Resolving the Paradox of the Monnet Plan: National and International Planning in French Reconstruction

Georges Bataille, François Perroux and French Critiques of the Marshall Plan

“…According to Soria, member of the PCF, the Marshall Plan was at the same time useless and dangerous for France. It was useless regarding the economic recovery, as France embarked on its own domestic indicative planning, known as the Monnet Plan (see Lynch 1984). The Marshall Plan was dangerous because the economic aid would only be the prelude to a political and military agreement against the Eastern Bloc.…”

Comparing Implementation of Internet Diffusion in the United States and France: Policies, Beliefs, and Institutions

“…When the time came for national policies implementing the diffusion of the IT throughout all the strata of society in France or in the United States with a variety of means (legislation, scientific expertise, capital funding, and so on), coalitions of leading individuals and organizations had to be built in both countries around the core beliefs that “technology and science are useful for progress” (Hecht, 1997), “economic growth is a matter of public policy” (Lynch, 1984), and “the Internet will produce huge benefits for the whole nation” (Abbate, 2001). This illustration of “neo”‐corporatism in rather different public economy policy settings in two Western industrialized societies points out to the fact that “policy formation and implementation [entail] regular negotiations and collaboration between state agencies and interest groups with the power to ensure the compliance of their members” (Grant, 1985).…”

“…Therefore, as would have been expected in government‐led programs, particularly when thinking of the well‐regarded tradition of planning in the French economy since after the Second World War (Lynch, 1984), France and the United States mostly adopted a “top‐down” approach in the early stages of the implementation process. The respective governments initiated and led the research and later on financially supporting the diffusion efforts of elite scientists and administrators.…”

“…The French government, from the seventeenth century under King Louis XIV's Finance Minister Colbert on, has always practiced some form of centralized economic planning implemented through various state, commercial, or industrial monopolies. This economic policy, known consequently as “ le colbertisme ” (Hecht, 1997; Lynch, 1984), consisted in governmental interventions into the economy through careful planning and pointed directives on the one hand and through massive funding and properly executed management on the other hand. It has persisted to the present day with central authorities using legislation as well as public resources to restrict, coordinate, or even initiate industrial and commercial activities (Chevallier, 1996).…”

“…Because of the necessities of planning and implementing centrally designed policies while resisting centrifugal tendencies from provinces distant from Paris, France has over the centuries built a corps of career and professional bureaucrats—“les fonctionnaires”—and particularly “les grands corps de l'Etat” (Bezes, 2005; Venardakis, 2000) with a longstanding tradition of pursuing public policies with efficiency and impartiality. After WWII, the French government created a planning agency (“Commissariat Général au Plan”) in charge of laying out five‐year development cycles over a variety of industries across the national territory (Lynch, 1984). This coordination effort was based on the understanding of and adherence to the critical responsibility resting with public policy and, therefore, with a centripetal corps of competent, impartial, and devoted civil servants in the promotion of national development.…”