Hidden Legacies: How Discontinued International Organizations Have Shaped European Governance since the 1910s (InechO)
InechO is a history project, but it is informed by various disciplines, chiefly by political science and legal studies. The project profits from the work in other disciplines, and also seeks to contribute to their debates.
InechO examines the history of European IGOs, broadly conceived. While focusing on European IGOs, InechO situates Europe in a global world, and argues that some European IOs were in fact global affairs, not least due to the role of empires.
Historically, Europe is the world region with the densest population of international organizations. Also, the termination ratio in Europe was substantially higher in comparison to other world regions and to global IGOs during the longest part of the 20th century. Hence, Europe was a laboratory of international organization, and – though this has largely gone unnoticed – a particularly dynamic laboratory for ending such forums. Even more important: Given the densely networked character of the continent, legacies of discontinued IGOs had a great chance to live on and to impact other forms and forums of (international) governance.
InechO does not assume that a discontinued IGO impacted the work of just one other IGO. In fact, legacies and links might have become relevant at local and national levels of governance or in IOs that were less firmly institutionalized than IGOs. InechO selects the most important vectors and vessels linking a specific IGO to other forums of (international) cooperation and issues of governance. The project will pay particular attention to three vectors of interconnection between forums:
- People
- Knowledge and practices
- Objects
Empirically, InechO features five case-studies, see here for more information on the sub-projects.