The Party and the Laboratory: François Perroux in Authoritarian and Democratic Rule

Abstract

The trajectory of François Perroux across the Vichy regime poses about all possible range of methodological issues to the historian of ideas: individual versus collective biography, ideational versus ideological reading, internal versus external analysis, etc. The chapter outlines key elements about Perroux’s trajectory showing the entanglements and boundaries of science and politics in the transition from democratic to authoritarian rule and vice versa. A particular emphasis on uncertainties and adjustments shows, against the tendency to a teleological explanation induced by a linear interpretation of his career, that different paths were considered by Perroux, but that his choices were nevertheless constrained by the forces of both the scientific and political fields.

Citation

Cohen, A. (2022), "The Party and the Laboratory: François Perroux in Authoritarian and Democratic Rule", Fiorito, L., Scheall, S. and Suprinyak, C.E. (Ed.) Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on the Work of François Perroux (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 40C), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542022000040C002