ABSTRACT
This article will analyse this propaganda as a form of political action designed from 1958 by the Directorate General responsible for the ‘Association’ (development policy) with African countries: the DG VIII. Its main objective was to enhance the legitimacy of the European Community in what was soon to become its first international mission. It was also part of the larger process of the institutionalization of DG VIII (Dimier 2002, 2003a, b, c). ‘Institutionalization’ refers to the process whereby an organization – and the officials who operate therein – develops its own identity or culture (Selznick 1957). The success of that institutionalization much depended on the capacity of DG VIII to identify itself with a mission, specific values and principles, but also to convince the actors it had to deal with of the benefits and necessity of that mission, in sum to make it acceptable in order to gain some legitimacy. This legitimacy can be referred to as the process by which an institution becomes respected, ‘desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions’ (Suchman 1995: 574). The problem concerning DG VIII is that its mission, as formulated in 1958, became less and less desirable for the world in which it was acting.
