Great Leaps Forward

The postwar period saw remarkable growth in the infrastructure of internationalism. This expansion began a move away from a transnational community toward a more explicitly global one. Why some concepts and approaches that the League had pioneered with the inputs of liberal international society were built into UN this was less about the League as an organization than the perceived requirements of liberal order. The need for a stable stream of information and analysis had been confirmed by the League along with collaborators across international society. World War II and US hegemony cemented this and built new relationships and institutions to perform these tasks. Demands for information and analysis did not change in the postwar era even if, in what would become a more plural international community, some actors, concepts, and goals were forever altered.