Developmentalism and social policies since 1945: an introduction

Through precisely documented case studies, the articles in this dossier present different modalities of the encounter between two research traditions on development and social policies, working on what might anachronistically be called the origins of "human development". The contributions reveal the contradictions that exist between the objectives of economic development or territorial enhancement and social measures. The decades following the Second World War, at the heart of the dossier, were a period when protective and redistributive policies were being developed in the metropolises of Western Europe, while development programs were being implemented in countries that were still colonized or had emerged from decolonization. A double question therefore lies at the heart of this issue: to what extent do discussions around the welfare state and the social engineering projects that accompany it open the way to a new interpretation not only of the ideology of development, but also of the concrete forms it adopts, in diverse contexts with distinct administrative capacities and resources? In turn, to what extent does developmentist ideology invite us to reconsider or complicate our approach to social policies which, when viewed from the West, are generally presented from the unique angle of progress for the populations who benefit from them, but which, in these areas, have primarily served the objectives of development ?