Franco Archibugi (18 September 1926 – 23 November 2020)^[1] 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.^[2]

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,^[3] with whom a long association was born together with his peer Giorgio Ruffolo.^[4] In those years, he also contributed to the foundation of the Italian Section of the Fourth International, together with Giorgio Ruffolo and Livio Maitan.^[5]

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.^[6] 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 brilliant young people such as Lucio Colletti, Emilio Garroni, Tullio Gregory and Gennaro Sasso, writing his thesis on 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.^[7]

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.^[8] 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.^[9]

In recent years, he had worked hard on a massive trilogy on the programmatic approach, published last year by publisher Palgrave Macmillan.^[10]

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,^[11] also as a member of the National Association of Garibaldi Veterans.

1944–1952: Sapienza University of Rome. Degree in History and Philosophy.^[12]

1947–1950: ISE- BCI- [Institute of Economic Studies. Rome department]^[13]

1963–1964: London School of Economics (LSE). One year Diploma in 'Economics and Social Administration'.^[14]

• 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.^[15]
• 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).^[16]

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 ^[17] and, after the “Maastricht act”, social cohesion policies;^[18] and has been director of several multi-year projects within “EU Research Framework Programme”, in more than one edition.^[19]

For the OECD and the Council of Europe, he has been speaker in several inter-governmental Seminars on innovations in the socio-economic policies.^[20]

Franco Archibugi has constantly accompanied his technical-professional activities and experiences by research activities (which in their turn resulted in a systematic and scientific concept of planning methodology). After the decline of the experiences of economic planning in Italy (but also elsewhere, in the 1960s and 1970s, whether in developed or developing countries and in the UN activities), Franco Archibugi focused more intensively his attention and energy on the introduction of a unified approach to planning in the educational and academic world; he has been Full Professor at some Italian Universities and finally at the “Scuola Superiore della Pubblica Amministrazione” [Postgraduate School of Public Administration] in Rome. He has been also active in an international networking of scholars who pursue the same intellectual path towards the integrative, socio-economic, unified planning; and for a new scientific experience – the “planology” (never implemented in its appropriate terms), and which he tried to illustrate like new disciplinary field, autonomous and free from its components disciplines (economics, sociology, physical planning, and so on) in a real meta-disciplinary approach: the ‘planological’ (or ‘programming’) approach. Franco Archibugi has been member of the Association of European Schools of Planning and active in several of its Congresses,^[21] and also at the World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC)^[22] and in the activities of the GPEAN (Global Planning Education Association Network).^[23] He has also been associate at the EAEPE (European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy) participating in some of its Congresses. He was also a member of other academic Italian associations like SIEDS (Società Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica) and SGI, (Società Geografica Italiana); of which he was honorary member, and many others. In his works, Archibugi has often expressed openly his intellectual debt and his derivations of thinking to some great scholars such as Gunnar Myrdal, Ragnar Frisch, Jan Tinbergen and Wassily Leontief. (Of the last three, he has also benefited from friendly personal relations). He believed he followed in their traces, tried to relaunch their thinking (never rightly known and understood); and he hoped to have updated, completed and made explicit the meaning of their work in some way.

Over the last years of his life, he completed a trilogy which summarize his own work and ideals, and published in 2019.

• The Programming Approach and the Demise of Economics. Volume I: A Revival of Myrdal, Frish, Tinberger, Johansen and Leontief (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2019).
• The Programming Approach and the Demise of Economics. Volume II: Selected Testimonies on the Epistemological 'Overturning' of Economic Theory and Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2019).
• The Programming Approach and the Demise of Economics. Volume III: The Planning Accounting Framework (PAF) (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2019).

Here there is an essential selection of the most significant works by Franco Archibugi^[24] in the four different, but interwoven fields on which he got some attention and influence: