State, Power and Global Order

This article examines the evolution of international thought through the notion of ‘political space’. It focuses on two important domains of international politics, the nation-state and the global, to reflect on the discipline’s spatial categories. Since its inception, the concept of the nationstate has dominated mainstream International Relations (IR) theory. Yet an investigation of how international order has been theorised over IR’s first century shows that this era has also been defined by globalist visions of political order. This study reviews the interplay of the state and the global sphere, using Barbara Ward’s analysis of equality and development to shed light on the interplay of the global and the national spaces. Nowadays, globalization is sometimes seen as the apex of the historical interplay of particularity and universality. The progression towards global political and economic order, however, is today undermined by the resurgence of statecentric political nationalism which seeks to challenge the legitimacy of the global political space

From the Private to the Public and Back Again: The International Thought of David Mitrany, 1940-1949

This paper looks at the international thought of David Mitrany in the 1940s. The Second World War spurred many to outline a new world order that would guarantee peace and prosperity. Mitrany, an influential economist and public intellectual, saw international private cooperation as the foundation of a new world order. He developed the notion of "functionalism" to explore the diffusion of practices from the private to the public sphere, and define a new global political space which would 'make frontiers meaningless'. In an increasingly interconnected world, the private domain of business and entrepreneurship offered successful models of global cooperation, and had a unique social function in the nascent welfare state. Mitrany promoted this idea not only in theory but also as political adviser to the international corporation Unilever. This paper analyses his claim that the diffusion of collaborative practices from the private to the public sphere would revolutionize international relations and could become the basis for European unity. It assesses Mitrany’s theory of the diffusion of concepts, institutions and practices like "human rights", "democracy" and "welfare" from the private to the public and back. Finally, I argue that Mitrany's original "functionalist" theory can shed light on the role of private companies and organizations in enhancing cooperation and unity in today’s European Union as well

Realism and Geopolitics in Italy during the Cold War: Decline and Revival

Since the end of the Cold War, realism and geopolitics have enjoyed a remarkable revival in the study of international affairs in Italy. These approaches are often presented as linear and coherent intellectual trajectories in the history of Italian political thought, connecting Niccolò Machiavelli to Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca. In this paper we argue that this genealogical account is not only problematic, but also has limited relevance precisely to the Cold War years. While the Cold War may be considered their «golden age», political realism and geopolitics had actually very little impact on Italian scholars during the Cold War. By exploring the fragmented and complex development of Italian realist and geopolitical thought during the Cold War, the article thus challenges the presumed continuity of these two traditions and outlines alternative genealogies. These shed light not only on the «weak» and «hybrid» versions of realism and geopolitics that survived the end of the Second World War, but also foreground the specific contribution of scholars such as Pierpaolo Portinaro, Carlo Galli and Gianfranco Miglio in returning geopolitics and realism to the intellectual debate, and highlight the unexpected convergence of Marxist and conservative thought around this revival

The emergence of globalism: Visions of world order in Britain and the United States, 1939-1950

How competing visions of world order in the 1940s gave rise to the modern concept of globalism During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system. Without using the term "globalization," they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a "globalist" ideology to reflect this new postwar reality. The Emergence of Globalism examines the competing visions of world order that shaped these debates and led to the development of globalism as a modern political concept. Shedding critical light on this neglected chapter in the history of political thought, Or Rosenboim describes how a transnational network of globalist thinkers emerged from the traumas of war and expatriation in the 1940s and how their ideas drew widely from political philosophy, geopolitics, economics, imperial thought, constitutional law, theology, and philosophy of science. She presents compelling portraits of Raymond Aron, Owen Lattimore, Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Curtis, Richard McKeon, Michael Polanyi, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Maritain, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. G. Wells, and others. Rosenboim shows how the globalist debate they embarked on sought to balance the tensions between a growing recognition of pluralism on the one hand and an appreciation of the unity of humankind on the other. An engaging look at the ideas that have shaped today's world, The Emergence of Globalism is a major work of intellectual history that is certain to fundamentally transform our understanding of the globalist ideal and its origins

The Value of Space: Geopolitics, Geography and the American Search for International Theory in the 1950s

This article examines the Council on Foreign Relation engagement with geography and geopolitics. It focuses on the history of the 1953 study group on international theory, gathered under the Council's auspices. The group dedicated its attention to international theory and geopolitics, reflecting the prominence of spatial thinking in mid-century American politics. In the 1950s, American politicians and the general public alike started to pay a greater attention to the role of the physical geographical environment in shaping world affairs and foreign policy strategy. Nonetheless, the reception of geopolitics and geography at the study group was icy. Their wariness towards spatial thinking reflected a more general aversion to geographical modes of analysis among American scholars and practitioners of international affairs that continues today. I explore the study group's interpretation of spatial thinking and offer counter examples in the form of three American mid-century approaches to geopolitics. By mischaracterising the spatial thought available at the time, the study group missed a wide range of geopolitical ideas that could have contributed to the formation of a pluralistic and diverse theoretical foundation for the discipline of International Relations. Focusing on the work of Nicholas Spykman, Hans Weigert and Harold and Margaret Sprout, I argue that geopolitical scholarship in the United States at the time offered a richer variety of concepts that could still serve International Relations scholars today

Barbara Wootton, Friedrich Hayek and the debate on democratic federalism in the 1940s

In the 1940s many internationalists thought the Second World War created a unique opportunity to establish a new world order to promote peace as well as social welfare. By thinking globally, British internationalists wanted to challenge earlier social theory, and to offer novel solutions to social and economic problems that, according to them, could not be solved domestically. This article focuses on the international social thought of the economist and social scientist Barbara Wootton, who envisaged a world order balancing socialist, democratic, and liberal international ideas. As a leading member of the political organisation Federal Union, she envisaged a global social democracy based on social and economic planning in a federal framework. By taking the British socialist tradition as her point of departure, she sought to integrate socialism, liberal democracy, and internationalism in a harmonious federal world order. While associating herself with the British socialist tradition, Wootton regarded it as insufficient to address the post-war international crisis, and drew inspiration from democratic and liberal political theory. In this article the author discusses Wootton's international thought in historical context, and assesses her intellectual exchanges with prominent intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, to reveal her significant contribution to British international thought

L’Impero della Libertà. Imperialismo e internazionalismo nel pensiero liberale inglese, 1919-1936

This article explores the post-imperial thought of three British liberal internationalists and analyses their reactions to the political crises of the 1930s. It reassesses the history of international relations by overcoming the "idealism-realism" dichotomy, and by reconsidering the role of empire in liberal thought. The essay focuses on Alfred E. Zimmern, John A. Hobson and Henry N. Brailsford, three leading thinkers who embodied different factions within British liberalism writ large. In the first part of the article the author looks at their interpretation of global economics, international law and world government, and shows that "empire" was a component of - rather than an obstacle to - their new internationalist order. In the second part, it is analysed their reactions to two international crises: Manchuria (1931) and Abyssinia (1935). Drawing on archival sources, as well as newspaper articles, this article adds nuance to our understanding of the continuities and contradictions in international thought, and reveals the discrepancies between theoretical arguments and reactions to current affairs. It would suggest that in the 1930s liberal internationalism unconsciously promoted a biased, anti-democratic concept of international leadership, assimilating some of the practices of imperialism that these thinkers condemned