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European Journal of International Relations
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`World Opinion' and the Founding of the UN: Governmentalizing International Politics

Hans-Martin Jaeger

Carleton University, Canada

While `world opinion' is a staple in political discourse, the concept has received little attention in IR. Locating it along the `realist—idealist' divide, existing studies have conceptualized `world opinion' empirically, as an aggregative or intersubjective phenomenon, annexed or opposed to state sovereignty, and embodying a normative standard. Drawing on Luhmann's conception of public opinion and Foucault's governmentality approach, this article reconceptualizes `world opinion' discursively (functionally and semantically), as a medium of communication that enables post-sovereign forms of international governance irrespective of an inherent normativity. The alternative conception of `world opinion' is illustrated in the discourse of the emerging United Nations in the early 1940s. In this context, `world opinion' addressed problems concerning the failure of the League of Nations, total war, and threats to `civilization'. With public opinion research as a technical backdrop, `world opinion' underwrote governmentalities of international policing, welfare and rights liberalism, post-colonial pastoralism, and pedagogical panopticism in response to these problems.

Key Words: governmentality • Luhmann • realism—idealism debate • United Nations history • world opinion

European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 14, No. 4, 589-618 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1354066108097554
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