From Colonial Know-How to Development Economics: Experts and Expertise in Early EEC Development Cooperation

In times of crisis, experts are much in demand, as the current financial crisis of the EU blatantly reveals. The developments in Greece, where a troika of independent experts from the European Commission, the IMF and the ECB tries to direct and control the country’s austerity policy, is in some respect reminiscent of the wave of structural adjustment programs that the IMF and the World Bank have imposed on many developing countries since the early 1980s. However, the rise of the development experts has even a longer history and is closely connected to the emergence of international organisations after the Second World War. By looking into the role of experts and expertise in early development cooperation of the EEC, this paper sheds light on the colonial basements of this expertise as well as its quick displacement by a more knowledge-based approach corresponding to development economics. In contrast to extant literature, it will be argued that right from the beginning, scientific expertise quickly gained ground in European development cooperation. The shift towards development economics in the course of the 1960s counterbalanced French pretensions in Paris as well as within the Commission and contributed to a – gradual and conflict-laden – Europeanization of this policy field. At the same time, a closer look at particular development projects reveal that experts were not only much in demand in times of crisis, but just as much involved in those political processes that had precipitated them.