| Outflanking
the Nation-State
The
Origins of the "functional approach" to the New
World Order
by
Will Banyan
1.
Defining Functionalism
In the academic-speak employed in the International Relations
departments of most universities, "functionalism"
refers to that policy of shifting responsibility for resolving
various problems from the nation-state to international bodies
"indirectly, by stealth." [1] According to one key
academic International Relations textbook, under functionalism
"the role of governments is to be progressively reduced
by indirect methods, and integration is to be encouraged by
a variety of functionally based, cross-national ties."
[2] As international mechanisms expand in scope and authority,
"the role of the nation-state would diminish and the
prospects for world government [would] become more real"
[3] The functionalist approach, quite simply, seeks to undermine
the nation-state and build world government, not through a
frontal assault but by outflanking it.
Readers
of populist accounts of the New World Order would be more
familiar with Richard N. Gardner's formulation of functionalism
presented in his article "The Hard Road to World Order"
published in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) journal,
Foreign Affairs in 1974. In his contribution to the
"quest for a world structure that secures peace, advances
human rights and provides conditions for economic progress",
[4] Gardner had endorsed an "end run around national
sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece…" [5] This
"functional approach to world order", [6] Gardner
explained, would involve "inventing or adapting institutions
of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with
specific problems on a case-by-case basis…" [7]
The
impact of Gardner's article on New World Order researchers
is not to be underestimated; it is probably the most widely
cited Foreign Affairs article in the genre, with many
researchers crediting Gardner as the sole architect of that
strategy. Dr. Steve Bonta, for example, the Executive Director
of the Robert Welch University and a regular contributor to
the John Birch Society's periodical, The New American,
declared in 2004 that Gardner was obviously "one of the
most influential men alive" and the "intellectual
godfather of the modern new world order." That Gardner's
"program for world order" was still being followed
three decades later, argued Bonta in a direct reference to
Gardner's 1974 article, was "testament to his cunning
as a global strategist." [8]
What
is not widely known, though, is that not only was Gardner's
voice but merely one Establishment voice among many advocating
this strategy in the 1970s; it was not Gardner's idea.
The essential characteristics of the functionalist approach
had actually been devised in some detail in the 1930s and
1940s by a Rumanian-born academic David Mitrany. His proposals
had already been published in the 1940s by the Royal Institute
for International Affairs (RIIA), the British counterpart
to the CFR. In this article I propose to explore the genesis
and evolution of the functionalist approach from its original
formulation by Mitrany; the cultivation of Mitrany and his
functionalist concept by the liberal-internationalist faction
of the Anglo-American power-elite; the revival of functionalism
in the 1970s; and finally, if only very briefly, how its implementation
has built what many observers now call "global governance."
2.
The Chief Architect: David Mitrany (1888-1975)
Although hailed as the "chief architect" of
functionalism by his admirers, [9] Mitrany's background is
inauspicious. Born in Bucharest, Rumania on 1 January 1888,
Mitrany does not appear to have come from any privileged bloodlines;
in fact as a Jew, opportunities for advancement in the educational
and professional fields were restricted. It was in seeking
to escape those limitations that in 1908 Mitrany had travelled
to Germany to work and study. In 1912 he moved to London and
enrolled at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he
studied sociology and economics until the outbreak of the
First World War. During the war Mitrany did what he describes
as "intelligence work relating to South-Eastern Europe
for both the British Foreign Office and War Office."
Though exactly what that "intelligence work" entailed,
Mitrany, not surprisingly, has neglected to explain. [10]
The
seeds of the functionalist concept were planted during his
years in Britain, first at the LSE by his most primary teachers
Leonard T. Hobhouse (1864-1929) and Graham Wallas (1858-1932).
