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On the basis of the example of the suspension of anti-diabetic medicines in France, this article addresses the question of regulatory agencies' autonomous capacity of action as regards their respective minister. The article shows that this decision of the Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Produits de Santé (AFSSAPS) was effectively imposed by the minister for Health and his close advisers. In demonstrating how and why this occurred, our analysis challenges an academic orthodoxy which considers agencization to be a foundation of a “strong state”. More precisely, we reveal the structural conditions that enabled different actors to adopt strategies that, ultimately, rendered the ministerial intervention possible. More generally, we propose a means of sociologically studying the moments of contingency which favor concordance between the logics of action adopted by certain factions belonging to separate …