5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

In this invited session, we question the common assumption that the regimes' fear of revolts or the lobbying of corporatist groups benefiting from subsidy rents would be the major political obstacles to subsidy removal. This assumption, which is constitutive of the ‘social pact’ theory, neglects the fact that multiple power dynamics intersect subsidy systems daily, involving various actors whose logics of action diverge. In this sense, there is no overarching ‘social pact’: it disintegrates into multiple relationships that do not form a unified agreement but are composed of interdependencies and conflicts among the many actors in the supply-chains. These actors assign diverse meanings to subsidies from their respective positions, whether high or low, in the social, economic, and political hierarchies.

Papers in this session examine different social settings (Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria) and highlight segments of food or energy supply-chains that constitute prominent fields of struggle among various actors (for instance, wheat mills and bakeries; electricity public enterprises and private providers; central banks, traders and ministries in import policies; etc).