégies visant à afficher l’autonomie irréductible des acteurs nationaux vis-à-vis des acteurs internationaux. Elle met par ailleurs en évidence la compétition que se sont livrée les institutions financières internationales pour la prééminence et le crédit intellectuel des CCTP.

The expression “rare earth crisis” was used by a collection of actors in the United States, Europe and Japan to describe the situation created by the 2010-2011 surge in the global market prices of 17 metals occupying a strategic place in many industrial sectors and the fear that supplies would be disrupted following China’s adoption of export quotas. Yet this crisis – described both as a trade crisis and a geopolitical one – concealed a financial operation and major damage to the environment. This article adopts several perspectives to study what may be described as “interwoven crises”, paying special heed to J. Roitman and M. Dobry’s call to be attentive to the processes by which crises are labelled in addition to their dynamics and effects. Analysis is further enhanced by extending the timeframe of the analyzed circumstances, thus providing a better grasp of their longer-term dynamics and re-situating these critical situations in their temporal and spatial contexts.

Since the late 1980s, European cooperation policies have included an increasing number of “private sector development” programs in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Among other things, these programs targeted the promotion of entrepreneurial culture, business support measures, improving the business environment and openness to global trade. Examining the mechanisms whereby an international norm emerged, circulated and was transferred allows one to consider official and unofficial strategies of influence and political principle legitimation – in this instance, strategies formulated in Brussels and applied in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The OECD, EEC, World Bank and the countries of the African, Caribbean, Pacific Group of States (ACP) were all parties to this game. Yet the actors of ACP countries played little role in the emergence and circulation of this norm. Instead, American institutional “go-betweens”, publications and conferences occupied a preponderant place in this process. Piloted by the economic and political institutions of the North for implementation in the “countries of the South”, liberalization does not appear to have been the result of a joint EEC-ACP decision.

This article seeks to identify the rationalities of higher education marketization in Kenya and offer new sociological variables to help understand a transformation that first began in the 1980s. The higher education sector is today managed in keeping with mechanisms that mimic the operation of the market. Contrary to those who would argue that the successive reforms of this sector were imposed from the outside by international actors, the origins of this market are above all to be found in the role played by political elites and the strategies of administrators and instructors within teaching establishments. Under the pretext of responding to an ever-growing demand on the part of student-clients, the market mimeticism that has structured the higher education sector since independence in fact and above all serves the interests of elites and instructor-managers.

How does crisis preparedness fit within the everyday operations of those organizations exposed to the possibility of a serious and potentially destabilizing situation ? This study of crisis management simulation exercises in the French civilian nuclear industry sheds light on the process by which crisis management has become bureaucratized within these organizations and as a consequence, crises normalized. In particular, it argues that strategies for excluding “uncomfortable knowledge” have converged in producing an orderly and pacified vision of crises. This in turn sheds additional light on the regulation of complex organized systems.