Philippe Blanchard

Dr Philippe Blanchard

Small Group Project 2017-18

Transnational business networks: the European corporate elite through the lens of network analysis and sequence analysis

With Antoine Vion & François-Xavier Dudouet

Does the accumulation of capital generate a transnational business community? This project takes the angle of "interlocking directorates" ("ID"), that is, networks of people holding simultaneous leading positions in several major companies, based in two or more countries. Yet we intend to push this approach further by examining sociologically how much interlockers resemble each other, interact with each other and, possibly, coordinate their activity. We combine and cross-fertilise the structural, network angle of ID studies, with the biography-oriented research on the sociology of elites. All along we keep a systematic, wide-scale empirical perspective, through a rigorous prosopography of interlockers in five core capitalist countries over a six-year period.

More information

Areas of interest

Environmental Politics Nuclear Governance Pollution Political Sociology

Cohort

FG3

Biography

Philippe Blanchard is Associate Professor in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, which they joined in 2014. They have previously held positions at the Universities of Paris 9, Lausanne, and Pennsylvania State, and have collaborated in research and teaching across institutions in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the United States. They have been active within the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) as Convenor and Board Member of the Standing Group on Political Methodology, Instructor at the Methods School, and Chair of the School's Academic Advisory Board, and have served on the board of the Committee on Concepts and Methods (IPSA) and the executive committee of the Sequence Analysis Association.

Their research spans green and anti-green politics — including nuclear energy, air pollution, advertising, and apocalyptic scenarios — political communication, and political sociology. They have a strong methodological focus, with expertise in multivariate statistics, sequence analysis, survey design, text and content analysis, and multi-methodological approaches to the social and political sciences.

Biographical details correct as of 14.05.26