Hidden Legacies How discontinued International Organizations have shaped European governance since the 1910s

What happens after international organizations (IOs) cease to exist?

While IOs ends are occasionally discussed in political science and legal studies, we know very little about the legacy of IOs, and hence the subsequent role and impact of people, ideas, practices and objects (including buildings and budg-ets) that once filled such organizations with life and meaning.

InechO hypothesizes that for a full un-derstanding of international history and questions of political governance more broadly, it is indispen-sable to consider the legacy and impact of liquidated IOs.

New beginnings frequently echo the work of earlier IOs, even if existing interpretations and narratives ignore or downplay such links.

Using largely neglected public and private sources as well as interviews, InechO will break new ground for interna-tional and European history by focusing on the afterlives of European International Organizations since the 1910s. It highlights five empirical case-studies representing the whole spectrum of possible options.

Informed by and contributing to an interdisciplinary state of the art, InechO builds on an in-novative set of concepts and methods to address these issues.

InechO will thus establish a new con-ceptual framework that will help research to rethink the nature of international cooperation and interna-tionalism.

Its approach and its findings are also highly relevant for the analysis of other world regions and their international history and for audiences beyond academia.