Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Emergence of a Global Economic Order: From Scientific Internationalism to Infrastructural Globalism

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Science, Numbers and Politics

  • 357 Accesses

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to trace the chronological process of establishing global infrastructure of economic order, beginning with the foundation of scientific organizations at the turn of the century and the years following World War I, through the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, until the construction of economic statistics commissions at the League of Nations, and later on, the United Nations. The paper examines this global development which is bound by two main processes of standardization, a transition from local voluntary initiatives of scientific societies to better the world with science and to improve coordination between countries, titled “scientific internationalism”, to the establishment of coercive international institutions that reinforce global economic order during the postwar era, termed as “infrastructural globalism”. The first part of the paper centers on Canada and its role in leading the standardization of economic statistics around the British Empire. A pivotal moment of this initiative was a conference held in 1920 in London and titled “First Conference of Government Officers Engaged in Dealing with Statistics in the British Empire”. The conference dealt with the establishment of imperial statistical bureaus in the British colonies. The second part of the paper, dealing with infrastructural globalism, describes the construction of the SNA and its dissemination as a direct consequence of the Bretton Woods Conference and the economic world order it established.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Israel State Archives. Gimel 5509/2948 August 7, 1952, 3.

  2. 2.

    Mikesell (1994b).

  3. 3.

    Kendrick (1970, 284–315).

  4. 4.

    Boli and Thomas (1997, 171–190), Boli (1987), and Meyer (1987).

  5. 5.

    DiMaggio and Powell (1983, 147–160).

  6. 6.

    Babb (1998).

  7. 7.

    McNeely (1995).

  8. 8.

    McNeely, 74

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 79.

  10. 10.

    Miller (2001, 167–218), Miller and Edwards (2001, 1–29), Miller (2004, 81–102), and Edwards (2006, 229–250).

  11. 11.

    Bowker and Star (2000) and Star and Ruhleder (1996, 111–134).

  12. 12.

    Miller (2001).

  13. 13.

    Miller classifies three modes of interaction between scientific and political cooperation as was articulated in the cooperation of American policymakers and organizations, like the WMO: (1) intergovernmental harmonization; (2) technical assistance; and (3) international coordination of scientific research. These modes were integrated into the activities of international institutions.

  14. 14.

    Edwards (2006).

  15. 15.

    Prévost and Beaud (2012, 111).

  16. 16.

    See also Gerould and Gerould (1938).

  17. 17.

    Hacking (1990, 16–17).

  18. 18.

    For an example of studies that take a different perspective on the history of science in general and statistics in particular see Curtis (2002), Harrison (2005, 56–63), Prakash (1999), and Schaffer (1999, 457).

  19. 19.

    Worton (1998, 169–171).

  20. 20.

    Beaud and Prévost (2005, 369–391).

  21. 21.

    Coats (1920, 226–228).

  22. 22.

    Edwards (2006, 229–250) and Miller (2001, 167–218).

  23. 23.

    Urquhart (1987, 414–430).

  24. 24.

    Goldberg (1955).

  25. 25.

    Worton (2000, 91–92).

  26. 26.

    Beaud and Prévost (1993, 1998).

  27. 27.

    CSA: RG 31 Acc. 89–90/133, box 8, file 834, pt 2, 3, 4, 1915.

  28. 28.

    A national System of Statistics for Canada. RG 31 Accession 89–90/133, box 8, file 834, pt 2, 3, 4, August 25, 1916; Goldberg (1955).

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Bowley (1908, 459–495).

  31. 31.

    Bowley, 477.

  32. 32.

    Coats (1929).

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 98.

  34. 34.

    Beaud and Prévost (2005).

  35. 35.

    Worton (1998, 168).

  36. 36.

    Beaud and Prévost (2005).

  37. 37.

    Worton (1998, 169).

  38. 38.

    Ibid.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 170–171.

  40. 40.

    Worton (1998, 174).

  41. 41.

    Edwards (2006) and Miller (2001, 2005, 2006).

  42. 42.

    Mikesell (1994a).

  43. 43.

