Mesoeconomics is interested in the articulation of individual choices into collective projects, a central process for thinking about change and supporting societal transitions.
What do the automobile or finance sector, professional football, and the social and solidarity economy have in common (ESS) or even the mountain dairy territories ? These are productive spaces with relative autonomy, while being influenced by overall macroeconomic dynamics. ; in other words, these are meso spaces.
T. Lamarche and J. Bastien offer here a work that is both manual and manifesto for mesoeconomics. They carry out an inventory of French and Anglo-Saxon work explicitly referring to mesoeconomics or being linked to it by their object of study. The polysemy of the term is underlined with three proposed definitions, namely mesoeconomics: i) as an intermediate scale of structuring productive activities ; ii) as living environments ; and iii) as a process of articulating individual action into collective projects.
From the substantive analysis of sectors to the enhancement of living environments
If neoclassical economics emphasizes the figure of the competitive market as an idealized mode of coordination of human activities, mesoeconomics is interested in the diversity of productive projects and the resolution of ecological and social tensions associated with their realization.
The authors place the emergence of mesoeconomics in the 1960s in the United States. Several authors then emphasize the endogenous work of companies to structure market spaces and maintain themselves over time. Companies establish entry barriers to complicate and limit the entry of other companies into their market and thus reduce the level of competition and maintain a high level of profit (Mason, 1937). These barriers can be legal with obtaining patents or technical-economic. The seniority of a company in a sector and its experience (the learning achieved) can allow it to produce goods of higher quality than competitors or at lower cost (high productivity of its employees, efficient organizational innovations or even economies of scale). Mesoeconomics has thus contributed to highlighting the social construct dimension of markets. She also supported the American policy of combating monopolies and oligopolies (“ antitrust ), aiming to consider the specificities of concrete markets and to preserve an appropriate degree of competition. French economists continued this work in the 1980s. Seeking to better understand the dynamic nature of the business-market dialectic, they emphasize the role of rules which ensures its dynamic reproduction. They also define the sector as a productive system bringing together production activities, conditioned by technical specificities, and giving rise to vertical commercial relations (Morvan, 1985).
Mesoeconomics then became interested in the location of businesses and more broadly in the spatial structuring of economic activity. The authors use the founding work of F. Perroux (1955) to emphasize that growth does not appear everywhere at the same time. Cities, metropolises in particular, appear to be privileged places for the agglomeration of work and capital and therefore for the concentration of productive activities. However, meso economists have emphasized that the quality of links between companies can compensate for their density or even their size.
Thus, networks of small and medium-sized businesses, referred to as districts, manage through mutual knowledge, cooperation (exchange of information, loan of money, agreement on starting salaries) and complementarity (subcontracting) to build a segmented offer of competitive quality products on international markets.
This capacity to specify relationships and resources in a given territory makes possible the differentiation of the space of competition and the protection of particular modalities of production, consumption and exchange (Pecqueur, 2006). Mesoeconomics thus allows us to think about how actors in a territory can adopt common rules and collaborate effectively in resolving productive problems. If sectoral mesoeconomics is centered on the conditions of capital accumulation within and between companies, territorial mesoeconomics makes it possible to balance the different social, environmental and economic dimensions of human activities.
Mesoeconomics thus emerges as a valuable resource to support the reterritorialization of human activities (the “ landing » that Bruno Latour called for). The reference to the work of the geographer Augustin Berque reinforces this effort to equip the territories. These latter can in fact be thought of as living environments, both shaped by man and shaping him. The mesoeconomic reading of territories can thus promote the ecological quality of territories (preservation of a diversity of agroecosystems) while ensuring their social inclusiveness (access to resources and services and redistribution of the wealth created). The authors also link the work of E. Ostrom on the revitalization of communities and resources managed in common with the mesoeconomy. They thus broaden the range of tools accessible to economic actors in transitions.
