Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T20:31:35.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between the crisis of democracy and world parliament: the development of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the 1920s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2012

Martin Albers
Martin Albers*
Affiliation:
Christ's College, St Andrew's Street, Cambridge CB2 3BU, UK E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Great War created new challenges for the proponents of pre-1914 cosmopolitanism. This article explores this theme by studying the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international association of members of parliament active in the interwar period. The IPU is first taken as a case study to discuss the difficulty of clearly differentiating between national politicians and agents of international civil society during the years between the wars. The article then shows how pre-war liberal internationalists had to reorient after the First World War, and how socialists and nationalists brought new agendas to the realm of international cooperation at the non-governmental level. These new perspectives shaping the international system even led to far-reaching plans for a world parliament. However, the IPU's history also shows how domestic political polarization contributed to the failure of interwar internationalism.

Keywords

Inter-Parliamentary UnioninternationalismLeague of Nationsparliamentary democracyworld parliament
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 189 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Erez Manela, The Wilsonian moment: self-determination and the international origins of anticolonial nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007Google Scholar; Carl Bouchard, Le citoyen et l'ordre mondial, 1914–1919: le rêve d'une paix durable au lendemain de la Grande Guerre en France, en Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis, Paris: Pedone, 2008Google Scholar; Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier, eds., Competing visions of world order: global moments and movements, 1880s–1930s, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007Google Scholar.

2 Among recent publications, see Mark Mazower, No enchanted palace: the end of empire and the ideological origins of the United Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009Google Scholar; David Long and Peter Wilson, eds., Thinkers of the twenty years’ crisis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995Google Scholar; Joachim Wintzer, Deutschland und der Völkerbund 1918–1926, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006Google Scholar. See also Susan Pedersen's review essay ‘Back to the League of Nations’, American Historical Review, 112, 4, 2007, pp. 1091–1115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See, for example, Horst Möller and Manfred Kittel, eds., Demokratie in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918–1933/40: Beiträge zu einem historischen Vergleich, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002Google Scholar; Karina Urbach, ed., European aristocracies and the radical right, 1918–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007Google Scholar; Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jeremy Mitchell, eds., Authoritarianism and democracy in Europe, 1919–1939, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002Google Scholar; Giovanni Capoccia, Defending democracy: reactions to extremism in interwar Europe, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005Google Scholar.

4 Key sources were the archives of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the League of Nations Archives in Geneva, and the papers of the prominent German IPU members Walther Schücking and Eduard David, kept at the University of Münster and the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie in Bonn respectively. I would like to thank all these institutions for their generous support.

5 Ralph Uhlig, Die Interparlamentarische Union, 1889–1914, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1988Google Scholar; Claudia Kissling's dissertation also includes a summary of events in the Union between 1914 and 1945, based on IPU publications: Claudia Kissling, Die Interparlamentarische Union im Wandel, Rechtspolitische Ansätze einer repräsentativ-parlamentarischen Gestaltung der Weltpolitik, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 31–143Google Scholar.

6 Martin Ceadel, Semi-detached idealists: the British peace movement and international relations, 1854–1945, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 6Google Scholar.

7 When the term ‘pacifist’ is used in the following article, however, this mostly refers to what Ceadel has called ‘pacificism’. According to Ceadel, Idealists, p. 7, pacificists believe ‘that the abolition of war will be achieved only by improving the structure either of the international system or of its constituent states and that until this has been achieved defensive military force may be needed to protect these reforms’.

8 See for example Quantz, Dietrich R., ‘Civic pacifism and sports-based internationalism: framework for the founding of the International Olympic Committee’, Olympika: the International Journal of Olympic Studies, 2, 1993, pp. 1–23Google Scholar; Cooper, Sandi E., ‘Pacifism in France, 1889–1914: international peace as a human right’, French Historical Studies, 17, 2, 1991, pp. 359–386CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Uhlig, Interparlamentarische Union, p. 130Google Scholar.

