THE SPACE OF ECONOMIC NEUTRALITY: TYPES OF LEGITIMACY AND TRAJECTORIES OF CENTRAL BANK MANAGERS.

The article focuses on legitimacy and trajectories of central bank managers. A social process of neutralization can be observed from the study of the particular methods of construction and legitimization of independent institutions, which are the central banks and of the social characteristics of agents who supposedly embody this independence, the central bankers. Multiple correspondence analyses is used to explore the structure of these particular social spaces. The space of the academic and professional trajectories of central bank governors testifies to the coexistence and rivalry between different types of legitimacy. There are insiders, who come from the central bank institution on the one hand, and outsiders, whose legitimacy may be academic, economic or political, on the other hand. There are leaders, who come from the financial world and the private sector on the one hand, and then leaders who come from the political or university arenas. Central banks are the places where these different forms of legitimacy affront each other and combine. This phenomenon of neutralization, which concerns authorities made up of wise men officiating as guardians of money, has now become self-evident.