Doctrinal History of the Political Economy Faculty in French Faculties from 1877 to 1942[Histoire doctrinale du corps professoral d’économie politique dans les facultés françaises de 1877 à 1942]

This article is a doctrinal history of french Professeurs agrégés des facultés de droit. A doctrine is a system that implies, on the part of its authors, a value judgment accompanied by a program of social reconstruction, when this judgment results in a total or partial condemnation of the current economic world. Professors of political economy at law faculties are grouped into three groups: socialists, interventionists and liberals. In 1877, 75 % of the first corps of professors defended classical liberalism. By 1897, liberalism in French professors had fallen to 41 %. Their share then declined to 15 % by 1942. The institutionalization of political economy in the faculties favored the formation of a new orthodoxy around the search for a third way (more than 70 % of the teaching body in 1942) between liberalism and socialism. It also helped to establish the socialist doctrine in the faculties. The law Faculties have also given France many politicians. 10 % of professor from this period went on to hold ministerial or equivalent posts. In addition to the historical interest of this story, it notes that classical liberalism, at least in the faculties, was challenged before the 1929 crisis. The doctrinal structure changes before the facts, in great crisis in particular.