The Belgian ‘Impossible Scenario’ of 1980: Reinventing planning in times of ‘crisis’

Argument In 1980, Belgian Plan Commissioner Robert Maldague clandestinely circulated a document called The Impossible Scenario, thereby reshaping planning practices in Belgium amidst a widely perceived moment of crisis. Using archival records and oral histories, this article traces how reformers within the (now federal) Belgian Planning Bureau combined foresight scenarios and macroeconomic modeling in The Impossible Scenario . It explains the use of foresight scenarios through the Planning Bureau’s aim of restoring its capacity to intervene in Belgian policymaking. The article then highlights the broader political meaning of this epistemic transformation: the reconfiguration of planning infrastructures in Belgium—and, more broadly, in Europe—from instruments of democratic economic coordination to tools of market governance. Examining this previously underexplored Belgian case thereby reveals the neoliberaliz ed and neoliberaliz ing character of Western planning infrastructures in the early 1980s.