Abstract

The article presents an exploration of medium long-range planning in Norway, Sweden, Great Britain and the Low countries. In recent years there has been a strong upsurge in long-range planning in business-particularly strong among large companies in the United States and western Europe. At the same time formalized long-range planning has been developing in governments, more in Europe than in the United States. This article explores governmental planning among a few selected western European countries--Norway, Sweden, Great Britain and the Low countries--and seeks to clarify and summarize, from a bewildering complex of planning details and interrelationships among governments and private sectors of the economy, the major characteristics and trends of these systems. The subject of government-industry planning interrelationships is challenging for two reasons. First, in western Europe the differences from country to country in planning are really bewildering. Alongside a country with no formal planning at all will be a country with a beautifully elaborated planning system, endorsed by law and popularly accepted as a valuable institution.