Francois Perroux, A Precursor of the Current Analyses of Power

Abstract

Despite its important contributions to economic thought, namely in the field of spatial economics and economics of development, Francois Perroux, one of the most important French economists of the 20st century, remains today poorly appreciated and frequently unrecognized. This paper tends to show how unfair is this deficit of recognition. We underline Perroux's illuminating views on asymmetry, domination and power which can be considered as a prefiguration and – to some extent – as a generalization of works made in this field half a century later, for example the American realist and neo-realist approaches of power (namely the concepts of hard and soft power) or by Susan Strange (with her concept of structural power).

Keywords: asymmetry, power, domination, influence, coercion

JEL Classification: B19, B4, B5