This is confirmed by Mitrany's short "Memoir" on
the origins of the functionalist idea, where he explicitly
identifies his instruction from Hobhouse and Wallas on sociology
and political science as crucial to the development of functionalism:
Without
a doubt the first light towards a "functional"
outlook on things social and political came from my two
teachers at the London School of Economics, in its early
days, when it was small but intensely alive, and truly free
intellectually. [11]
In
particular Mitrany credited Hobhouse with introducing him
to the idea one should treat "politics as a science"
and strive to uncover "the relation of things"
rather than make predictions. This concept, according to
Mitrany, was "in a way the central philosophical idea
behind the whole functional theory." [12]
Further
inspiration was to come during the First World War when
Mitrany became an "active member" of the British
League of Nations Society, [13] an organisation founded
in 1915, according to one of its leading members, as a "propaganda
body" for the express purpose of convincing the British
public of "the necessity for a League [of Nations]
and for its establishment in the peace treaty after the
war." [14] Mitrany joined its group of five lecturers
who visited towns throughout Britain on a rotating basis
to speak for the Society. As the token Eastern European,
Mitrany's topic was usually "Small States and a League
of Nations." Reflecting on his role years later, Mitrany
suggested it showed his "plain concern", even
then for "the effective working of an international
system." [15]
It
also brought him into the orbit of Leonard S. Woolf (1880-1969),
one of the Society's co-founders, as well as a Fabian Society
member and scholar, and author of the influential Fabian
Society tract International Government (1916). In that tract and some other pamphlets he had written for the
Fabian Society, Woolf had endorsed creation of an "international
authority to prevent war", that would based on the
merging of the existing "internationalisation of administration"
in crime, communications, industry and commerce. [16] These
contacts were extended when in 1918 Mitrany was "invited"
(most likely by Woolf) to the join the Labour Party's Advisory
Committee on International Questions. Mitrany notes that
Woolf, who was Committee Secretary from 1918 to 1945, was
among its "regular members." Mitrany resigned
from the Committee in 1931 when it became compulsory to
be a Labour Party member. [17]
Given
their close proximity over at least fifteen years, it is
assumed by many analysts that Woolf influenced Mitrany's
functionalist concept to no small degree. Peter Wilson,
for example, argues that it was Woolf who was clearly "a
pioneer of international functionalism" and suggests
that in constructing his functionalist theory Mitrany "drew
on Woolf's ideas on international government, perhaps more
than he himself realised." Wilson suggests their "close
working relationship" in the League of Nations of Society
and the Labour Party Advisory Committee on International
Questions, would have given Mitrany an "in-depth knowledge
of Woolf's ideas", many of which were "strongly
functionalist in flavour." According to Wilson, Woolf
was "the first thinker to show how a functionalist
type analysis could be applied to international relations";
he provided "the skeleton of functional theory."
[18]
There
is some truth to these claims, though it ought to be remembered
that even Woolf's tract had non-Fabian origins. When putting
together International Government, Woolf apparently
did not refer to any of the few Fabian works on international
relations. In his own memoir, Woolf would recall that there
were "only two books of any use", one was the
Yearbook of the L'Union des Associations Internationales,
the other was Public International Unions (1911)
by an American academic, Paul Reinsch. [19] According to
Dubin, it was Reinsch "a University of Wisconsin political
scientist who, between 1907 and 1911, anticipated the core
of Mitrany's thesis." [20] Mitrany, however, would
go beyond the basic outlines of Reinsch, Woolf and Hobhouse
to construct something more enduring.
The
next steps in Mitrany's functionalist odyssey took him onto
editorial staff of the Manchester Guardian from 1919
to 1922. When his time finished there an apparently chance
meeting with American academic James T. Shotwell, led to
Mitrany's employment as Assistant European Editor of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's (CEIP) Economic
and Social History of the First World War. Mitrany would
later credit the Carnegie study, which he worked on until
its completion in 1929, with revealing to him how the functions
of government could shape its actual structure. [21]
Additional
inspiration came during the 1930s when in 1933 he joined
the Institute for Advance Studies (IAS) at Princeton, a
body established and run by Dr. Abraham Flexner, who had
spent much of his career as an advisor to John D. Rockefeller
Senior and leading figure at the Rockefeller Foundation.
Mitrany would have preferred to devote his studies at the
IAS to international issues; however, Flexner reportedly
took a strong dislike to the Rumanian scholar and insisted
he focus on domestic politics. Mitrany thus found himself
studying the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Yet, the
TVA, which had emerged to address a specific function -
water control - across seven states, merely reinforced Mitrany's
functionalist idea. The TVA, noted Mitrany, boasted one
important innovation, although it had not formally changed
the US Constitution it had actually transformed it by increasing
Washington DC's powers at the expense of the states. But
this had happened without much public protest; in fact the
American people had accepted the new state of affairs because
they needed the service. [22] Not surprisingly Mitrany thought
this strategy could and should be applied globally.
Mitrany's
first public expression of his new "functionalist"
idea was in a lecture he gave in 1932 at Yale University,
on "The Communal Organization of World Affairs."
After reviewing all the other models for world order, including
world government, and finding them wanting Mitrany had argued
that one of the main obstacles in the quest for a "world
society" was the "pagan worship of political frontiers."
To overcome this he proposed to "dissect" the
"tasks and relevant authority" of government on
"functional lines." [23] Only the "[f]unctional
integration of materiel activities on an international scale
and cultural devolution on a regional basis", he argued,
offered the "most hopeful way out of international
anarchy." [24] The four lectures he gave at Yale were
later published as The Progress of International Government
(1933).
