The Crete Development Plan: a post-Second World War Israeli experience of transnational professional exchange

The paper deals with the Crete Development Plan, prepared in the mid-1960s by a team of Israeli and Greek planners and funded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in the context of post-Second World War development. It discusses the export of professional knowledge in the micro-/macro-political contexts of national and international processes. Analysis of controversies within the Israeli team draws attention to incongruities and dissonances between regional concepts and their applications. It emphasizes how professionals interested in democratic and participatory processes used data sources to guide implementation, but also had to rely on mediated information, were removed from actual decision-making and thus were not directly responsible for the implementation of such decisions. The paper highlights the political role of expertise in post-Second World War development, and the ambivalent position of international experts serving both their countries’ and their own professional goals.