The social-democratic roots of global governance: Welfare internationalism from the 19th century to the United Nations

Abstract

Welfare internationalism was and still is one of the most powerful justifications for establishing international organizations. It suggests that public international organizations should cater to the material needs of individuals, rather than solve conflicts among states. In this article, we trace the origins of welfare internationalism, challenging the dominant narrative that depicts it as a projection of the British welfare state or the American New Deal to the globe. We show that welfare internationalism emerged earlier and combined ideational elements of very different origins. Notions of professional colonial administration migrated to the international context and dovetailed with a cosmopolitan interpretation of 19th-century public unions as caretakers of citizen interests. Reform socialist approaches to the social question inspired domestic and international developments simultaneously, leading to the foundation of the International Labour Organization, which became a crucial venue for the promulgation of welfare internationalism. We thus document how international theorists and practitioners of the early 20th century established a new perspective on international affairs, emanating from individuals and their needs. That perspective came to rival the traditional conception of international politics as intergovernmentalism and delivered important building blocks for the (self-)legitimation of the League of Nations and the United Nations.