Franco Archibugi (18 September 1926 – 23 November 2020)Obituary of Franco Archibugi La Repubblica, 24 November 2020. was an Italian scholar in political, economic and social sciences, university professor in economic policy and spatial planning. He largely operated in Italy and in international governmental agencies; including in the field of economic development, social welfare and cooperation policy. Archibugi was the author of several works in planning theory and methodology, and was among the theorists and promoters of a new unitary discipline of planning – the “Planology” – aimed at creating a bridge between the theoretical scientific progress in economics and other social sciences with the actual political and administrative efficiency and management. After retiring from academia, he was still an active researcher as President of the Planning Studies Centre. He died in Rome in November 2020 at the age of 94.Formez, Dipartimento della Funzione Pubblica,E' scomparso Franco Archibugi, 24 November 2020.
Biography Born in Rome in 1926 and son of the violinist Corrado Archibugi and Adelina Francia, he was the grandson of the art historian Ennio Francia.
He participated in the Resistance with small demonstrative actions such as the throwing of leaflets of socialists in cinemas and with the scattering of four-pointed nails on the Via Flaminia in Rome. After the liberation of Rome in 1944, he was one of the leaders of the renewed Italian Socialist Youth Federation led by Matteo Matteotti, Leo Solari and Mario Zagari,Roberto Maffioletti, La scelta. Roma 1943/1944, Ginevra Bentivoglio Editori, Roma 2011 with whom a long association was born together with his peer Giorgio Ruffolo.Leo Solari, I giovani di "Rivoluzione Socialista", Iepi, Roma, 1964. In those years, he also contributed to the foundation of the Italian Section of the Fourth International, together with Giorgio Ruffolo and Livio Maitan.Giorgio Ruffolo, Il libro dei sogni. Una vita a sinistra raccontata a Vanessa Roghi, Donzelli, Roma, 2007.
He had his first job at the Ministry of Reconstruction, collaborating closely with the Minister Meuccio Ruini and with his head of cabinet Federico Caffè, representing Italy in Europe for the implementation of the Marshall Plan.Paolo Pagliaro, Per pianificare la ripresa, rivolgersi ad Archibugi 9 Colonne, 28 aprile 2020. With Federico Caffè, he maintained a deep friendship until his disappearance.
Student of the Institute of Philosophy of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Sapienza University of Rome, he had as teacher Guido Calogero and as friends and classmates young people such as Lucio Colletti, Emilio Garroni, Tullio Gregory and Gennaro Sasso, writing his thesis on the German Enlightenment under the guidance of Carlo Antoni.
After the split of the Italian Socialist Party, he joined, together with the entire Socialist Youth Federation, the Italian Liberal Socialist Party (later PSDI) led by Giuseppe Saragat. He started working at Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions (CISL), collaborating with Pietro Merli Brandini.
After the death of Eugenio Colorni, in 1944, he had a long friendship with Ernesto Rossi, connected to the joint professional commitment for the Italian economic reconstruction and to the common pro-European ideals. He was later one of the young officials who initiated the process of European integration as Director General of the European Coal and Steel Community in the late 1950s.
Ideally close to the socialist intellectuals, he had progressively distanced himself from the PSI when Bettino Craxi was appointed secretary, so much so that he supported other lists such as that of the Radical Party in 1987 and that led by Massimo Severo Giannini in 1992.<ref>In 1992, he was expelled from the Socialist Party together with Massimo Severo Giannini and Federico Zeri. See Gianluca Luzi, ECCO GIANNINI 'DA SOLI I PARTITI NON CAMBIANO''', La Repubblica, 31 marzo 1992.</ref>
Archibugi was one of the promoters of programming in Italy in the 1960s, collaborating closely with Antonio Giolitti and Giorgio Ruffolo. Professor of Urban Planning, he has taught at University of Calabria, University of Naples Federico II and at National School of Administration (Italy).
Founder in 1963 and President of the Planning Studies Centre, he was among the supporters (and promoters) of a new unified planning discipline.Francesco Domenico Moccia, Il ricordo di Franco Archibugi, Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica, 24/11/2020. He contributed to the development of planning techniques in the urban, territorial and economic fields, collaborating with United Nations, the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and with the Nobel Laureates for Economics Jan Tinbergen, Ragnar Frisch, Wassily Leontief and Richard Stone. Together with Jacques Delors and Stuart Holland he proposed to go beyond capitalist planning.Stuart Holland (ed.), Beyond Capitalist Planning, Blackwell, Oxford, 1978.
In recent years, he had worked hard on a massive trilogy on the programmatic approach, published last year by publisher Palgrave Macmillan.Franco Archibugi, The Programming Approach and the Demise of Economics, 3 voll. (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2019).
Private life
Married to the poet Muzi Epifani in 1953, he had four children with her, Luca, Daniele, Francesca and Albertina. After the separation, he had a fifth child by Karla Koenig, Mathias, and a sixth child, Alessandro, by his second wife Fulvia Banchi. His house outside Rome at Divino Amore, in addition to hosting - since 1981 - the headquarters of the Planning Studies Centre, has been an intense hub of cultural, musical and social life.