At
the outbreak of World War Two, Mitrany was back in Britain
working for the British Foreign Office in an academic intelligence
unit called the Foreign Research and Press Service. Although
under the day-to-day direction of Chatham House, this unit's
actual role was to devise plans for the war and the peace
expected to follow for the Foreign Office. [25] Mitrany
contributed a number of papers, including one in January
1941 titled Territorial, Ideological, or Functional International
Organisation? However the Foreign Office, recalled Mitrany,
"were polite, but not interested." [26]
3.
"A Working Peace System" (1943)
Frustrated
with the Foreign Office's rejection of his ideas, Mitrany
had resigned in 1942 and returned to Chatham House to expand
upon his ideas in the pamphlet The Working Peace System
(1943). This would prove to be his seminal work on functionalism.
In it Mitrany claimed there were only two approaches to
eliminating the political divisions which caused conflict:
One
would be through a world state which would wipe out political
divisions forcibly; the other…would rather overlay
political divisions with a spreading web of international
activities and agencies, in which and through…all
nations would be gradually integrated. [27]
Mitrany,
of course, argued for the "spreading web", rejecting
out of hand proposals for "continental and ideological
unions", such as the proposed Pan-American and Pan-European
unions, as little more than "rationalised nationalism."
[28] There was "little promise of peace", he charged,
"in the mere change from the rivalry of Powers and
alliances to the rivalry of whole continents." [29]
Instead the only hope was to "make changes of frontiers
unnecessary by making frontiers meaningless through
the continuous development of common activities and interests
across them." [30] The "functional approach"
would make "frontier lines meaningless by overlaying
them with a natural growth of common activities and common
administrative agencies." [31]
Mitrany
made it also made it clear that he did not envisage a world
permanently ruled by an uncoordinated mass of international
agencies but held out the possibility of "some of them
or all being bound together in some way." To this end
Mitrany suggested a four-stage plan to reach this goal:
- First,
there would be coordination within the same group of functional
agencies, such as those dealing the road, rail and sea
transport.
- Second,
several groups of functional agencies would be coordinated.
- Third,
the functional agencies would then collaborate with certain
international planning agencies. Mitrany envisaged
two such agencies: an International Investments Board
and an International Development Commission.
- Finally,
the fourth stage, would involve creation of an overall
political authority, although not quite a world government,
it would be something like the League of Nations Assembly
or the International Labour Organization Governing Body,
though with few actual powers. [32]
In
Mitrany's prescriptions we find a very careful and perceptive
pragmatism. There was, he wrote, "no prospect that
under a democratic order we could induce the individual
states to accept a permanent limitation of their economic
sovereignty by an international authority, operating over
the whole field…" even in the midst of or in
the immediate aftermath of a major war. Yet nations may
be "found willing…to transfer part of that sovereignty
to international executive agencies entrusted with specific
and carefully defined activities." [33] What he offered,
he admitted, was a "spiritless solution", [34]
one that was not wrapped up in the emotions and ideologies
engendered by the more overt schemes for international order,
such as the push for world federalism. But what it did offer
was the potential "creation now of the elements
of an active international society." [35]
The
functionalist premise was simple, yet deceptively dangerous
to the concept of democracy. In response to a succession
of narrowly defined needs, the public would unwittingly
give its consent to the erosion of national sovereignty
and a weakening of the bond (such as it was) between it
and government. Mitrany's scheme, for all its idealism about
building world peace, was also a recipe for a creeping global
dictatorship. When applied international bodies would assume
more responsibilities and thus greater authority, while
national, state, provincial and local political organisations
would see their autonomy eroded, their power and their public
responsiveness and accountability curtailed by a growing
network of supranational organisations.
4.
The Post-War Years (1948-1967)
Despite Mitrany's strident efforts, functionalism remained
on the sidelines of world order thinking during the post-war
years as the United Nations took centre stage and the nuclear
arms race generated a mass movement in favour of world government.
Mitrany also had to contend with an eruption of nationalism
as the European nations, many of them weakened by the war,
dispensed with their empires.
Speaking
at Chatham House in 1948 to a distinguished audience which
included Lionel Curtis - a Round Table member and co-founder
of the RIIA and CFR - Mitrany appeared to lament that the
appearance of new states, seeing the "danger of regression"
into "social nationalism or national socialism"
in those areas pushing for independence from their former
imperial masters. [36] This new wave of the "idea of
national self-government", he argued, was actually
undermining the "unity" emerging from the "modern
division of labour" that had tended to "weld peoples
and countries together." These were conditions, he
noted, in which "international house-building must
start." [37]
Mitrany
maintained his pitch for functionalism while rejecting regional
federation as "an argument for new nationalism not
for a new internationalism." [38] The functional approach,
he explained, "is not a matter of surrendering sovereignty,
but merely of pooling so much of it as may be needed for
the joint performance of a particular task." Yet, he
acknowledged this mere "pooling" would in time
go further, especially if national governments let these
international organisations succeed and grow in number,
to the point that "world government will gradually
evolve." [39]
Taking
questions afterward, Mitrany had assured the audience that
with regard to his functionalist proposal "the ultimate
goal was federation." There was at that time, though,
"no prospect" of achieving that world federation,
but through functionalism countries would "lose their
hesitation about international arrangements" and world
federation would in effect be developed in "instalments."
