Aims

1) To demonstrate the importance of a historical, institutional and contextual approach in order to understand the evolution of the conceptions of development planning, particularly in respect of the relationship between agriculture and industry, and between problems of rural and urban development, and the interactions between them.
2) To situate the issues of development planning from the perspective of a comparative approach based on the development of large countries that have undergone a major experience of planning; and to show how, in these cases, the transition of the plan to the market, as it has operated since the 1980s and 1990s, illustrates theoretical controversies, the complex dimensions of relationships between agricultural development strategies and industrial growth, and the problems of looking for balance between plan and market.

Main themes

The course will be based on a study of the evolution of theories and on case studies. Using these cases as a basis, the course will show how, from the point of development, reflection on planning has shifted from a centralised, and essentially macroeconomic, perspective (in the framework of a mixed or socialist economy) towards a search for an institutional framework that will facilitate the implementation of a form of integrated development at the level of the quality of life of the peoples concerned. It will also stress the increasingly important role of the relationship between development and the environment in the planning.

Other credits in programs