These three names are just examples, picked out at random. The book contains many others, dozens, even hundreds. Geoffrey Geuens’ aim is nonetheless not to linger over such or such precise case, but to bring to light a global logic, ‘a collective portrait of the directors of this ‘digital revolution’,’ he explains.
The quotation marks are not incidental. This specialist of the socio-economics of the communication industries affirms what he thinks straight off: ‘the digital revolution has not taken place.’ The long drawn out investigation he has carried out sets about the task of dissecting the clichés generally served up by the (pseudo) academic literature as regards this so-called new economy, said to have emerged with the advent of ICTs (information and communication technologies). ‘The great majority of the writing on the subject bring up various platitudes,’ he points out. ‘First of all that the world has become a global village, in which the nationalities of business groups no longer exist. Next that the market has become crazy, out of control, and that businesses are finding themselves confronted by a heightened competition. Finally, that the policies drawn up nation states have withdrawn from the economy.’ So many clichés which Geoffrey Geuens likes to summarise through the expression ‘the triptych of globalisation’: the economy is now said to be no longer under state control, has been deterritorialised and deregulated.
The Boards of Trustees under a microscope
And yet, according to the researcher, this ‘new economy’ has in reality has never ceased to be state-centred, the power structures remaining eminently national, the actors within the system retaining close links with politics.
The steps taken by the author are systematic. He analyses the holding structures of the sector’s business companies and retraces the professional career paths of the members of their Boards of Trustees. Instead of noting a wild and unfettered competition, we on the contrary observe that there is a strong overlap amongst these shareholders, who hold key positions simultaneously in several companies, in moving from one to the other over the course of their careers, but generally tying together businesses which are supposed to be hermetically sealed from one another.
Investigating these Boards of Trustees with a fine toothcomb in addition demonstrates that these senior managers often have behind them a career background in politics, serving within a government, friends in high places, etc. But always in a bipartisan and mainstream logic. Being close to the world of the media is the prerogative of neither the right or the left. The Boards of Trustees, bringing together representatives from all sides, like to have available intermediaries at every level of power. ‘They adapt and recuperate all the currents of thought which can be recuperated’ he sums up.
The Old Elites of the New Economy also studies the importance of think tanks, private circles and other socialite networks, all the socialisation arenas reserved for the elites. Arenas which, in addition to providing entertainment to the ‘great and the good,’ also serve the building up of business networks and this intermingling of political, media, entrepreneurial and intellectual authorities.
Family power
After a preliminary mainly theoretical chapter, the book focuses on three countries: Belgium, France and the United States. Three nations which have appreciably different realities.
Belgium first of all. The author describes a ‘blood related’ Belgian communications industry, marked by an ‘archetypal family capitalism where business networks and family connections interweave over the course of business company equity acquisitions and the logics of co-optation.’ All the groups (Rossel, CORELIO, Roularta, De Persgroep, IPM, etc.) are scrutinised, through the close relationships between their directors, a strong regional affiliation, crossover involvement, etc. All so many largely family based businesses, generally marked by strong denominational affiliation (the Bishop of Namur, for example remained for a long time a shareholder in Mediabel) and by a closeness with political authorities, with Liberals and Social Christians at the forefront, depsite the supposed disappearance over time of the so-called ‘newspapers of opinion.’