    Van Dormael (1978).

  44. 44.

    Steil (2013).

  45. 45.

    Steger (2017).

  46. 46.

    Stern (1944, 165–179).

  47. 47.

    Miller (2005, 174–186).

  48. 48.

    In memory of Raymond F. Mikesell. Annual newsletter, Department of Economics, University of Oregon, fall 2006.

  49. 49.

    Steger (2017, 37–38).

  50. 50.

    Comim (2001, 213–234).

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Kendrick (1970).

  53. 53.

    Morgan (2003, 275–305).

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 302–303.

  55. 55.

    Desrosières (2003, 553–564) and Morgan (2003).

  56. 56.

    Desrosieres (1994).

  57. 57.

    Hall (1989, 9).

  58. 58.

    Morgan (2003, 305).

  59. 59.

    Fourcade-Gourinchas (2001, 397–447) and Weir and Skocpol (1985).

Bibliography

  • Babb, Sarah. 1998. “Neoliberalism and the Rise of the New Money Doctors: The Globalization of Economic Expertise in Mexico.” Latin American Studies Association Meeting, Chicago (September).

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaud, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-Guy Prévost. 1993. “La structuration de l’appareil statistique canadien, 1912–21.” The Canadian Historical Review 74 (3): 395–413.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaud, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-Guy Prévost. 1998. “The Politics of Measurable Precision: The Emergence of Sampling Techniques in Canada’s Dominion Bureau of Statistics.” Canadian Historical Review 79 (4): 691–725.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaud, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-Guy Prévost. 2005. “Statistics as the Science of Government: The Stillborn British Empire Statistical Bureau, 1918–20.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33 (3): 369–391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boli, John. 1987. World-Polity Sources of Expanding State Authority and Organization, 1870–1970. Chicago: Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boli, John, and George M. Thomas. 1997. “World Culture in the World Polity: A Century of International Non-Governmental Organization.” American Sociological Review 62 (2): 171–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 2000. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowley, Arthur L. 1908. “The Improvement of Official Statistics.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 71 (3): 459–495.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coats, R. H. 1920. “British Empire Statistical Conference at London.” Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association 17 (130): 226–228.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coats, R. H. 1929. “The Place of Statistics in National Administration—Function and Organization of Statistics—Scope and Method of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.” The Royal Society of Canada.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coats, Robert H. 1936. “Statistics Comes of Age.” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique 2 (3): 269–287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comim, Flavio. 2001. “Richard Stone and Measurement Criteria for National Accounts.” History of Political Economy 33 (5): 213–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Curtis, Bruce. 2002. The Politics of Population: State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840–1875. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desrosieres, Alain. 1994. “Official Statistics and Business. History, Classifications, Uses.” Information Acumen. The Understading and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business. Londres: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desrosières, Alain. 2003. “Managing the Economy.” The Cambridge History of Science 7: 553–564.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiMaggio, Paul, and Walter W. Powell. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Collective Rationality and Institutional Isomorphism in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48 (2): 147–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, Paul N. 2006. “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism.” Osiris 21 (1): 229–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fourcade-Gourinchas, Marion. 2001. “Politics, Institutional Structures, and the Rise of Economics: A Comparative Study.” Theory and Society 30 (3): 397–447.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gerould, Winifred Gregory, and James Thayer Gerould. 1938. “International Congresses and Conferences 1840–1937.” New York: The H. W. Wilson Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, S. A. 1955. The Dominion Bureau of Statistics: Its Organization and Activities. American Statistical Association Annual Conference. New York City, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacking, Ian. 1990. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Peter A., ed. 1989. The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism Across Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, Mark. 2005. “Science and the British Empire.” Isis 96 (1): 56–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herrera, Yoshiko M. 2006. Transforming Bureaucracy: Conditional Norms and the International Standardization of Statistics in Russia. No. 417. Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Aberdeen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herrera, Yoshiko M. 2010. Mirrors of the Economy: National Accounts and International Norms in Russia and Beyond. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendrick, John W. 1970. “The Historical Development of National Income Accounts.” History of Political Economy 2.2: 284–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leibler, Anat E. 2008. “Nationalizing Statistics: A Comparative Study of the Development of Official Statistics During the 20th Century in Israel-Palestine and Canada.” PhD diss., UC San Diego.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGillivray, Alex. 2006. A Brief History of Globalization: The Untold Story of our Incredible Shrinking Planet. New York: Carroll & Graf.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNeely, Connie L. 1995. Constructing the Nation-State: International Organization and Prescriptive Action. No. 113. Greenwood Publishing Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, John. 1987. The World Polity and the Authority of the Nation-State. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mikesell, Raymond F. 1994a. The Bretton Woods Debates: A Memoir, vol. 192. Princeton: International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mikesell, R. 1994b. “The Short-Term Dept Crises of Israel 1952–53: Memories.” Revaon Lecalcala (Economics Quarterly).

