Appel à communication pour doctorants, workshop "Business and development in the EU" (novembre 2015)

Bonjour, j’organise avec l’université de Strasbourg un petit workshop sur le sujet ci-dessous, en novembre prochain, je cherche des doctorants, notamment africains, qui voudraient venir présenter leurs travaux

"Business and development in the EU

While several studies have recently been focusing on development agencies, their experience and their histories, their links with foundations, experts, scientists or NGOs (Staples, Cullather, Connelly, Barnett and Finnemore, Simpson, Engerman), none dealt with one of the major actors of development policies : firms, whether construction companies, oil companies or consultancy firms. In the same way, very few studies examine businesses and their links with the EEC from an historical perspective (). This conference precisely aims at analysing the role of companies and their links with the EEC or its member states within the framework of European development policies in the present and in the past. This could lead us to several questions or sub-themes :
– To what extent development policies could be used as strategies by French, Belgian and British companies at decolonization in order to remain in Africa and keep their colonial privileges ? To what extent these companies influenced the EEC or Member State’s development policies ? What kind of lobbying strategies and tools did they use and still use for that purpose.
– Looking at instruments like the European Development Fund, we may ask how the EEC tried to regulate the competition of the Member State’s firms, through rights of establishment, measures concerning procurement or common technical laws and regulations.
– We may also look at the way recipient states in Africa, those who are expected to implement these development policies and enact procurement procedures, reacted to the lobbying of the companies, their competition and the norms imposed by the EEC or the Member States.
– we may also look at the way European companies faced competition from outsiders (US, Japan companies or more recently Chinese, Indian and Brazilian companies). This within different fields linked to development policy : energy fields (oil and the more recent rise of bio-carburant), drugs (with the debate about access to HIV treatment), fishery…"

Véronique Dimier
Institut d’Etudes Européennes
CP 172
39 Av F. Roosevelt
1050 Bruxelles
vdimier@ulb.ac.be