Information Processes and International Organizations (1910–1940)

Abstract

In 1934, a young American political scientist, Francis Graham Wilson, after having spent a year as fellow of the Social Science Research Council in Geneva, published his first book, which dealt with labour questions and international cooperation in the post-World War I period. In it, he analysed the workings of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its first 15 years of operation. Referring to the organization of international research, he remarked

There must be more lost in international research than in national governmental or institutional research, and this is true whether individual or co-operative international research is considered. The material is more heterogeneous, the research workers are diverse in traditions and points of view, their traditions as to method are divergent, all the written languages of the world must be employed, and there are innumerable delays and difficulties in securing the proper material. ... [B]efore international comparison can be developed, a mass of political obstruction must be cleared away by the gradual processes of international good will and the reform of national statistical method. (Wilson 1934, 323–324)