Management and democracies faced with major risks

In collaboration with IQSOG

The spread of management into all spheres of social life is having major effects on institutions, law and forms of legitimizing power. Romain Laufer's work offers a direct entry into these tensions. At the crossroads of management, law and political philosophy, he examines the normative frameworks that make possible the exercise of power in a democratic regime, and the conditions of its acceptability. By restoring legitimacy to its full scope, it highlights the fractures generated by the absence of third-party bodies in modern managerial arrangements.

This meeting proposes to explore several decades of work, from the first texts devoted to the crisis of the criterion in administrative law to recent reflections on the competition of normativities. It is also an opportunity to discuss the main theses of his latest book, Management, Legitimacy and Society. Face à la crise des institutions (Presses de l'Université Laval, 2025), in which he proposes a systematic rereading of his work based on the question of the third party and inter-normativity. It thus sets the stage for a new way of thinking about the role of law, the imaginary and institutions in the management sciences, and questions the role of management in the reconfigurations of legitimacy at a time when classical institutions (state, law, science) are losing their structuring power.

Romain Laufer is Professor Emeritus at HEC Paris, where he has structured management science research for over forty years. He has articulated public management, administrative law and legitimacy from a reading of Chester Barnard. A pioneer in the mobilization of law, institutions and political philosophy in the analysis of organizations, he has introduced into management perspectives that cross Tocqueville, Weber and Mary Douglas. He was a member of the scientific committee of the Collège international de philosophie.