Using the cases of Norway and European Union as a basis, we intend to analyze in this article the combination of different factors and scales of some social processes (individual, institutional, and from national and transnational political unities), which play a structuring role in the building of the social meanings of development and shed light on the relationship between moral principles and interested exchange, a constitutive part of the "moral cultures" we can map in the universes analyzed. Under the perspective of the individuals, we will exam, in the case of the EU, the motivations, vocations and life stories of the "professionals of development", as well as the reasons of the adherence of public opinion to the actions of international cooperation. In the institutional scale, we will deal, in both cases, with the political and bureaucratic models used by the development administration and the logic under which the different groups are organized, in Norway, in order to compete for its resources. At the state level, we will take into account national and international politics involved in the negotiations to the define bilateral and/or multilateral interventions of the international cooperation apparatus, in Norway as well as in the EU.
European Union; international cooperation; moral cultures; Norway