David Mitrany

David Mitrany (1888–1975) was a Romanian-born, naturalized British scholar, historian and political theorist. The richest source of information concerning Mitrany’s life and intellectual activity are the memoirs he published in 1975 in The Functional Theory of Politics.

On September 1, 1933 Mitrany joined the original faculty of the School of Economics and Politics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey where he served along with Edward M. Earle, Winfield W. Riefler, Walter W. Stewart, and Robert B. Warren. He left the IAS in 1953.

Mitrany worked on international relations and on issues of the Danube region. He is considered as the creator of the theory of functionalism in international relations, also classified as a part of liberal institutionalism (see Liberalism).

Mitrany pioneered modern integrative theory. This discipline is the third main liberal approach to international relations (along with international liberalism and idealism). Its basic principle maintains that international (not only economical) cooperation is the best means of softening antagonism in the international environment. The idea of this international cooperation was elaborated upon by Leonard Hobhouse, and then by Leonard Woolf and G. D. H. Cole. The main rationale behind it was that “peace is more than the absence of violence”. Cornelia Navari wrote that the British pluralist doctrine had become the lifeblood of Mitrany’s theory.

Following a series of conferences held at Harvard and Yale, he published two of his theoretical studies concerning the international system, The Political Consequences of Economic Planning and The Progress of International Government. The first public presentation of his functionalist approach to international relations occurred during a series of conferences held at Yale University in 1932. Mitrany got famous eventually with his pamphlet A Working Peace System of 1943.

...
Wikipedia