Working the machinery

This chapter explores how technocratic internationalism found new fields of application in international development and regional integration. During the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of international organizations began to work on the socio-economic tasks that functionalists had recommended for international action. With the expansion of the United Nations system of organization, global governance took a markedly technocratic but also a welfarist turn. In this explicit orientation towards human welfare and concrete projects, they differed from the technical standard setting organizations active since the 19th century. The concept of socio-economic development was congenial to functionalists since its promise of progress is linked to the technocratic belief in technical solutions. Functionalism also became a textbook doctrine for European integration, with the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 as a direct product of functionalist thinking. This chapter also discusses the professionalization of political science in the 1950s and 1960s, where scholars began to perceive Mitrany’s ideas as ‘reformist ideology’ rather than as a serious theory of international organization. To remedy these defects, American political scientist Ernst Haas re-formulated it as ‘neo-functionalism’. Although ostensibly an empirical-analytical approach eschewing normative commitments, neo-functionalism remained committed to the ideal of rationalized governance.