In the context of enterprise responsibility, some refer to social Responsibility alone, whereas others make a distinction with regard to Societal Responsibility. By Societal is meant : "what concerns the structure, the organization, the functioning of society". This distinction is the translation, effected by the economist, of a debate belonging to political philosophy : what is the legitimacy conferred upon private organizations, so that they may pretend to regulate society ? Recent history has given birth, on the occasion of the crisis of fordism, to the idea of ungovernability according to which public authorities were no longer capable of taking their responsibilities. It has engendered the substitute of the government of things, by asking the question : "How do govern without government ?". "Why not Civil Society ?", some will answer. They forget that it often founds its legitimacy on the auto-proclamation of its expertise. Should the expert, initially an instrument of power, become power itself, against the democratically elected politician ? Here, the case of the ECB is exemplary.
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