Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PLANAGE (The Age of Planning. Planning as a paradigm for policy history of post-war Europe: national cases and the European integration process (1940s-1960s))
Berichtszeitraum: 2018-05-01 bis 2020-04-30
In order to be less partial than the existing reconstructions, the project aimed: 1) to study four national cases comparatively (Italy, France, Great Britain, the German Federal Republic), revealing the differences but also any borrowing/adaptation from others’ experience; 2) to map the transnational circulation of ideas, approaches and applications among the countries studied and also further afield; 3) to show the dynamics of how the respective national approaches penetrate one another and are transferred onto a supranational scale, especially involving the European Community; 4) finally, to place the planning experience within a historical reconstruction of Western Europe’s recovery from World War II.
Although the project is distinctly historical, its results are of interest to society as a whole, since they cover topical issues such as: the limited national horizon of public policies, whereas knowledge circulates transnationally more and more; the difficulty of combining national experiences and transposing them onto a European scale, the risk always being that the upshot will be an unsatisfactory lowest common denominator; the problematic relation – glimpsed once again in the handling of our present health emergency – between the political sphere, democratic policy control and expertise.
Work carried out during the project achieved these objectives, or came close to doing so, given the international scale of the archive research (alas, limited by the pandemic) and the multidisciplinary approach that evolved from background reading in political science, sociology, economics and philosophy. The natural outcome will be a meeting (Strasbourg, September 2021) stemming from all the networking with top international experts in the field over the last couple of years. The proceedings will come out as a jointly-authored volume establishing the groundwork for a global history of planning in which Western Europe has its rightful place.
Phase Two – albeit restricted by health emergency measures – consisted in a broad archival reconnaissance on sources both of government institutions involved in planning and those of private “technicians” who powered such operations.
Meanwhile participation in meetings and networking revealed the growth of a parallel interest in the topic on an international scale. There formed an international exchange and interaction network which should shortly become formalised and will underpin the final meeting and proceedings publication by multiple authors. One chapter of the book will condense the first scientific results of the project, as will two scientific articles currently in the pipeline (one of a comparative nature, the other tracing the relationship between policy and expertise) and due for publication in Green Open Access by specialist journals. In the longer term, when conditions return to permitting archive research, there remains the aim of writing a monograph on the planning experience of postwar Western Europe (1945-1970s), destined perforce to extend beyond the four national cases examined by the project. As for the work of communication and dissemination, it has involved, inter alia, participation in six scientific conferences, one workshop and three seminars open to the public; also publication of five articles in journals widely circulating in Italy and abroad.
Lastly, the experience of this MSCA Individual Fellowship and the work it entailed have greatly boosted the researcher’s career prospects: one concrete positive illustration being that even before the project terminated he was selected and appointed to a role at Verona University (Italy).