Published as a journal article, Rappard’s address to the Geneva Institute of International Relations on July 28, 1930 examines whether the League of Nations constitutes the beginning of government above sovereign states. Its three-part argument moves from conceptual definition to an assessment of existing international order and authority, then to the desirability of world government and the obstacles to achieving it. Rappard combines a federalist horizon with a deliberately restrained appraisal of Geneva: the League cannot guarantee peace as a government could, yet its organization of sovereign states creates indispensable conditions for further development.
Against an initially quoted definition by Jessie Wallace Hughan, Rappard distinguishes government from the mere administration of common affairs. Government requires both authority—the capacity to command and secure obedience—and order, a scheme to which those governed must conform.
But where there is both order and authority, political authority exercised to enforce some kind of political order, then there is bound to be government.
This definition separates government by several nations from government of several nations. The international commission administering the Saar Basin exemplifies the former; League supervision of mandates does not, because supervision lacks governing powers. The latter meaning poses the deeper difficulty. League members regard themselves as governors acting together, not as subjects governed by one another. Strictly understood, “international government” is therefore unstable terminology: sovereign nations remain independent, whereas submission to superior political authority establishes supernational or world government. The distinction matters because expectations that the League will prevent war, secure disarmament, and reorganize economic relations silently presuppose powers it does not possess.
Rappard next tests the international system against his two criteria. He rejects an indiscriminate picture of international anarchy: most political, economic, and intellectual dealings already proceed peacefully through recognized laws, treaties, and tribunals. Disorder is concentrated in relations among states, where three different deficiencies demand different remedies.
First, states remain reluctant to accept compulsory judicial settlement without reservations. The expanding jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice is encouraging, but incomplete. Second, adjudication cannot correct an unjust legal settlement merely by applying existing law. Frontiers, colonial possessions, distributions of resources, and restrictions on independence may be legally protected yet indefensible. Revision still depends upon the consent of those benefiting from the arrangement.
If he does not, the international community is helpless.
Rappard’s analogy is to a state whose constitution permits neither majority legislation nor constitutional amendment. Drawing on J. L. Brierly, he treats peaceful legal change as essential to law’s survival: stabilizing an inequitable order without providing for revision invites eventual violence. Third, some internationally destructive conduct lies outside existing law altogether. Tariff policies, oppression of nationals, exclusion from resources, and threatening military preparations may endanger other peoples without furnishing a tribunal with an applicable prohibition. More courts alone cannot solve either unjust law or the absence of law.
The second criterion, authority, reveals the League’s decisive limitation. Its founders avoided a frontal challenge to sovereignty because such a challenge would have jeopardized the institution itself. Subsequent interpretations and unsuccessful proposals for stronger guarantees confirmed governments’ resistance to binding commitments.
Government by persuasion is persuasion and not government.
Yet this categorical distinction does not make Geneva politically empty. Repeated Council and Assembly meetings create an international esprit de corps: statesmen sometimes develop loyalties beyond their national instructions, make mutual concessions, and shape common policies. Rappard locates the beginnings of government in these habits and influences, not in an already existing sovereign authority. He distinguishes three stages—spontaneous cooperation, voluntary organization, and world government. The League occupies the second, while limited commitments to accept external decisions foreshadow the third.
The address then maps the uneven political interests obstructing that transition. France and its continental allies favor collective guarantees for existing frontiers but resist powers of revision; dissatisfied states favor revision while opposing stabilization. Smaller European former neutrals support judicial settlement but fear political government by the great powers. Their demand for disarmament conflicts with their reluctance to surrender the independence needed for effective guarantees. Britain presents a related reservation under different circumstances. Non-European states generally value cooperation while resisting burdensome organization and world authority. Soviet Russia occupies a separate position, interpreting world government through revolutionary expansion. These assessments expose how apparently universal commitments to peace remain conditional upon national advantage.
The conclusion asks why humanity desires peace and prosperity while resisting the authority necessary to secure them. Rappard identifies weak world solidarity, the historically consecrated attachment to independence, and unequal national circumstances. A defensible federation would protect cultural diversity and self-determination rather than impose uniformity; overcoming fear of it therefore requires education. Unequal benefits and sacrifices are harder to remedy, particularly when secure, resource-rich countries have less immediate incentive to federate.
Finally, Rappard qualifies Harold Laski’s claim that the League must either deny sovereignty or amount to nothing.
It is, as I see it, an attempt to build up international coöperation on the foundations of national sovereignty.
This formulation captures the address’s enduring conceptual contribution: cooperation can be valuable without being government, while genuine government requires capacities for enforcement and peaceful change that cooperation alone cannot supply. The League is neither sufficient security nor an empty façade, but a necessary bridge whose further development depends upon interests and solidarities still only partially formed.
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