10 For the feminist movement, see Nitza Berkovitch, From motherhood to citizenship: women's rights and international organization, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999Google Scholar; Leila Rupp, Worlds of women: the making of an international women's movement, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997Google Scholar. For the specific case of the abolitionist movement, see Summers, Anne, ‘Which women? What Europe? Josephine Butler and the International Abolitionist Federation’, History Workshop Journal, 62, 2006, pp. 214–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the development of the Second International, see, for example, Julius Braunthal, History of the International, London: Nelson, 1966, vol. 1, chs. 7–16Google Scholar; James Joll, The Second International, 1889–1914, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 30–55Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Enrica Costa Bona, ‘Le Bureau international de la paix et la Société des Nations’ in Marta Petricioli and Donatella Cherubini, eds., Pour la paix en Europe: institutions et société civile dans l'entre-deux-guerres, Brussels: Peter Lang, 2007, p. 36Google Scholar; Helmut Mauermann, Das Internationale Friedensbüro 1892 bis 1950, Stuttgart: Silberburg Wissenschaft, 1990, pp. 214–217Google Scholar.

12 See n. 2.

13 Miller, David Philip, ‘Intellectual property and narratives of discovery/invention: the League of Nations’ draft convention on “scientific property” and its fate’, History of Science, 46, 2008, pp. 299–342CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clavin, Patricia and Wessels, Jens-Wilhelm, ‘Transnationalism and the League of Nations: understanding the work of its economic and financial organisation’, Contemporary European History, 14, 2005, pp. 465–492CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wöbse, Anna-Katharina, ‘Oil on troubled waters? Environmental diplomacy in the League of Nations’, Diplomatic History, 32, 2008, pp. 519–537CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See, for example, Erik Odvar Eriksen and John Erik Fossum, eds., Democracy in the European Union: integration through deliberation?, New York: Routledge, 2000Google Scholar; Falk, Richard and Strauss, Alexander, ‘Toward global parliament’, Foreign Affairs, 80, 1, 2001, pp. 212–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archibugi, Daniele, ‘Cosmopolitan democracy and its critics: a review’, European Journal of International Relations, 10, 3, 2004, pp. 437–473Google Scholar.

15 Charnovitz, Steve, ‘The emergence of democratic participation in global governance (Paris, 1919)’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 10, 1, 2003, pp. 45–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See, for example, Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik: die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1964Google Scholar; Ricardo Bavaj, Von links gegen Weimar: linkes antiparlamentarisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik, Bonn: Verlag J. H. W. Diets, 2005Google Scholar; Ursula Büttner, Weimar: die überforderte Republik, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008Google Scholar; Ian Kershaw, Weimar: why did German democracy fail?, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990Google Scholar.

17 See n. 3, and Siaroff, Alan, ‘Democratic breakdown and democratic stability: a comparison of interwar Estonia and Finland’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 32, 1999, pp. 103–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erwin Oberländer, ed., Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1919–1944, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001Google Scholar.

18 Möller and Kittel, Demokratie.

19 See n. 3, and also Karina Urbach, ed., European aristocracies and the radical right, 1918–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007Google Scholar.

20 Mary Kaldor, Global civil society: an answer to war, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003, pp. 11fGoogle Scholar.

21 See, for example, Alejandro Colas, International civil society: social movements in world politics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002, pp. 1ffGoogle Scholar.; David L. Brown, Creating credibility: legitimacy and accountability for transnational civil society, Sterling: Kumarian Press, 2008, p. 1Google Scholar; Gideon Baker and Charles Chandler, ‘Introduction: global civil society and the future of world politics’, in Gideon Baker and Charles Chandler, eds., Global civil society: contested futures, London: Routledge, 2005, p. 2Google Scholar. See also Jürgen Kocka, ‘Zivilgesellschaft als historisches Problem und Versprechen’, in Manfred Hildermeier, Jürgen Kocka, and Christoph Conrad, eds., Europäische Zivilgesellschaft in Ost und West: Begriff, Geschichte, Chancen, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2000, pp. 19Google Scholar, 21–6.

