2 - In Search of a Programme for the West

Summary

This chapter sets the scene for the history of plan-making in the Western hemisphere before, during, and after the Second World War. It delves into four great ideational projects of this period: (1) human rights, (2) the invention of a Christian-inspired liberalism, (3) solving the ‘social question’, and (4) the why and how of ‘mixed economies’. During the period 1937-47, these projects were gradually taken on by the leading politicians, policymakers, and intellectuals of the ‘free world’, as they were considered key for the creation of a more stable and just order, both in the national and in the international sphere. These four projects, moreover, were not only interlinked, but they also shared the overarching outlook of anti-totalitarianism and aimed for what could be called ‘ideational reconciliation’: the merging of the universal and the personal in the UDHR, a transatlantic-inspired ecumene, a combination of the ideologies and economic theories of socialism and liberalism. This produced a myriad of plans and counterplans for institutional structures, (federal) organisations, and policies for post-war Europe.