Ralph Bunche on Political Science and the Management of Decolonization

• In Event: The “Global” in Political Theory

Abstract

This paper looks at the high tide of anticolonialism in the 1940s to 1960s and efforts to deploy ‘political science’ in shaping a new global order after the end of formal European empires. In doing so, it focuses on Ralph Bunche – political science professor, Nobel laureate, and former APSA president – as someone who both studied and officially oversaw transitions from empire to independence as head of the Trusteeship Council and in later roles at the United Nations. It tries to reconcile his critiques of empire, including what he saw as new forms of US imperialism, with his views on reform, development, and a managed transition to independence. It follows his work from his student writings, through his research on the Carnegie-funded study resulting in Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 An American Dilemma, his work at Howard University on international relations and empire, and his involvement as head of the UN Trusteeship Council. The paper tracks how Bunche used ‘political science’ and ideas of human rights to merge critiques of imperialism and racial domination with more moderate ideas of trusteeship and peacekeeping. In the process, it considers how, as ‘civil rights’ grew as a domestic language of reform in the Cold War US, ‘human rights’ emerged as part of a new vision of global order and American power.

Author

• Emma Stone Mackinnon, Cambridge University