Economic Cooperation Administration And The Reconstruction Of Western Europe (1947-1951)

Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) was the agency to administer European Recovery Program. Drawing on all kinds of archival sources, this dissertation examines the important role that ECA played in the reconstruction of Western Europe. One of the hallmarks of the European Recovery Program was the cooperation between government authorities and interest groups, they assured the legislative enactment of a European aid Program and the establishment of Economic Cooperation Administration. ECA brought together business, labor and government representative, it became the hub in an elaborate system of public-private cooperation and power sharing, which could recruit talent from the private sector and guarantee a business-like efficiency in operational matters. ECA had helped European restore production, control inflation, revive trade and contain the growing of communist.The promotion of economic recovery and anti-Communism were the most well-known objectives of the European Recovery Program, yet the plan also had a cultural component. As a separate agency, ECA was able to exercise a considerable degree of autonomy. ECA dispensed advice as well as aid, offering Europeans the American model along with American money. One such strategy involved the ECA's plans for an integrated European economic order and a fully multilateral system of world trade, the ECA launched a campaign to remove import quotas, liberalize trade and making currencies convertible; Being convinced that the American system of industrial production was a most efficient model, ECA launched the technical assistance program to disseminate American technical and production methods to Europe; Through information program, ECA sought to increase support for American policy goals as well as spread of American mass culture. ECA advertised the Untied States as a land that Europe could emulate if it accepted the key American principles of economic efficiency and unlimited productivity. However, the Cold War forced the dramatic reorientation of European aid policy to military production, which prevented the ECA from achieving its full potential.