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Clark A. 2001. “Scientific Internationalism in American Foreign Policy: The Case of Meteorology, 1947–1958.” Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance, edited by Clark A. Miller and Paul N. Edwards, 167–218. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Clark. 2004. “Resisting Empire: Globalism, Relocalization, and the Politics of Knowledge.” Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance, edited by Sheila Jasanoff, Marybeth Long Martello, and Peter M. Haas, 81–102. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Clark A. 2005. “Science and Democracy in a Globalizing World: Challenges for American Foreign Policy.” Science and Public Policy 32 (3): 174–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Clark A. 2006. “An Effective Instrument of Peace.” Osiris 21 (1): 133–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Clark A., and Paul N. Edwards. 2001. “The Globalization of Climate Science and Climate Politics.” Changing the Atmosphere, 1–29. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, M. S. 2003. “Economics”. The Cambridge History of Science: The Modern Social Sciences, edited by T. M. Porter and D. Ross, vol. 7, 275–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Porter, Theodore M., and Dorothy Ross. 2003. “The Cambridge History of Science: The Modern Social Sciences.” Changing Contours of the Social Science Disciplines, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prakash, Gyan. 1999. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prévost, Jean-Guy, and Jean-Pierre Beaud, eds. 2000. L’Ére du Chiffre/the Age of Numbers: Systèmes Statistiques et Traditions Nationales/Statistical Systems and National Traditions. Puq.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prévost, Jean-Guy, and Jean-Pierre Beaud. 2012. Statistics, Public Debate and the State, 1800–1945: A Social, Political and Intellectual History of Numbers. NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaffer, Simon. 1999. “Late Victorian Metrology and Its Instrumentation.” The Science Studies Reader, 457. US: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Star, Susan Leigh, and Karen Ruhleder. 1996. “Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces.” Information Systems Research 7 (1): 111–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steger, Manfred B. 2017. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steil, Benn. 2013. The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order. Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stern, Ernest H. 1944. “The Agreements of Bretton Woods.” Economica 11 (44): 165–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Urquhart, M. C. 1987. “Three Builders of Canada’s Statistical System.” Canadian Historical Review 68 (3): 414–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Dormael, Armand. 1978. Bretton Woods: Birth of a Monetary System. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ward, Michael. 2004. Quantifying the World: UN Ideas and Statistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weir, Margaret, and Theda Skocpol. 1985. “State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynesian’ Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States.” Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, 107. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Worton, David. 1998. The Dominion Bureau of Statistics: A History of Canada’s Central Statistical Office and Its Antecedents, 1841–1972. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Worton, David. 2000. “Robert H. Coats, Architect of Canada’s National Statistical System.” The Age of Numbers: Statistical Systems and National Traditions, edited by Jean-Pierre Beaud and Jean-Guy Prévost. Montreal: Presses de l’Université du Québec.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Anat Leibler

Authors
  1. Anat Leibler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Heidelberg, Germany

    Markus J. Prutsch

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Leibler, A. (2019). The Emergence of a Global Economic Order: From Scientific Internationalism to Infrastructural Globalism. In: Prutsch, M. (eds) Science, Numbers and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11208-0_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation