David Mitrany

David Mitrany (born January 1, 1888 in Bucharest , † July 25, 1975 ) was a British political scientist of Romanian origin. His focus was on international relations and the problems of the Danube region. He is considered the founder of the theory of functionalism in international relations.

Mitrany became known with his work “A Working Peace System” from 1943, the title of which meant: a peace system that really works . Mitrany turned against illusionistic federation projects à la Coudenhove-Kalergi , which could prevent rapid and effective peacekeeping. Instead, Mitrany recommended lean, functional agencies to handle international cooperation in all relevant, especially technical and economic areas. Mitrany's functionalism, however, also referred to domestic organizational formations: to special-purpose associations such as the Tennessee Valley Authority or the London Transport Board, in which partially independent Union states or local administrative units of the same order coordinated, and accordingly the rationalization cartels of the British shipping, cotton and ... Steel industry.

The doctrine of political functionalism “form follows function”, which is often attributed to Mitrany, does not come from this, by the way, but was adopted from the functionalism of industrial design . It served to popularize Mitrany's thinking.

Selected Works

• Romania, her history and politics (1915)
• Greater Romania: a study in national ideals (1917)
• The problem of international sanctions (1925)
• The land and the peasant in Romania: the War and agrarian reform, 1917-1921 (1930)
• The progress of international government (1933)
• The effect of the War in south eastern Europe (1936)
• A working peace system (1943)
• The road to security (1944)
• American interpretations (1946)
• World unity and the nations (1950)
• Marx against the peasant: a study in social dogmatism (1951)
• Food and freedom (1954)
• The Prospect of European Integration: Federal or Functional , Journal of Common Market Studies, 1965
• The Functional Theory of Politics . New York: St. Martin's Press., 1975

literature

• Mihai Alexandrescu, David Mitrany. From Federalism to Functionalism , in: Transylvanian Review , 16 (2007), No. 1.
• Mihai Alexandrescu, David Mitrany. Viaţa şi opera , în Nicolae Păun (coord.), Actualitatea mesajului fondatorilor Uniunii Europene , EFES, Cluj-Napoca, 2006
• Mihai Alexandrescu, Câteva date de demografie a României de la începutul secolului al XX-lea, prezentate de David Mitrany , în Ioan Bolovan, Cornelia Mureşan, Mihaela Hărănguş, Perspective demografice, istorice şi sociologice. Studii de populaţie , Presa Universtiară Clujeană, 2008
• Gerhard Michael Ambrosi, David Mitrany's functionalism as an analytical basis for economic and political reorganizations in Europe , in Harald Hageman (ed.): The German-speaking economic emigration after 1933, Metropolis-Verlag, Marburg, 1996.
• Gerhard Michael Ambrosi, Keynes and Mitrany as instigators of European Governance , in Millennium III , No. 12/13, summer 2005
• Dorothy Anderson, David Mitrany (1888-1975). An appreciation of his life and work , In: Review of International Studies, 24 (1998).
• Lucian Ashworth, Creating International Studies. Angell, Mitrany and the Liberal Tradition , Aldershot 1999.
• Per A. Hammarlund, Liberal Internationalism and the Decline of the State. The Thought of Richard Cobden, David Mitrany, and Kenichi Ohmae , New York 2005.
• Cornelia Navari, David Mitrany and International Functionalism , in David Long and Peter Wilson (ed.) Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis. Inter-War Idealism Reassessed , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995
• British International Studies Association, Review of international studies, Volume 24, Butterworths, Kent, England, 1998, p. 577 ff.
• Harald Hagemann (ed.), On German-speaking economic emigration after 1933, Metropolis-Verlag, Marburg, 1997, p. 551 ff.