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Although not a very legitimate genre from an academic point of view, the production of economic essays has been an important element of diffusion in France for a political and economic common sense : rather planist and Keynesian in the 1950-70s, neo-liberal since the 1980s. After some decades, this genre has developed and has changed but its position on the editorial market remains seemingly solid. Strongly mobilized at the economic turning point of 1982-83, with the fall of the Socialist Party into the so-called liberal « cercle de la raison » (A. Minc), this genre is, precisely, an essential component of the construction of the liberal social order in the 1980s and 1990s. The success of critical essays as from 1995 testifies to the rising crisis of legitimacy which liberal policies now have to face.