[40]
During
this lengthy period in the wilderness Mitrany also took
up a role on the board of the multinational corporation
Unilever, working as a close adviser to its chairman Paul
Rykens from 1944 through to 1960. As Ambrosi points out,
Rykens was a co-founder and "prime mover of the Bilderberg
Group", who reportedly had the ear of its founder Prince
Bernhard of the Netherlands. [41] Ambrosi suggests that
Mitrany's functionalism would have probably inspired Rykens
and his Bilderberg cohorts to pursue the creation of the
European Union by linking the countries through economic
means first. [42] Given Mitrany's documented distaste for
regional federations this would be an ironic outcome, and
probably accounts for his silence on the issue.
In
1967 Mitrany embarked upon a three-month tour of US universities
with the purpose of promoting functionalism. Who funded
this endeavour, and which universities he visited is unclear,
but this venture marked the beginnings of a revival of functionalism.
The key moment, though, arguably occurred towards the end
of 1969.
5.
The Functionalist Revival: The Bellagio Conference (1969)
Consult any travel guide to Italy and look up Bellagio,
located on the banks of Lake Como in the Lombardy region
of northern Italy, and one is overwhelmed with superlatives.
"The prettiest town in Italy", according to Frommers;
"an impossibly enchanting location", gushes Fodors.com;
and "one of the most beautiful places on the planet",
asserts Luxury Link. So spectacular was the location
that George Lucas used it for Episode II of Star Wars.
It is also the location of Villa Serbelloni, better known
as the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference
Centre. Bequeathed to the Foundation in 1959 by American
expatriate Ella Holbrook Walker to promote "international
understanding", Villa Sorbelloni is an estate comprising
eight buildings dating from 17th to 19th
centuries, set amongst 50 acres of gardens.
This
facility offers both short-term residencies to individual
scholars and a venue for all manner of international conferences.
According to the Rockefeller Foundation's 1999 Annual
Report, the Centre had paid host, over its 40 years,
to some 2,700 residents and 19,000 conference delegates
from over 80 countries. Some of those conferences have contributed
to the cause of global political and economic integration.
In June 1965, for example, it paid host to a conference
on "Conditions of World Order" (see Daedalus
Summer 1995). While its alumni of residents includes David
Ray Griffin, a Professor of Theology and author of The
New Pearl Harbour. Griffin admits to having being a
resident there for five weeks in 1992, during which time
he "first developed the conviction that if the world's global
problems are to be solved, we need to move from the present
global structure - technically known as global anarchy -
to global democracy." [43]
In
November 1969 Bellagio was host to a conference on "Functionalism".
The purpose of that conference was explained in the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace's Report for 1968-1970:
After
a period of some neglect, international organization scholars
have begun to re-examine the functionalist theories developed
by Dr. David Mitrany several decades ago…In an effort
to redefine and reassess functionalism and the functionalist
approach and to take advantage of Dr. Mitrany's recent efforts
to revise and update his original ideas, a conference was
sponsored at Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy in November
1969 by the Endowment and the Institute for the Study of
International Organization of the University of Sussex.
Sixteen scholars from the United States and Europe attended
the conference and a conference report was distributed by
the Endowment in 1970. [44]
It
is important to keep in mind the stated purpose of the conference:
"to redefine and reassess functionalism and the functionalist
approach." Coming after a "period of some neglect"
the objectives of the conference in breathing new life into
the functionalist concept could not be any clearer. This
would have been more than amply facilitated by the sixteen
individuals who attended a group comprised mostly of academics
with a couple of bureaucrats. But who were they and what
were their affiliations in 1969?
>Dr. David
Mitrany.
>Professor Inis L. Claude, Jr. - University of Virginia.
>Professor Harold K. Jacobson - University of Michigan;
CFR.
>John Groom - University College London.
>Paul Taylor - London School of Economics and Political
Science.
>Professor Leon N. Lindberg - University of Wisconsin.
>Robert Rhodes James - Institute for the Study of
International Organisation, University of Sussex.
>Professor Marcos Kaplan - Escuela Latinoamericana
de ciencia politica y administracion publica, FLASCO.
>Edward Miles - University of Denver; recipient
of Ford Foundation and CEIP grants.