Informing and supporting institutional change
The light shed on instituting collective action is another asset of the work. An action becomes an institution when it extends to other people and is reproduced over time. Three processes underlie this reproduction i) conformism, based on the desire to belong to the group ; ii) the operationality of the proposed solutions and iii) respect for the authority which constrains and imposes a solution, as in the case of the State and the law.
The institution is therefore both an external constraint imposed on individuals and a resource for action which allows us to understand and interpret the action of others. Two levels of institutionalization are highlighted in the work:
i) the establishment of rules within an organization, underlying associated action at the scale of a company, sector or territory (Chapter 3) and,
ii) the diffusion of rules between a diversity of organizations and meso spaces, until their eventual rise in the establishment of a new macroeconomic order (chapter 4).
The role of actors and actresses is central in these institutionalization processes, in particular because the rules are, as conventionalist economists emphasize, interpretative: people interpret the rules, in the sense that they mobilize them, activate them, adapt them (Bessis et al. 2006). The reproduction over time of meso spaces is thus based on an internal legitimacy of the rules, referring to their fair and operational character for the community. Each meso space – organization, sector or territory – thus functions as a self-organized sovereign collective, endowed with considerable autonomy to experiment with rules, manage resources and adapt to external shocks.
This capacity for differentiation of meso spaces also implies a work of external legitimation, referring to the negotiated insertion of the meso space into the overall dynamic. This meso-macro dialectic covers two issues: the authorization by the State and public regulation of collective rules on the one hand and, on the other hand, the capacity of these meso rules to influence the overall macroeconomic dynamic. This increase in speed requires the ability of actors to impose their rules on other spheres of activity. This diffusion can come from an ability to impose values: principle of efficiency and performance indicators like the diffusion of management tools to all public organizations (hospitals for example). It can also result from the power associated with holding a major economic function of the macroeconomic regime, like the institutions of finance which have shaped financialized capitalism. In a comparable way, digital platforms, by carrying a new form of intermediation of which they are owners, are putting themselves in a position to define new forms of competition, new services and new methods of getting to work through outsourcing and de-employment, within this space but also beyond. L’ESS conversely, it seeks to prioritize meaning at work and income equity. However, it remains marginal with a limited capacity to rebuild societal values and economic dynamics. So, “ the meso does not play alone, it takes its strength from the articulation with the regime » (p. 129).
A method for capturing meso spaces from four dimensions
The work ends with the proposal of a survey to capture and characterize meso spaces. This approach will be useful to researchers but also to those involved in transitions who wish to work on the construction of living territories. Four steps are proposed. The first two aim to characterize the internal coherence of the meso space with a first step of defining the scope of the object of analysis (identification of the individuals and collectives involved, as well as the associated productive structures). The second step is based on a detailed analysis of the rules ensuring the reproduction of the meso space, and specifying the constraints and opportunities raised for the actors. The third stage focuses on the articulation with the macro regime (contribution to the overall dynamic or on the contrary critical scope). Finally, the fourth stage periodizes the mesoeconomic dynamics.
More precisely, the authors propose four keys to reading the structuring of meso spaces: work, product, futurity, nature. Work refers to the production process through an analysis of the labor process. It takes into account skills and performance logics and reveals particular forms of capital accumulation. The key “ product » accounts for the differentiation strategies of the players and their attempt to shape the form of competition to their advantage. Futurity refers to the work of Commons and emphasizes that men act with concern for the future consequences of their actions. This dimension focuses on the productive project and its renewal. It has a symbolic significance and is linked to the identity of the group which founded it. Futurity acts on relations of cooperation and competition as well as forms of work mobilization. Finally, the relationship with nature concerns the interactions between the socio-economic and biophysical systems.
Thus, by observing the material and ideal reproduction of meso spaces and their articulation with the global economy, the meso approach provides tools for thinking about and supporting the experimentation of a variety of ways of living, producing, consuming, distributing and, ultimatelyto shape living environments. In this period of ecological and social crisis, this theoretical, methodological and empirical contribution is particularly welcome.