The Market as a Form of Political Regulation

Economic instruments, market mechanisms, market-based solutions-market systems are currently invested with an instrumental purpose in policy regulating. Here we probe the market pragmatics at the core of public action, focusing in particular on how the actors who apply it work to anticipate, instrumentalize and steer market behaviors. We apprehend the concept of these market arrangements by studying collective spaces of definition and negotiation that involve a wide array of actors-scientific, industrial, advisory, expert, interest groups-and use many types of knowledge and anticipation. Market engineering leads to a wide variety of institutional arrangements characterized by constant tension between strategic orientations and economic behavior adjustment.