>Professor Joseph S. Nye - Program Director, Center
for International Affairs, Harvard University (in 1968 he
was visiting professor at the CEIP's educational institute
in Geneva).
>Professor James P. Sewell - Yale University.
> Richard Symons - UNITAR (Geneva).
>Sir Geoffrey M. Wilson - Permanent Secretary, Ministry
of Overseas Development (Britain).
>Dr Gerda Zellentin - University of Cologne.
>M. Jean Siotis - CEIP (Geneva).
>Anne Winslow - CEIP (New York).
The
deliberations of this trans-Atlantic group of academics
and bureaucrats was put together in a single document by
the rapporteurs, Groom and Taylor, and published by the
CEIP as: Functionalism: final report of the conference,
Bellagio, 20-24 November 1969. One of the oddities of
this report is how hard it is to obtain. Few libraries save
for the Library of Congress have it; even the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace library in Washington DC does not
have its own copy! [45]
Only
Mitrany's address to the conference appears to have been
published elsewhere - in Chatham House's journal International
Affairs - and from this we can gain some insights into
the revival of functionalism. Prime among Mitrany's concerns
was the need for the world to bring under "common control"
a combined "political upheaval, social surge and a
scientific eruption." [46] There was a need for a flexible
"scheme for a new international order" to deal
with the "permanent revolution" then underway.
[47] If anything the world had a reached a crucial point
of decision:
The immediate
issue is nothing less than the breaking away from a concept
and practice which since the end of the Middle Ages has
been inculcated as an ideal, the near worship of the national-territorial
state…We are standing at a crossroads, but do not
know what kind of world we are reaching for…It is
beyond us, who live in the turmoil of the transition, to
grasp how great an historical turning-point ours may prove
to be… [48]
Of course, the
only method Mitrany approved of to meet this dilemma was functionalism
which "in essence means…a direct attack on problems,
mutual problems, as such; in the process building up, sector
by sector, effective positives rules of international government…"
[49] Mitrany noted that with issues such as nuclear power
and space exploration "there is no alternative to mutual
functional arrangements for these most controversial
and most fateful international issues." [50] He
stressed the need to create a "peaceful international
community" through a gradual process of bringing under
joint control those activities "which concern the essential
needs of the people at large." [51] Otherwise, he warned,
"We will go on acting the pretences of old political
ideas until some calamity blasts them out of the scheme of
human organisation altogether." [52]
6.
Taking the "Hard Road to World Order" (1973-1976)
For
Mitrany and his admirers, the Bellagio conference stands as
a pivotal moment in the evolution of the functionalist idea.
In the preface to The Functional Theory of Politics
(1975), published shortly before his death, Mitrany was full
of thanks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
for sponsoring the conference. [53] While Anderson presents
the "outstanding conference of academics" at Bellagio,
as the culmination of the wave of interest generated by Mitrany's
university speaking tour. [54] Despite its obscurity, the
conference was pivotal in elevating functionalism from the
fringe to the centre of Establishment world order thinking
as the liberal internationalist faction abandoned the direct
approach to global unity.
The
functionalist approach was endorsed in a number of Establishment
forums and publications. The aforementioned Richard Gardner,
for instance, had embraced the idea in a paper he presented
at the Pacem in Terris III convocation held in Washington
DC in October 1973 by the Center for Study of Democratic Institutions
(CDSI). A slightly revised version of that paper was later
published in Foreign Affairs. Other key public advocates
included Lester R. Brown, a scholar with the Rockefeller-funded
Overseas Development Council; Maurice Strong, a millionaire
environmentalist and senior UN official; and some of the participants
at the Bellagio conference including Inis Claude Jr and Joseph
Nye. Even some leading Establishment figures who had not attended
the conference also got in on the act.
This
new generation of functionalists presented a number of common
themes. Like Mitrany they rejected the other more direct approaches
to world order, including the UN. Gardner, for instance, declared
at Pacem in Terris III that plans for "instant world
government" through world federalism, revising the UN
Charter and "world peace through world law" were
now "bankrupt of possibilities." [55] Indeed, given
the current state of affairs where the UN's member nations
"pay lip service to the organisation while…pursuing
their interests at its expense", thereby contributing
to its "creeping irrelevance" such plans carried
"little credibility." [56] In his best selling book,
World Without Borders (1973), Lester Brown was just
as equivocal, noting how the UN had "not lived up to
its expectations" as it had been "hobbled"
by the Cold War. [57] David Rockefeller, also dismissed the
UN as unworkable, arguing it had "largely reduced itself
to a forum for the expression and promotion of narrow national
or bloc interests rather than the broad human interests its
charter proclaims." [58]
The
solution, of course, lay in what Gardner described in Foreign
Affairs as the:
much
more decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of
inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction
and selected membership to deal with specific problems on
a case by case basis, as the necessity for cooperation is
perceived by the relevant nations...
