International and European plans of modernization of economy and infrastructures (1930-1950). A typology of their contents and authors

Around the 1930s, several committees within the League of Nations and the International Organization of Labour conducted extensive enquiries among governments in order to assess their needs in terms of modernization of their economies and infrastructures. At the same time, new international mechanisms of financial support were devised in order to respond these needs. The general financial and economic crises and the subsequent dramatic war events put an end to these innovative plans. The ideas were revamped during the 1950s within international organizations such as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation, OEEC (then Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD), the Council of Europe and the United Nations.. The solutions offered, however, differed from the ones developed twenty years before. The research aims at establishing a typology of these plans of modernization, looking at their sources of inspiration and underlying visions in order to assess the continuity (or rupture) experienced from the late 1960s onwards in terms of linkages between modernization and integration at whatever level –global, continental or regional.