22 Today, the IPU does not have individual politicians as members, but the parliaments as organizations: see Statutes of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Article 3, 2009, http://www.ipu.org/strct-e/statutes-new.htm (consulted 7 January 2011).

23 Quidde was only a national parliamentarian during the time of the Weimar Constitutional Assembly in 1919 and 1920, but remained active in the IPU throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

24 In 1921, for example, the WILPF secretary Emily Balch asked the IPU Secretary-General Christian Lange to use his influence in order to persuade Fridtjof Nansen to become a member of the League of Nations’ Permanent Commissions on Mandates. IPU Archives, Box 35, Balch to Lange, 11 February 1921; Lange to Balch, 16 March 1921, Geneva. See also, for example, IPU Archives, Box 748, International Federation of Trade Unions to Inter-Parliamentary Union, 13 November 1922.

25 For a case study, see Adams, Christine, ‘In the public interest: charitable association, the state, and the status of utilité publique in nineteenth-century France’, Law and History Review, 25, 2007, pp. 283–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 For Schücking, see Andreas Thier, ‘Walther Schücking’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, ed., Neue Deutsche Biographie, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007, vol. 23, pp. 631–633Google Scholar. For Thomas, see Fine, Martin, ‘Albert Thomas: a reformer's vision of modernization, 1914–32’, Journal of Contemporary History, 12, 1977, pp. 545–564CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inter-Parliamentary Union, Compte rendu de la XXVIe conférence tenue à Berne et Genève du 22 au 28 août 1924, Geneva: Bureau interparlementaire, 1925, pp. 569–72. For Spears, see ibid., pp. 20, 146, 152f., 252–60. All three remained active in the IPU after having left parliament.

27 See, for example, Berkovitch, From motherhood; Joll, Second International, pp. 30–55.

28 See Inter-Parliamentary Union, Rapport du secrétaire général au conseil interparlementaire pour 1913, Brussels: Bureau interparlementaire, 1913, p. 7; Uhlig, Interparlamentarische Union, pp. 900ff.

29 See, for example, Gorman, Daniel, ‘Ecumenical internationalism: Willoughby Dickinson, the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches’, Journal of Contemporary History, 45, 1, 2010, pp. 51–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laqua, Daniel, ‘“Laïque, démocratique et sociale”? Socialism and the Freethinkers’ International’, Labour History Review, 74, 3, 2009, pp. 257–273CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Owing to budget surpluses, the IPU secretariat had accumulated a reserve fund of 100,000 Belgian Francs in 1914.

31 See, for example, Arno Mayer, Political origins of the new diplomacy, 1917–1918, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959Google Scholar, ch. 9.

32 David Hunter Miller assumes that the Smuts proposal was inspired by a socialist resolution, but the design of the assembly that Smuts proposed was much closer to the IPU proposal. See David Hunter Miller, The drafting of the Covenant, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1928, pp. 218ffGoogle Scholar., 272–5; IPU Archives, Box 258, Christian Lange, ‘The Inter-Parliamentary Union and its place at the League of Nations: popular representation at the League’, unpublished memorandum sent to Zimmern, 5 February 1919, London.

33 See, for example, Tosstorff, Reiner, ‘The international trade-union movement and the founding of the International Labour Organization’, International Review of Social History, 50, 2005, pp. 399–433CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Ibid. See also Jasmien Van Daele, ‘Engineering social peace: networks, ideas, and the founding of the International Labour Organization’, International Review of Social History, 50, 2005, pp. 456ffGoogle Scholar.

35 Götz, Norbert, ‘On the origins of “parliamentary diplomacy”: Scandinavian “bloc politics” and delegation policy in the League of Nations’, Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association, 40, 3, 2005, pp. 263–279CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Charnovitz, Steve, ‘Two centuries of participation: NGOs and international governance’, Michigan Journal of International Law, 18, 183, 1996–1997Google Scholar, p. 222.

37 IPU Archives, Box 491, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Commission pour l’étude des questions politiques et d'organisations, Comité de rédaction pour le développement de l'Union, Annexe à la circulaire de convocation, “Développement de l'Union”’, 26 August 1926, Geneva, p. 3.

