Intellectuals, international relations theory, and change in the international system: Anglo-American League societies and the League of Nations

This work examines the contribution to foreign affairs produced by the British and American groups working on the League of Nations idea during WWI. The production of ideas in international relations by intellectuals is held to be of pinnacle importance given the distracting requirements of governing imposed on leaders. In examining this relationship a division is first made between leaders and intellectuals that holds intellectuals to be external to the bureaucracy in any official capacity at the time they are producing research and advocating on its behalf to leaders in power. The case of the League sees two primary groups, the League to Enforce Peace and the League of Nations Society, as the major contributors to the policy innovations. The plans put forward by these groups are compared to the League Covenant to establish a reflection of these groups' work. Original correspondences of Theodore Marburg are used to establish access to the leaders of the British and United States governments. The case of Upper Silesia is considered in establishing a change in the handling of international affairs. Innovations produced by these intellectuals are held to have reformed, for a period, the mechanisms of diplomacy through their adoption into the domestic policy of the Allied Powers.