Entrepreneuriat financier et « agir » socio-politique aux États-Unis : le cas George Soros

Résumé 0

Entrepreneurship is not only influenced by institutions and contexts but also shapes institutions. It may steer the socio-economic orientation of post-modern entrepreneurial societies. Entrepreneurs are innovative actors that produce economic outcomes but also have become institutional agents that enunciate standards and enact desirable societal models through the shared vindication and implementation of their projects. Financial entrepreneurship in the USA– the creation and exploitation of innovative and sophisticated instruments and organizations for leveraging credit, securitization, and managing risk– rests on such a political economy paradigm: a reflexive but controlled interaction between aggregated individual agencies and institutional structures both characteristic of an “open society” and an “achieving society”. Financial entrepreneurs have assumed a greater social and governance role in the US civil society but also in the world of politics and policy making. The case of George Soros who turned successively philanthropist, social, political, and even intellectual entrepreneur provides the ideal-type of an economic and political hedge fund entrepreneur that encapsulates the disruptive agency and the polymorphous governance function of new financial elites. A complex interaction and transaction between agencies and institutions is made visible with the economic, philanthropic and social initiatives he has undertaken to sculpt a more positive public image and achieve political influence.