ABSTRACT
To Bentham, the force of public opinion would make states keep their pledges, so that “international integration was not so much attainable and undesirable as utterly unnecessary.” General belief in the feasibility of international cooperation through the formal organisation of Powers with common values, however, was to wane after Bismarck was forced to resign. As for formal international organisation, that potentially rich harvest was to remain in seed for later generations. If the diplomatic interplay of the nineteenth century may be said to have been ushered in by statesmen-thinkers, it also had its share of political philosophers who never held power, but who, in the long run, were probably more influential for not doing so. Their views contributed to the history of ideas in International Political Economy that was to constitute one of the growing points of the discipline in the late twentieth century.
