The research group aims to investigate, from an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective, the history of "political planning", understood as the capacity to govern and direct economic and social processes, in their relationship with democratic political forms. Is political planning possible in a democratic context? What theories and practices underlie it? How can historical examples of political planning, or its lack, help us understand the transformations of the contemporary world? Through the lenses of the history of political thought, contemporary history, and economic history, the research group aims to study these issues in different geographical and historical contexts, mapping the political and conceptual evolution of planning "varieties" both at the political-theoretical level—through the study of the works of eminent intellectuals of the period—and at the historical-economic level, demonstrating the changing and varied nature of planning in different political regimes.