Public debt between legitimacy and legality.: A juridification without judicialisation of the pro-debt cancellation activism

International audienceFrom the Third World debt crisis in the 1980s to Greece in 2015, this articleproposes to analyse the militant trajectory of public debt cancellation. Welook back at cancellationist actors, their backgrounds, their resources, andabove all how they strive to accredit illegitimate debt through symbolic lawmobilization. Our aim is to analyse how law is used by activists as a symbolicresource to convince governments to cancel part of their public debt for thesake of social democracy. This is a contribution to the sociology of law, to thecontentious uses of the law against economic policies, as well as to the existingwork on anti-debt activists.Légitimité et légalité de la dette publique. Une juridicisation sans judiciarisation du discours annulationniste De la crise de la dette du tiers-monde dans les années 1980 au contexte grec en 2015, cet article propose d'analyser la trajectoire militante de l'annulationnisme. En revenant sur les acteurs annulationnistes, leurs trajectoires, leurs ressources, et surtout sur la manière dont ils cherchent à accréditer la dette illégitime à travers un travail d'exégèse juridique, il s'agit d'étudier la manière dont le droit est convoqué par des militants en tant que ressource symbolique afin de convaincre des gouvernements d'annuler une partie de leur dette publique, au nom de la défense de la démocratie sociale. On contribue ici autant à la sociologie du droit, aux recours contestataires du droit contre des politiques économiques, qu'à la sociologie des mouvements sociaux positionnés sur la dette. Public debt between legitimacy and legality. A juridification without judicialisation of the pro-debt cancellation activism From the Third World debt crisis in the 1980s to Greece in 2015, this article proposes to analyse the militant trajectory of public debt cancellation. We look back at cancellationist actors, their backgrounds, their resources, and above all how they strive to accredit illegitimate debt through symbolic law mobilization. Our aim is to analyse how law is used by activists as a symbolic resource to convince governments to cancel part of their public debt for the sake of social democracy. This is a contribution to the sociology of law, to the contentious uses of the law against economic policies, as well as to the existing work on antidebt activists