L’ouverture commerciale contre la démocratie ? Réflexions sur une relation ambivalente

The relationship between trade openness and democracy is deeply political, yet its meaning is far from unambiguous: polymorphous and historically variable, it has successively taken the form of mercantilist elitism, protectionist imperialism, and post-war Western liberalism. Within this last framework, the conviction took hold that openness would act as a vector of democratic convergence; as it became dominant throughout the 1990s, this conviction shaped decisive institutional choices, foremost among them China's accession to the WTO. The 2007–2009 global financial crisis laid bare the flaws in this narrative: underestimated social and local impacts, wholly inadequate compensation mechanisms, and a fundamental misreading of the trajectory of the Chinese model. Far from dissipating, these tensions now fuel a growing politicisation of trade issues and a resurgence of power-driven logic. For democracies, the challenge lies less in trade openness as such than in its institutional design and its articulation with domestic politics.