Interest Group Leadership and Territory: The Case of Bordeaux Wine Producers

Résumé :

This chapter presents the demonstration firstly to how different leaderships have sought to regulate the production of wine in the Bordelais region and, secondly, to their visions of how this product should be marketed. It sets out to show how research can be designed in order to grasp the different but interdependent dimensions of sectoral power. Used as an analytical concept and by linking it to that of territory, political leadership can usefully be applied to studying power and legitimacy not only within public authorities but also within interest groups. However, most representatives of Bordeaux’s wine producers have rarely been entirely comfortable with this level of public intervention. In the Bordeaux region time is more often counted in centuries but is very much a part both of promotional activity and of discourse used to justify particular forms of interest aggregation and market regulation.