Economic and social planning as it used to be done years ago is no longer practised. In a market economy, we keep being told, it is not possible to really plan. But whoever is managing a political system... or even a large enterprise... is bound to declare his/her aims and how it is being proposed to reach them.

In the EU, it has become the custom to lay out strategies sector by sector, at times with quite detailed targets. So, we get projects like the Green Deal, the capital markets union, banking union and others - and for instance quite recently an EU defence policy. A number of these programmes come packaged with precise outcomes and timelines. Some targets are reached quite satisfactorily as in the fight against Covid; some roll forward with less success, as on the environment; while others like the capital markets union project get stuck.  

Yet there does not seem to be a unified conception of how to comprehensively tie together all these initatives into one whole. True, an attempt at making the programmes cohere together is usually carried out in the framework of the Union's annual budget, and in the exercises meant to prepare a seven year budgetary framework (sometimes compacted into a five year perspective). In reality, planning remains a fragmented process.

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MODEL

During many years, the coalition model by which to run a government appeared to be ideal for Europe. The foremost example was Germany which served to show how the compromises that parties assembled inside a coalition have to arrange between them, lead to the adoption of  a moderate and effective governmental approach. It is highly dubious, to put it mildly, whether this argument can be applied to the coalition government which has just collapsed in that country. For as long as it lasted, it was plagued by never-ending stories about the bickering between its member parties.

By contrast the right wing coalition which has governed Italy these last years has shown itself to be quite stable. The same can hardly be said about the French government which though it is a minority formation, and needs to strongly discipline its approach if it is to be coherent, still seems unable to maintain a steady course. Indeed, it is an illusion to suppose that there can be a "best" model of government which would be fit for all seasons.                 

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CONTROL

In the wake of its win in the US presidential elections, the Donald Trump camp seems to be better prepared this time round than when Trump won the elections of 2016. Decisive moves were made with the first nominations to what will be leading positions in the next administration; independently of what one thinks of their intentions and ideology, nominees know what they want and how they want it done.

If Trump follows the advice given to him by the Heritage Foundation, the major American institution which espouses the views of the hard (not to say extreme) right, his priority would be to assume full control over the US federal administration. It is difficult to see how this can be done without triggering another institutional crisis in the US. The huge federal bureaucracies which Trump would seek to bring under his control have a long administrative history during which they sought to contain the efforts of no matter which President who tried to venture outside the traditional frameworks that define how things should be done.