Abstract Christine ZUMELLO

Christine ZUMELLO (CREW, Sorbonne-Nouvelle) : « Financial Institutions and Political Parties in the USA: new forms of representation and new forms of intermediation ».

In the United States, there has been a fundamental revision of the channels of communication and governance within political parties and financial institutions over the last twenty years. These transformations are the manifestations of longer trends, but also of more recent developments. In both cases, the unifying tendency has been a shift toward the reinforcement of « direct access ». Direct access meant that participation, and hence representation within political parties could be improved and that « inefficient » intermediaries within financial institutions could be eliminated. Within political parties « direct access » was both an off-shoot of the institutionalisation of primary elections but also of the internet revolution and the growing reliance on viral communication through astroturf organizations. Meanwhile, the intellectual theorizing of government failure and the efficiency of markets has led to an increasing financiarisation of the American economy and what appears to be a « democratisation of financial markets » and a weakening of intermediaries. The overall effect was a change in the status of the activist/citizen in political parties and of the client/investor in financial institutions.