| Summary/Abstract |
In this article, we reintroduce the political thought of James Arthur Salter (1881–1975), a British diplomat, politician, and university professor, who made a seminal contribution to the emergence of International Relations theory in the interwar years. His academic writings were informed by his professional engagement with the Allied Maritime Transport Council (AMTC) during the First World War and the technical branches of the League of Nations. Salter promoted a distinctly transgovernmental form of expert cooperation in international advisory bodies connected to national ministries. His vision of a depoliticised transnational expertocracy inspired various IR functionalists, not least David Mitrany. Salter suggested such forms of governance also for British national politics, drawing what we call here an ‘international analogy’. His work illustrates very well how the emergence of IR theory was connected to broader trends in political theory, in particular in efforts at adapting democracy to the increasing complexities of industrial modernity.
|