La Gouvernance par les nombres: Cours au Collège de France (2012–2014). By Alain SUPIOT

• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12067
• Author: Francis Maupain

BOOK REVIEWS

La Gouvernance par les nombres: Cours au Collège de France (2012-2014).1

By Alain SUPIOT. Paris, Fayard, 2015. 512 pp. ISBN 978-2-213-68109-2.

The crisis in labour law has been a recurrent theme of countless seminars, art-

icles and books. This book, based on Alain Supiot’s lectures at the Collège de France in

2012–14, contextualizes the debate in broader terms of the erosion of law in favour of

what he calls “governance by numbers”: a resurgence of the old Western dream of achiev-

ing harmony by calculation. Since the advent of modern times, law has been grounded

in awareness of the limitations of mathematical reasoning when it comes to governing

human affairs. From a mechanistic perspective, however, it is regarded as a “machine”

whose purpose is to redress the imbalances generated by the industrial world. Yet this

perspective has failed to live up to “the cybernetic fantasy that has gained ascendancy”

(p. 11), ruling out the very principle of a heteronomous standard.

Supiot’s demonstration unfolds in two parts. In the rst, he reviews the succes-

sive stages in the contamination and subsequent subversion of the rule of reasonable,

heteronomous law in favour of governance by numbers, not least because statistics are

no longer merely descriptive, but now also prescriptive (p. 148). Here, the forcefulness

and richness of his demonstration are driven by his vast erudition and constant cross-

referencing to classical Greek thought, Roman law, medieval thought, Soviet law and

even “French Theory”.

His intellectual agility enables him to elucidate what likens and differentiates So-

viet central planning and neoliberalism, both of which subordinate law to utilitarian cal-

culation. He thus provides a better understanding of how the Gosplan marked a stage

that not only sheds light on the hybridization of communism and capitalism in China’s

current experience, but also, paradoxically, feeds into the trend towards his concept of

“Total Market”.

Also in this rst part of the book, Supiot’s chapter on the doctrine of “law and eco-

nomics” is of particular relevance to the ILO and its standards-based regulatory function

in regard to competition (chapter 7). Indeed, the doctrine assumes Darwinian competi-

tion between countries’ legislations – particularly labour laws – within the framework

of “new comparative analysis” and the market for law. The rationale of this approach,

which has gained the support of the leading credit-rating agencies (p. 239), is reected

in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” programme and in some of the decisions of the

European Court of Justice (ECJ).

1 An English translation is scheduled for publication in December 20 17 (by Hart Publishing, London),

entitled Governance by numbers: The making of a legal model of allegiance.

Copyright © The author 2017

Journal compilation and translation © International Labour Organization 2017

International Labour Review, Vol. 156 (2017), No. 2