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

1
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

2
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

3
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

4
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

5
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.

6
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.

7
>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

8
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...

9
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]

10
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

11
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.

12
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.

13
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.

14
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.

15
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.

16
77. Ibid, pp.335-352.
78. Ibid, p.351.

17