The elder brothers of his grandfather's father were Francesco and Alessandro Archibugi, volunteers of the University Battalion of Sapienza and died in defence of the Roman Republic (1849). As great-grandson, Franco kept their memory alive by participating in the commemorations,Franco Archibugi, Memoria. Sulla morte in combattimento di Francesco a Alessandro Archibugi, Distribuito all'Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza” in occasione del Convegno in celebrazione del CLIX Anniversario del Battaglione Universitario Romano, Roma, Città Universitaria, 2006. also as a member of the National Association of Garibaldi Veterans.
Education
1944–1952: Sapienza University of Rome. Degree in History and Philosophy.He attended lectures by Guido Calogero, Guido De Ruggiero, Pantaleo Carabellese, Rosario Assunto, Federico Chabod, Raffaello Morghen, Gaetano De Sanctis, Roberto Almagià, Giuseppe Tucci, Ernesto De Martino, Raffaele Pettazzoni, Alberto Carlo Blanc. Thesis degree with Carlo Antoni, on the theme “Enlightenment and Historicism: Opposition or Consequenciality?”
1947–1950: ISE- BCI- [Institute of Economic Studies. Rome department]He studied and worked in this Institute together with Federico Caffè, Carlo Gragnani, Bruno Pagani, and others, and contributed to the Journal “Mondo economico” [Economic World] and other various researches and enquiries.
1963–1964: London School of Economics (LSE). One year Diploma in 'Economics and Social Administration'.He attended in that year Lectures by P.J.O. Self; Peter Thomas Bauer; Imre Lakatos; Karl R. Popper; Richard M. Titmuss, E.J.Mishan, A.W. Phillips, among others.
Political-professional profile From the beginning, Franco Archibugi merged research activities with his political and professional activities. In 1945-1950 (immediately after World War II) he was – before the college degree - junior officer in the governmental administration for the country’s reconstruction and European cooperation policy. [At the Ministry of Reconstruction and at the Committee of Ministers for ERP-European Recovery Program, (The “Marshall Plan”) in Rome, and later in Paris at the OECE]. Between 1951–56, he became an economic and educational consultant of the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions (CISL); and from 1956-57 held the position of Chairman of the Economic Committee (of the European Regional Organisation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) (London-Bruxelles); in such role he participated at the negotiations of the Rome’s Treaties for the creation of European Economic Community. He later became Chief of the Technical Secretariat of the Comitato dei Ministri per il Mezzogiorno (Committee of Ministries for the South) (1958–59). During 1960-1962 he was Director at the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, for labour, industrial and regional re-conversion questions, in Luxembourg. In 1962, he returned to Italy (Rome), to open the "Planning Studies Centre" (Centro di studi e piani economici'', in Italian), together with a multidisciplinary team of colleagues, sponsored by some Italian public agencies. As Director of the Centre, Archibugi dedicated himself to the studies and practical experiences of a unified approach to development analysis and planning - as required in that time by the United Nations; giving technical-scientific support to the implementation of economic programming of the Italian Government (from 1963 to 1975), through an intense cooperation with the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning.In the time that Antonio Giolitti was Minister, and Giorgio Ruffolo General Secretary. In the same time Franco Archibugi was also acting as expert in the following international initiatives on integrative socio-economic planning issues, be it technical-scientific or operative:
For the United Nations, as consultant of the United Nations Center for Housing, Building and Planning (New York City, 1968-73); as project manager of some UNDP projects (1971-77); and member of the Senior economic advisers, a steering body of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (in Geneva) (1970- 75).The gist of that experience was gathered by Archibugi in the survey of the book (only in ital.) “New Perspectives of the Economic Policy. Review of International Tendencies and Experiences” (1979). See summary.
For the European Economic Community (later Union), he has been member and reports-writer of several Committees of analysis and evaluation, concerning economic urban and regional policies See the Report A policy for new public spaces and centralities in the recovery of the urban environment at the EEC Government Conference in Madrid in 1991 on “The future of the urban environment in Europe” and, after the “Maastricht act”, social cohesion policies;See for instance, a Report commissioned by the EEC Presidency (Delors) on the issues of “social cohesion” policies (1991), and published by the PSC as a book Insights into European Cohesion: a Contribution to a Study of a Policy for the Strengthening of Socio-economic Cohesion(1992). and has been director of several multi-year projects within “EU Research Framework Programme”, in more than one edition.Including the research gained through an international tender and an international team named “Activill”: ”The Future of the Urban Quality in Europe
For the OECD and the Council of Europe, he has been speaker in several inter-governmental Seminars on innovations in the socio-economic policies.The Report was elaborated for the Council of Europe (Strasbourg), on the question: “The Multiple Crises of the Social Welfare System: what conditions could promote a reform of the welfare state into a welfare society?”, published (2004) by the Council of Europe . Italian version.
Research and academic activities