38 IPU Archives, Box 8, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbaux du conseil interparlementaire’, 7 and 8 October 1919, Geneva, p. 2.

39 IPU, ‘Développement de l'union’, p. 2.

40 IPU Archives, Box 491, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Comité restreint de rédaction du comité d'organisation’, 1 February 1926, Geneva, p. 9.

41 Ibid.

42 IPU Archives, Box 416, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbal de la commission pour l’études de questions politiques et d'organisation’, 27 August 1926, pp. 9ff.

43 IPU Archives, Box 387, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Commission d'organisation, institutions des commissions permanentes’, 26 April 1922, pp. 1–3.

44 IPU, ‘Développement de l'Union’, p. 9.

45 See, for example, for minorities and colonies, IPU Archives, Box 419, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbal de la commission des questions ethniques et coloniales’, 6 and 7 April 1923, Basel, p. 60.

46 For the role of international forums such as the IPU in the conceptions of German racialist groups, see Bastiaan Schot, Nation oder Staat? Deutschland und der Minderheitenschutz: zur Völkerbundspolitik der Stresemann-Ära, Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut, 1988Google Scholar.

47 IPU Archives, Box 418, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Commission pour l’étude de questions juridiques, Procès-verbal’, 27 May 1925.

48 David's idea was to use the opportunity of German dominance in eastern Europe to establish a system of benevolent hegemony with limited self-determination for the peoples concerned. Freed from tsarist autocracy, they could have slowly moved towards prosperity and democracy without challenging German supremacy. See Snell, John L., ‘The Russian revolution and the German Social Democratic Party in 1917’, American Slavic and East European Review, 15, 1956, pp. 339–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Eduard David, Die Befriedung Europas, Berlin: Hensel und Co Verlag, 1926Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., pp. 23–31.

51 Archiv der Sozialen Demokratie, 1/EDAG000002, Personal Papers Eduard David, Eduard David, ‘Die Befriedung Europas’ (draft), 1924.

52 E. H. Carr, Internationa relations between the two world wars: 1919–1939, London: Macmillan, 1947, p. 98.

53 See n. 37; IPU Archives, Box 416, Minutes of the Committee on Organizational Questions for the years 1927, 1928, and 1929.

54 In late 1927, the Secretary-General of the IPU, Christian Lange, even managed to convince a League official, Arthur Sweetser, of the David Plan. Sweetser wrote an enthusiastic introduction to a memorandum prepared by Lange, to be presented to the League's Secretariat. IPU Archives, Box 519, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘The Inter-Parliamentary Union and its possibilities of development’, unpublished memorandum, October 1927.

55 See University of Münster, Germany, Nachlass Walther Schücking (private papers of Walther Schücking at the University of Münster, Germany; henceforth NWS), 13/13, 067, Walther Schücking to Christian Lange, 19 January 1929, Berlin(?).

56 David, Befriedung, pp. 13–16Google Scholar.

57 IPU Archives, Box 417, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbal, Sous-commission pour l'entente douanière européenne’, 9 July 1926, The Hague and 11 June 1927, Paris.

58 See n. 35; Larsen, Knud, ‘Scandinavian grass roots: from peace movement to Nordic council’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 9, 2–3, 1984, pp. 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 See, for example, Wilfried Loth, Entwürfe einer europäischen Verfassung: eine historische Bilanz, Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 2002, pp. 24–30Google Scholar; Martin Große Hüttmann, ‘Vom abstrakten zum konkreten Systemgestalter: die Rolle des Europäischen Parlaments in den Regierungskonferenzen bis Nizza’, in Andreas Maurer and Dietmar Nickel, eds., Das Europäische Parlament: Supranationalität, Repräsentation und Legitimation, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005, pp. 35–45Google Scholar.

60 Republican Party, Platform of the Republican Party of the State of New York, New York: Republican Party, 1920, pp. 2ff.; League of Nations Archives, IPM/IPB Archives, Box 309.

