How to tell the story of supranationalism

Posted By David Bosco Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - 7:19 AM Share

Cambridge scholar Peter Mandel argues that we need more histories of supranational organizations and movements:

‘International history’ used to mean the history of relations between nations – a fancy synonym for ‘diplomatic history’. But it should be no surprise in our increasingly globalised world that historians have been reaching for a new kind of ‘internationalism’, one that tracks the movement and communication of people across, above and beyond nations – really it should be called ‘supranational history’. Because this kind of history looks beyond the nation state it is not so interested in politics and diplomacy but more in the things ordinary people do in disregard of or in spite of the state – trade, travel, migration – or even against the state – like appeal for universal rights....A new international history of the 21st century will have to contend with these powerful forces that nation states are finding difficult to control.

Mandel is skeptical of recent works--he cites in particular Mark Mazower's No Enchanted Palace (see my review here) and Samuel Moyn's The Last Utopia (see my interview with Moyn here)--that cast doubt on the power and autonomy of supranational movements. I don't see why. Taking supranationalism seriously--as those authors clearly do--should not mean downplaying the evidence that powerful states very often channel it to their own purposes. I'm at work on a diplomatic history of the International Criminal Court in operation and it seems to me that the power of supranational ideas and the embedded influence of states are both critical parts of that story.