ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

Monday, 10 September 2018

BLOG: Tomoko AKAMI, Beyond the formula of the age of reason: experts, social sciences, and the phonic public in international politics (The Invention of Bureaucracy, Aarhus University)

(image source: Aarhus University)

First paragraph:
In recent years, the League of Nations has been examined as a ‘harbinger of global norms’ for the following UN system[1], rather than as a failed attempt at the world’s first collective security organization. Accordingly, scholars’ attention has shifted from diplomats, politicians and military officers to the experts who were in charge of the various norm-making projects of the League. One could even claim that the League was the first inter-governmental organization that began to consolidate the work of experts for the governing of the world. It mobilized experts, their ‘non-governmental’ expert organizations, and their networks across the globe.[2]

Read the full blogpost here.