To
this end Brown had endorsed creating new international institutions,
devoted to specific problems such as an "international
oceanic regime", a "World Environment Agency"
and a "National-Corporate Authority", to overcome
the reluctance of many nations to sacrifice their sovereignty.
[59] In Foreign Affairs, Gardner had argued that
a "structure of peace" required "strengthened
international institutions at the global and regional levels…"
[60] Earlier, in July 1973, Maurice Strong
Executive Director of the U.N. Environment Program had written in Foreign
Affairs of the "need to develop at the national
and international levels the kinds of structures and institutions
needed for societal management." [61]
Evidence
that Gardner was merely appropriating Mitrany's concept
can be seen not only in the obvious similarity between their
recommendations, but in the language used. At Pacem In
Terris III, Gardner stressed that no matter how the
international arrangements were made "the main thing
is that the essential functions be performed."
[62] One of the panellists, Elizabeth Mann Borgese, then
a Senior Fellow at the CSDI, explicitly linked that phrase
and Gardner's proposal to the "functionalist"
approach. [63] Subsequently in Foreign Affairs, Gardner
again made reference to "essential functions",
but also to "functional problems", "functional
and regional commissions," the "functional approach,"
and more explicitly, he described his proposal as the "functional
approach to world order." [64] In using these words
Gardner was acknowledging that there was nothing original
about his proposal.
Somewhat
more blatant was the Trilateral Commission's Triangle Paper
No.11, The Reform of International Institutions (1976),
which argued "functionally specific international organisations"
were a more successful means of binding nations together
than multi-purpose international organizations. [65] Another
Trilateral Commission report, Triangle Paper No.14, Towards
a Renovated International System (1976), was even more explicit in recommending "piecemeal functionalism",
in which issues were to be dealt with separately, an approach
that delivered "more durable" solutions "faster."
[66]
The
otherwise unknown Bellagio Conference can be judged a success
on those grounds alone. After languishing for some thirty
years the concept of "functionalism" had entered
the lexicon of the Establishment as a definite strategy
of world order. Mitrany's years of patiently pursuing his
policies, and above all his stated willingness, as a "matter
of principle", not to tie himself "to any political
party or ideological group" and to instead "work
with any and all of them for international peace" [67]
had finally paid off. Mitrany's pragmatism in service of
this objective had been uncompromising and had seen him
consort with Fabian socialists, write pamphlets for Chatham
House, and work as an Advisor on International Affairs to
the board of multi-national corporation Unilever
for 19 years. At the same time his unwillingness to be tied
too any political group remained strong, thus he refused
to join the British Labour Party when it became compulsory
for members of its advisory committees, he never joined
the Fabian Society, and even rejected membership of the
Freemasons, even though his "respected friend, Lucien
Wolf" was ready to "open the door to their Authors'
Lodge" for Mitrany. [68] But this was all in accord
with Mitrany's conviction, as he told his friend Felix Frankfurter
[69] in a letter in May 1925 to "see some development
in the organization of peace" and his admission that
he cared "little how it is done and by whom it is
done as long as it takes us to that end."
[70]
7.
From Functionalism to Global Governance
Mitrany died in 1975, his dreams of seeing a "working
peace system" in his lifetime unfulfilled. Yet, with
so many groups promoting functionalism there could be no
doubt the period of "neglect" of his ideas had
truly ended and that functionalism had taken on a life of
its own. So much so that ironically the word "functionalism"
has again retreated to background, now mentioned only in
International Relations textbooks in universities. But functionalism
has persisted and if we consider developments in contemporary
international politics over the past twenty years it is
perhaps pertinent to consider that we are still being shepherded
towards the fourth stage of Mitrany's original plan, the
creation of an overall political authority to organise the
functional agencies. The most obvious manifestation of this
fourth stage was the flurry of talk over the past decade
about the new phenomenon of "global governance"
and the need to transform the UN and existing international
institutions so they could integrate with these newer bodies
and networks.
This
becomes apparent once we consider the definitions of global
governance employed by its advocates over the years. The
Commission on Global Governance, for example, in its 1995
study Our Global Neighbourhood sought to define the
concept in the following terms:
At
the global level, governance has always been viewed primarily
as intergovernmental relationships, but it must now be understood
as also involving non-government organizations (NGOs), citizen's
movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital
market. Interacting with these are the global mass media
of dramatically enlarged influence…Nation-states must
adjust to the appearance of all these forces and take advantage
of their capabilities. [71]
If
anything a common theme of the definitions of global governance
is that the world is now captured by a plethora of functional
arrangements. In a paper prepared by Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
for the UN Panel on UN-Civil Society, for instance, it was
asserted the "contemporary global order is increasingly
the outcome of multiple, interlocking patterns of transnational
interaction shaped by both state and non-state actors."
