The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations

Gram-Skjoldager, Karen; Ikonomou, Haakon A.

doi:10.1080/07075332.2017.1409792

Cited by 9 publications

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“…23 The staffing practice of the League of Nations, for example, helped to balance legitimacy between state interests and the independence of the Secretariat; illustrate that international civil servants and executive heads can push back on a variety of constraints; and that organizational adoption follows political choices. 24 Moreover, research points out that since the beginnings of international organizations, "the administrative talents" of their Secretaries-General "were used in support of his political and diplomatic talents." 25 This is not much different in the case of the UN's Secretary-General.…”

Section: The Secretary-general As An International Civil Servantmentioning

confidence: 99%

The United Nations Secretary-General as an International Civil Servant

Troy

2020

The International History Review

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Section: The Secretary-general As An International Civil Servantmentioning

confidence: 99%

The United Nations Secretary-General as an International Civil Servant

Troy

2020

The International History Review

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“…47 The functional, rather than national, division of sections within the Secretariat, and the emphasis on thorough written procedure, pragmatism, neutrality and personal responsibility, were all traits reminiscent of the Foreign Office, and the first Secretary-General, Sir Eric Drummond, was himself a Foreign Office man. 48 However, this import of resources and norms did not only take place as deliberate political and strategic decisions by Drummond and other leading members of the Secretariat, but also through the professional habitus of the hundreds of diplomats, civil servants and experts recruited from various national settings to work in the League. Upon arrival in the Secretariat, its personnel had already been educated and socialized within different professional and national traditions -or, paraphrasing Vauchez, even if the Secretariat was emerging as a new and independent institutional unit, the nation states remained in control of the 'production of the producers' of professional norms and practices within the new weak field due to their control over educational systems.…”

Section: The Secretariat As a Weak Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Sense of the League of Nations Secretariat – Historiographical and Conceptual Reflections on Early International Public Administration

Gram-Skjoldager

Ikonomou

2019

European History Quarterly

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This article reintroduces the League of Nations Secretariat as a fundamentally significant object of historical study. By drawing on key insights from three generations of historiography on the Secretariat, the authors explore how historians can use a Bourdieusian conceptual framework to study this first major international administrative body. Each generation of literature has emphasized one of three professional archetypes – the bureaucrat, the diplomat and the technocrat. Moving beyond these archetypes, and applying Antoine Vauchez's concept of ‘weak fields’ and the notions of import, brokering capacity and hybridity, we see how the professional templates that were being imported into the Secretariat were culturally specific (mainly to Britain and Northern Europe) and how they were merged and reinvented to secure the smooth running of a multilateral, multinational and multivalent organization given charge of a series of new functions, thus producing new, specific forms of expertise exclusive to the Secretariat. Accordingly, we capture both the complexities of what kind of professional cultures came to dominate the Secretariat and the novelty of some of the types of expertise it rested upon: an important step towards a deeper understanding of the characteristics and role of international public administration in international politics in the twentieth century.

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Introduction: Locating Eastern Asia and the League in Global International Relations

Hughes

Shinohara

2023

East Asians in the League of Nations

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The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

The United Nations Secretary-General as an International Civil Servant

The United Nations Secretary-General as an International Civil Servant

Making Sense of the League of Nations Secretariat – Historiographical and Conceptual Reflections on Early International Public Administration

Introduction: Locating Eastern Asia and the League in Global International Relations

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