61 For the French attempts to create a general staff or an international army at the League of Nations, see for example Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: the Paris conference of 1919 and its attempts to end war, London: John Murray, 2001, pp. 101ff.; Ruth Henig, The League of Nations, London: Haus Histories, 2010, pp. 36f. The best-known proposal to create an international police force from outside official circles came from Lord David Davies: see Porter, Brian, ‘David Davies: a hunter after peace’, Review of International Studies, 15, 1989, pp. 27–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Inter-Parliamentary Union, Compte rendu de la XXIIIe conférence, tenue à Washington du 1er au 7 Octobre et à Ottawa le 13 Octobre 1925, Geneva: Bureau interparlementaire, 1926, pp. 459–521; Inter-Parliamentary Union, Compte rendu de la XXIVe conférence, tenue à Paris 25 au 30 août 1927, Geneva: Bureau interparlementaire, 1928, pp. 168–78, 460–521; IPU Archives, Box 418, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbal de la sous-commission pour la codification du droit international’, 2 and 3 April 1927, Geneva.

63 Henri La Fontaine was the only socialist politician of any importance who worked in the IPU before 1914. Eduard Bernstein did not attend any conferences but had become IPU Secretary-General Lange's interlocutor during the latter's attempts to invite German socialists. Bernstein had cordial relations with other bourgeois pacifists as well. After 1918, he became an active member of the German group. See, for example, IPU Archives, Box 235, Christian Lange to Eduard Bernstein, 8 July 1913, Brussels; NWS, 1/1, 032, Eduard Bernstein to Walther Schücking, 14 July 1915, Berlin.

64 ‘Interparlamentarische Konferenz’, Arbeiter-Zeitung, 29 August 1922; ‘Interparlamentarische Union’, Arbeiter-Zeitung, 31 August 1922.

65 See, for example, IPU Archives, Box 417, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbal de la commission pour l’étude des questions économiques et financières’, 30 and 31 August 1926, pp. 3ff.

66 In 1925, for example, the prominent right-wing politicians Kurt Graebe and Karl Tinzl attended the IPU Conference as members of the Polish and Italian Groups, but their main contribution to the debate was to blame their respective governments for discrimination and to call for a common defensive front of the (German) minorities against ‘Bolshevism’. Inter-Parliamentary Union, Conférence 1925, pp. 563–8, 711–15, 729–32.

67 Ralph Erbar, ‘Heinrich Schnee’, in Hockerts, Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 23, pp. 280ff.

68 Schnee, Heinrich, ‘Zur 25. Konferenz der Interparlamentarischen Union in Berlin’, Der Weg zur Freiheit: Halbmonatsschrift des Arbeitsausschusses Deutscher Verbände, 8, 1928Google Scholar; IPU Archives, Box 419, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbal du comité de rédaction de la commission des questions ethniques et coloniales’, 4 and 5 April 1924, Geneva, pp. 1, 4, 7ff.

69 Inter-Parliamentary Union, Conférence 1925, pp. 570ff.

70 IPU Archives, Box 491, Ludwig Quidde (?) to Walther Schücking and Christian Lange, 8 May 1925, Munich.

71 IPU Archives, Box 491, Ludwig Quidde to Christian Lange, 26 June 1926, Berlin.

72 By the end of 1926, the countries where an authoritarian regime had triumphed over attempts to install a liberal representative constitution included Russia, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, and Portugal. Of these, Poland, Hungary, and Italy sent numerous IPU delegations.

73 See IPU Archives, Box 8, Inter-Parliamentary Union, ‘Procès-verbaux du conseil interparlementaire, XIX’, 21–29 August 1924, Bern, p. 14; Inter-Parliamentary Union, Conférence 1925, p. 119.

74 See Inter-Parliamentary Union, The development of the representative system in our times: five answers to an enquiry instituted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva: Bureau interparlementaire, 1928.

75 Inter-parliamentary Union, Compte rendu de la XXVe Conférence tenue à Berlin du 23 au 28 août 1928, Geneva: Bureau interparlementaire, 1929, p. 349; Carl Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1926, pp. 5–23Google Scholar.