[72] Writing in the OECD Observer, Professor Walter Clemens
from Boston University explored the future scenario of "global
governance without world government" in the following
terms:
The
transnational civil society develops across many countries
and regions…There is no world government by a supranational
authority. National governments remain, but they share power
with a medley of non-governmental agencies - business and
labour groups as well as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).
Together they form expanding networks of institutions designed
to meet a wide range of human needs.
National
governments confer among themselves and with responsible
specialists from international and transnational agencies.
This is functionalism writ large - decision-making
informed and managed by experts, mediated and supervised
by representatives of elected governments… [73]
In
short, too many international activities, it seems, are
now subject to the rulings, pressures and even interference
of various functional bodies and transnational actors. In
Our Global Neighbourhood it is claimed there is at
present "no single model or form of governance"
but a "broad, dynamic, complex process of interactive
decision-making that is constantly evolving and responding
to changing circumstances." "Effective global
decision-making" to "build upon and influence
decisions taken locally, regionally and nationally"
would need to "build partnerships - networks of
institutions and processes - that enable global actors to…develop joint policies and practices
of common concern." [74]
The
recommendations of the global governance proponents repeat
the same evasions as employed by the functionalists. Thus
the CGG report on the one hand insists their argument that
national governments would not "bear the whole burden
of global governance", but would have share it with
"actors who have the power to achieve results",
"does not imply…world government or world federalism."
[75] But on the other hand, they admit that countries must
now "accept that in certain fields sovereignty has
to be exercised collectively, particularly in respect to
the global commons." [76]
It
seems that this supposedly entirely natural process in which
a profusion of international agencies, NGOs and other transnational
bodies has appeared to weaken the nation-state requires
a solution. The shape of that solution is represented in
calls for a greatly strengthened and expanded United Nations
and new international organisations. Our Global Neighbourhood
thus recommends: strengthening the ability of the UN to
intervene military, including establishment of a "UN
Volunteer Force"; creating an "Economic Security
Council" to provide high level international guidance
on economic matters; forming a "Global Competition
Office" to provide "oversight of national enforcement
efforts"; strengthening the power of the World Court;
and establishing an International Criminal Court. [77] Finally,
and recalling that Our Global Neighbourhood was published
in 1995, the report looked forward to the UN's then imminent
fiftieth anniversary and declared:
The
ultimate process has to be intergovernmental and at a high
level, giving political imprimatur to a new world order
whose contours are shaped to the designs developed for the
anniversary year. [78]
In
sum David Mitrany's contribution to the New World Order
is there for all too see. In fact, it can be safely said
- with apologies to Dr Bonta - that Mitrany was the intellectual
godfather of the modern New World Order. The fact that Mitrany's
program for "working peace system" is still being
followed some sixty years later is an indisputable testament
to his cunning as a global strategist. We ignore Mitrany's
program at our peril.
Will
Banyan has a graduate degree in Information Science and
is a writer specializing in the political economy of globalization.
He has worked for local and national governments as well
as some international organizations and the private sector.
He is currently working on a revisionist history of the
New World Order and an analysis of the War on Terror. Banyan's
six-part series, "Rockefeller Internationalism",
was published in NEXUS 10/03 and11/02. His series
"A Short History of the Round Table" is currently
appearing in NEXUS. Will Banyan can be contacted
at banyan007@rediffmail.com.
References
1. Robert W. Cox, "On Thinking About Future World
Order," World Politics, January 1976, p.188.
2. A.J.R. Groom
& Paul Taylor, ed.s, Functionalism: Theory and Practice
in International Relations, (University of London Press,
1975), p.2.
3. Cox, "Future
World Order", p.188.
4. Richard N. Gardner,
"The Hard Road to World Order", Foreign Affairs,
April 1974, p.556.
5. Ibid, p.558.
6. Ibid, p.573.
7. Ibid, p.558.
8. Steve Bonta,
"New World Order Strategist," The New American, 3 May 2004, p.17.
9. Groom &
Taylor, Functionalism, p.1.
10. David Mitrany,
"The Making of the Functional Theory: A Memoir",
in David Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics,
(London School of Economics & Political Science, 1975),
p.6.
11. Ibid, p.16.
12. Ibid, p.17.
13. Ibid, p.6.
14. Leonard Woolf,
Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911-1918,
(Hogarth Press, 1965), p.191.
15. Mitrany, "Memoir",
p.6.
16. Martin Dubin,
"Transgovernmental Processes in the League of Nations",
International Organization, Summer 1983, p.470.
17. Ibid, pp.8,
49 endnote 8.
18. Peter Wilson,
"Leonard Woolf and International Government", in
David Long & Peter Wilson, eds, Thinkers of the Twenty
Years' Crisis, (Clarendon Press, 1995), p.141.
19. Woolf, Beginning
Again, p.187.
20. Dubin, "Transgovernmental
Processes", p.470.
21. Mitrany, "Memoir",
pp.17-18.
22. Ibid, p.26-27.
23. Mitrany, The
Functional Theory of Politics, p.101.
24. Ibid, pp.103-104.
25. Dorothy
Anderson, "David Mitrany (1888-1975): an appreciation
of his life and work," Review of International Studies,
Vol.24, (1998), p.579.
26. Mitrany,
"Memoir", p.20.
27. David Mitrany,
A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional
Development of International Organisation, (Royal Institute
for International Affairs, 1943), p.6.
28. Ibid, p.19.
29. Ibid, p.12.
30. Ibid, p.26,
emphasis added.
31. Ibid, p.27.
32. Ibid, pp.35-37.
33. Ibid, pp.52-53.
34. Ibid,p.56.
35. Ibid, p.55,
emphasis added.
36. David Mitrany, "The Functional Approach to World
Organization," International Affairs, July 1948,
p.350.
37. Ibid, p.351.
38. Ibid, p.352.
39. Ibid, p.358.
40. Ibid, p.360.
41. Gerhard Michael
Ambrosi, "Keynes and Mitrany as instigators of European
Governance," January 2004, pp. 11-12 at www.uni-trier.de/ambrosi/publik/Keynes-Mitrany.pdf.
42. Ibid, pp.12-13.
43. "David
Ray Griffin Responds and So Do I" 911 Truth Movement
Musings, 3 October 2004, at http://mysite.verizon.net/vze25x9n/id25.html.
44. Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, Report for 1968-1970, (CEIP,
1970), p.20.
45. The author discovered this in course of email inquiries
with the CEIP. The CEIP claimed they had to obtain a copy
from the Library of Congress. See Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Functionalism: final report of the
conference, Bellagio, 20-24 November 1969, (CEIP, 1970).
46. David Mitrany, "The Functional Approach in Historical
Perspective," International Affairs, July 1971,
p.532.
47. Ibid, p.533.
48. Ibid, p.543.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid, p.539.
51. Ibid, p.541.
52. Ibid, p.543.
53. Mitrany,
The Functional Theory of Politics, p.vii.
54. Anderson,
"David Mitrany", p.582.
55. Richard
N. Gardner, "The United Nations and Alternative Formulations,"
in F.W. Neal & M.K. Harvey, eds., Pacem In Terris
III, Volume III, American Foreign Policy in the Age of Interdependence,
(Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions/Fund for
the Republic, 1974), pp.168-169.
56. Ibid, pp.167-168.
57. Lester R.
Brown, World Without Borders, (Vintage Books, 1973),
p.303.
58. David Rockefeller,
"Multinationals Under Siege: A Threat to the World
Economy", The Atlantic Community Quarterly,
Fall 1975, p.316.
59. Brown, World
Without Borders, p.318.
60. Gardner,
"Hard Road to World Order", p.576.
61. Maurice
Strong, "One Year After Stockholm", Foreign
Affairs, July 1973.
62. Gardner,
"The United Nations", p.179, emphasis added.
63. Bradford
Morse et al. "Transnational Institutions: More or Less,
Faster or Slower," in Neal & Harvey, Foreign
Policy in the Age of Interdependence, p.195.
64. Gardner,
"Hard Road to World Order", pp.559, 576 &
573.
65. Trilateral
Commission Task Force Reports: 9-14, The Triangle Papers,
(New York University Press, 1978), p.93.
66. Ibid, p.214.
67. Mitrany,
"Memoirs", p.8.
68. Ibid.
69. For a short
profile of Frankfurter see http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfrankfurter.htm.
70. Quoted in
Anderson, "David Mitrany", p.578, emphasis added.
71. The Commission
on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood: The Report
of the Commission on Global Governance, (Oxford, 1995),
pp.2-3.
72. Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, "Civil Society and Global Governance",
Contextual Paper for High Level Panel on UN-Civil Society,
June 2003, http://www.un.org/reform/pdfs/cardosopaper13june.htm.
73. Walter C.
Clemens Jr, "Alternative futures AD 2000-2025",
OECD Observer, October 2000 (emphasis added).
74. Our Global
Neighbourhood, pp.4-5, (emphasis added).
75. Ibid, p.4.
76. Ibid, p.70.
77. Ibid, pp.335-352.
78. Ibid, p.351.
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