Abstract

"Co-creating Development: The TVA Model in Colombia, Iran, and Italy"

Elisa Grandi, Université Paris Cité (elisa.grandi416@gmail.com)

This paper reframes the international diffusion of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) model as a process of co-creation between international financial institutions, national elites, and local business groups, rather than a linear transfer of development expertise. Between the 1950s and 1970s, David Lilienthal, through the Development and Resources Corporation (DRC) and in close cooperation with the World Bank, sought to reproduce the TVA’s vision of regional development in three distinct contexts: Colombia, Iran, and Italy. Though all three cases shared the same international architecture—World Bank loans, DRC consultancy, and the TVA’s narrative of modernization—their implementation revealed how local power actively reshaped the model.
In Colombia, regional companies in the Cauca Valley used Lilienthal’s collaboration with the Cauca Valley Corporation to challenge the central government’s control over World Bank funds. The Cauca business groups co-opted the TVA rhetoric of “grass roots” development to legitimize their autonomy and attract foreign support. In Iran, the DRC’s work in Khuzestan exposed the contradictions between technocratic planning and authoritarian politics: the TVA’s participatory ethos was absorbed into the Shah’s state-led modernization project, while Iranian technocrats and local contractors adapted its structure to consolidate bureaucratic power and international visibility. In Italy, finally, Lilienthal’s involvement unfolded within a dense web of negotiations among the World Bank, state agencies, and northern industrialists. The TVA-inspired framework, initially envisioned as decentralized and participatory, was reinterpreted through centralized management and corporate interests. Entrepreneurs such as Olivetti and Pirelli transformed the Bank’s intervention into opportunities for industrial expansion, while regional institutions remained subordinate to political and bureaucratic mediation.
By reading these trajectories the paper highlights how models of development travel not as blueprints but as outcomes of multiple interests.