Stabilization and openness: how strategies shape the markets. The case of the US defense industry

Abstract

The present article aims, on the one hand, to show that the study of markets should highlight both the processes of stabilization and the processes of upholding or creation of uncertainty. On the other hand, it stresses the strategies of actors backing up both types of processes. Consequently, a market is dynamically shaped through the combined effect of strategies of stabilization and strategies of uncertainty creation developed by actors. That markets are both stable and open (even if structural conditions and exogenous factors play a role in stability and uncertainty) is explained by these strategies. The article studies the case of the US defense industry since the end of the Cold War