Delving into ‘Development Sociology,’ the 1960s are labelled as the ‘Development Decade’ in United Nations parlance, a period recognised for its widespread economic and political reforms globally, particularly in the Global South. During this transformative period, a critical linguistic shift occurred: societies once labelled ‘underdeveloped’ were now referred to as ‘developing countries,’ a designation symbolising their potential to surmount longstanding economic stagnation and poverty. The driving forces behind this development were the developmental states, which, through authoritarian and swift modernisation efforts, aimed to ascend to the ranks of developed nations. Iran exemplified such nations, where a surge in oil revenues, significantly bolstered by OPEC, laid the foundation for rapid, albeit uneven, economic growth. This growth catalysed profound transformations in the working and living conditions of workers, particularly evident in Iran’s oil industry. Reflecting on this period, the examination of the daily lives of these workers reveals how the uneven pace of development markedly influenced their existence, offering insights into the intricate interplay between national development strategies and their palpable effects on the labour force amid global economic shifts.

Constitutionalism in the decolonising world was not merely an adoption of a set of norms pre-fabricated in the West. A materialist analysis of the Indian constitution argues for the socio-historical specificity of the post-colonial constituent project. Externally the goal of decolonisation was not just political freedom but also economic sovereignty. Internally an under-developed and unequal society posed a persistent danger of unrest for the new regime. Across much of the post-colonial world the solution was a project of planned state-led development and social transformation. The post-colonial constitution was designed to facilitate and realise this goal. These projects demanded the primacy of sovereignty over property and, hence, the constitution differentiated from metropolitan norms privileging property and constraining state interventions. It was a constitution by and for administrators and planners who were the vanguards of Third Worldism. Sans a popular mobilisation, however, a top down project of transformation through constitution failed. As the fortunes of planning declined and the Third World was ‘liberalised’, lawyers supplanted the administrators as the primary custodians of the post-colonial constitutions. Projects of planned transformation gave way to social rights litigation.

Chapter 13 analyzes his contributions to development economics. It is argued that his central contribution is not an economic theory of development, but rather a technique for development planning. Tinbergen’s work on planning is mainly concerned with implementing development plans, which he argued should be done using his three-stage planning model, consisting of the macro phase, the industry phase, and the project phase. Later work expanded this model to include regional planning and education planning. After the initial period between 1955 and 1960, most of Tinbergen’s work on development economics was increasingly about a vision of an integrated world economy. It is demonstrated that econometric and analytical work moved to the background and that his visionary and institutional work moved to the foreground. Crucial in his vision of the international economic order was his experience in the Netherlands. The chapter shows how his vision of the international economic structure crucially relied on analogies with the national economic order. The chapter concludes with some early reflections on his development economic work and suggests that it largely disregarded the ethos of self-help and emancipation that Tinbergen knew from his youth in the AJC.

Chapter 14 analyzes the political-economic context of Tinbergen’s work as development planning expert in Turkey between 1960 and 1966. Tinbergen was brought in against the will of the Turkish government, at the urging of the OECD and the IMF. After the military coup later that year, he played a key role in the founding of the State Planning Office as well as its institutional design. The SPO was modeled after the Dutch CPB, and how its political setting differed from the planning bureau in the Netherlands is analyzed. Many of the development planning efforts of the SPO were met with hostility in Turkish politics and in the economy. The chapter traces how Tinbergen sought to navigate these tensions, frequently unsuccessfully. He hoped to create space for economic expertise above the parties, as he had successfully done in the Netherlands, but structural reforms necessary according to the planning experts quickly became part of the political struggle within the country between the more traditional and liberal agricultural interests, and the more progressive and planning-minded industrial interests. The chapter highlights the importance of the international planning ideology and economic interests of the West in shaping the outcomes of Tinbergen’s efforts in Turkey.

Chapter 12 describes Tinbergen’s transformation from a national economic expert to an international development economist. While involved in domestic matters in the early 1950s, a trip to India affected him deeply. Afterward he reoriented his career, asked permission to leave the CPB, and developed a new research agenda. That new agenda went hand in hand with a redefinition of the role of the Netherlands in the world in the aftermath of colonization. Tinbergen argued that it was the responsibility of the Dutch people to give something back to the world after the country had received Marshall aid and was again a stable economy. The most visible outcome of this was his involvement in the founding of NOVIB. He worried that social democracy in Western Europe was turning into a complacent and materialistic movement and hoped that international goals would give it a new spirit. He drew on his extensive network in Dutch politics and the Royal family to shape development aid policies at home and to transform himself from a national into an international economic expert. This aligned with a reimagination of the economy, which he increasingly viewed as an international interdependent system, under the influence of Colin Clark.