European economic planning in the light of Belgium : from the 70’s crisis to the 90’s neoliberalism
Zoé Evrard (FNRS, ISPOLE)
Hugo Canihac (Université de Strasbourg- discutant)
Abstract
Zoé Evrard’s research overturns the narrative that planning disappeared under neoliberalism. It traces how planning institutions, expert networks, and policy devices were not all dismantled but strategically redeployed within European states between the 1970s and 1990s. Focusing on Belgium – a particularly fragmented political regime – the book shows how these infrastructures were both neoliberalized and neoliberalizing, thereby contributing to the country’s distinctively negotiated trajectory of neoliberalisation.
Through a rich multilevel analysis, the study reframes planning as a politically flexible infrastructure, demonstrating how “pragmatic” neoliberalization can be driven by incumbent actors and underneath significant ideological continuity, even in the absence of a strong, centralizing state. More broadly, the book bridges comparative political economy, institutionalist theories of change, and the sociology of expertise to shed new light on the repurposing of expertise within European states at a critical historical juncture.
The central argument is that neoliberalization has been mediated not only by ideas or ideologies, but also by heterogeneous networks of expertise contributing to forge new knowledge regimes and actively structure institutional change.
Bio
Zoé Evrard holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po Paris. Her doctoral dissertation examined the redeployment of socio-economic planning in Belgium and provided the empirical and conceptual foundations for this book. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at ISPOLE, supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), where she is developing a new research project that extends her work on planning, expertise, and neoliberalization to the European level.
In addition to her research on planning, she has worked on the emergence of the European “investor state,” on Belgian industrial relations, and more broadly on Belgian political economy and neoliberalism. Publications on the topic include the book she coordinated with Damien Piron, Le(s) néolibéralisme(s) en Belgique: Cadre macroéconomique, applications sectorielles et formes de résistance (Academia–L’Harmattan, 2023). Her work has also appeared in peer-reviewed venues journals, such as Science in Context.