La politique de l'ambiguïté juridique. Quand l'État tente de réguler les échanges entre la grande distribution et ses fournisseurs

This paper analyses twenty years of state intervention in the business relations between french supermarket chains and their suppliers, considering both the making of the regulations and their implementation. The narrative focuses on the Ministry of Economics department responsible for economic competition and consumer protection (DGCCRF: “Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consummation et de la répression des fraudes”). The paper studies how bureaucrats drafted new laws and how supermarket chains complied with them. In order to protect suppliers, DGCCRF deliberately created legal uncertainty. The successful use of legal uncertainty against supposedly more powerful economic players is an original case according to sociology of law. Halfway through the twenty-year period, however, the effectiveness of this strategy of legal uncertainty sharply decreased. Two explanations for this decline in effectiveness are examined. First, DGCCRF faced competition from other bureaucratic bodies, which promoted different regulatory projects for the retail sector. Second, supermarket chains gradually learned how to comply with the regulations on a formal level, without altering their actual business conduct with their suppliers.