Creating an 'international mind'? : the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Europe, 1911-1940

Abstract

How do non-governmental actors exert power beyond the confines of nation-states? Examining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) and its network of European foreign policy elites, I argue that non-governmental actors developed transnational political agendas in part to counter the democratizing and social shifts of the early 20th century. Throughout the interwar period the CEIP emerged as a key participant in cultural internationalism by providing financial and logistical aid for transnational outreach. Well connected to social elites in several countries, the CEIP's emergence illustrates how internationalism was inexorably structured by economic, social and cultural capital. As formerly marginalized social groups—e.g. women, organized labor and ethnic minorities became more integrated into national decision-making processes, traditional elites began to erect new barriers around transnational spaces to preserve existing power structures. The project investigates how the CEIP fostered the construction, transformation and circulation of expertise among the technical experts. Starting in the mid-1920s, the foundation promoted networking between economists, international lawyers and other specialists who staffed foreign ministries and international organizations such as the League of Nations, the International Labor Organization and the Permanent Court of International Justice. The CEIP used these connections and the power of the purse to stimulate the development of professional communities with the ultimate goal of reaching policy consensus on the divisive issues of the time thus in effect promoting the development of alternative governance mechanisms. This attempt to construct a techncratic "international mind" faltered with the beginning of the Second World War. Yet, tracing the careers of CEIP-connected experts into the post-war planning projects, the thesis ultimately challenges "creationist" narratives of international financial, human rights and security regimes after 1945. Many of the international policies implemented in the second half of the 1940s did not represent a clean break with a failed past. They were legacies of an attempt to make the world safe for a return to the liberal capitalist order that had marked the long 19th century.