Sociology of Transnational Guilds

This article seeks to discuss the emergence of transnational groups coming from the core of state bureaucracies and what has sometimes been called the “deep” or “right hand” of the state. In doing so, the article aims to explore the groups’ degree of autonomy in terms of elaboration of politics and their place within the different fields of power that irrigate the international. Are these groups exchanging information transnationally or not? Do they form a group, an elite of professionals, a guild, which has its own agenda and priorities? Have they a sense of solidarity provided by the sharing of a certain kind of know-how that enters into tension with the loyalty to a national agenda? And, if this exchange of information exists, as evidenced by...