Benjamin Lemoine is a researcher in Political Science and Socio-Economics at CNRS, National Center for Scientific Research. He has been based at Paris Dauphine University (IRISSO) since 2013. Supervised by Michel Callon at CSI (Mines ParisTech), he developed a geneological approach to the French public debt problem through the analysis of quantification controversies and financing devices. He mobilizes a critical Science Studies and Technology (STS) approach in order to analyze the materiality of public debt. During a post-doctoral research at IFRIS (Université Marne-la-Vallée) and Sciences Po (CSO), he studied the increasing power of credit rating agencies in defining sovereign risk, policy choices and economic decisions. He is now currently working on the ways in which sovereign debt techniques shape economic and social policies, but also political entities such as states and cities. His current fieldworks include an analysis of public debt diplomacy and the politics of sovereign debt restructuration, but also the relationship between law and private finance, in Argentina after the State defaulted. He recently published L’ordre de la dette. Enquête sur les infortunes de l’État et la prospérité du marché, La Découverte, Paris, February 2016; “Dealing with the State. The Politics of French Sovereign Bond Transaction and Wholesaling”, Sociétés Contemporaines, December 2013; and “Measuring and Restructuring the State. Debt Metrics and the Control of Present and Future Political Order”, Chapter in Transforming European States, D. King and P. Le Galès, (eds.), Oxford University Press, (Forthcoming, 2016).
