Katja Naumann joins the project group with an analysis of Economic Liberalism in the International Arena: Concepts and Impact of Czechoslovakian (later Czech), Hungarian and Polish Actors. She thus connects two strands in current global historical studies: firstly, research on International Organizations, which includes the transnational networks that emerged aside and within them, and secondly, works that follow the spatial turn and seek to de-centre worldwide integration in the 20th century and understand it as polycentric. Although the traditional Euro-centrism, particularly in (but not limited to) studies transcending national borders, has been criticized, leading to the acknowledgement of co-existing, connected and interdependent centres or hubs, currently the construction of peripheries reiterates in the field of European Studies. Societies of East Central Europe, previously marginalized as the outskirts of Europe are again marginalized; while non-Western regions are written into global historical knowledge and imagination, the area between Western and Eastern Europe receive hardly any attention and are consequently, even if unintended, zeroed out a second time around (Hadler and Middell 2010). Bringing Central European discourses on economy back in connects and bridges at the same time the studies of Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Niklas Olsen and Roxana Breazu so that the integrated European landscape of Economic liberal thought will become visible. By focusing on the impact of international organizations, Katja‟s project is connected to Fanny Fröhlich‟s analysis of Bretton Woods institutions. Tracing Czechoslovak (and later Czech), Hungarian and Polish economists from the 1930 until today is relevant both 1) politically and 2) intellectually. 1) Their home countries were all but open to their intellectual positions, at times even hostile. After the World Economic Crisis of the 1930s the political climate in East Central Europe shifted towards state intervention and market regulation (often coined as „economic nationalism‟) and after the Second World War, in the context of socialist transformation, this policy was implemented even stronger, albeit in a different form. For those defending and elaborating liberal arguments this meant seeking support and opportunities outside of the immediate surroundings. The degree in which they operated in international circles and contexts is, while not really surprising, still remarkably high.

Gusztav Gratz (1875-1946), in the early 1920s the first Hungarian envoy in Vienna and then Hungarian Minister of Finance, worked later on in the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) (Paál and Seewann) 2009, Gratz 1922). Similarly Feliks Młynarski (1884-1972), who as representative of the Polish Committee criticised the ICC for its re-consideration of the gold standard as an effective means against economic disturbance (Rosengarten 2001). One could go further to Ferdynand Zweig (1896-1988), professor of economics at the University of Cracow, who emigrated to Great Britain during the Second World War where he lectured at Oxford and Manchester before going to Tel Aviv and who – like Ota Šik (1919-2004), a key thinker of the economic reforms of the Prague Spring – highlights the importance of the exile and thus of transnational biographies for the development of economic liberalism (Zweig 1932, 1942, 1948). These international lives and careers, however, were not at all at odds with the home-contexts. Janos Kornai (b. 1928), whose dissertation from 1959 belongs to the first critical discussions of planned economies, held a chair of economics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which allowed him to lecture throughout Europe and the US (Wagner 2011). 2) Intellectually, the discourse of newness regarding the liberal thinking in the region (Szacki 1994) is striking. Without doubt the change of 1989 and the strict renunciation of everything associated with the old regime grew into a wave, even hype of liberal economics in politics as well as in economics itself. That it is by and large presented as a discovery of new lands, however, speaks more for the ideological baggage with which the subject is often treated – and which is backed by a particular version of the traditions of this line of thought – than for the result of analytical studies. (For first works on the rich tradition of liberal economic thinking see Tökéczki 1993, Bernacki 2003, 2004, Haugstein 2007). This sub-project will address the above-mentioned shortages and highlight the transnational character of East Central European economic liberalism by avoiding the regional trap, i.e. the tendency of regional studies to disconnect their subject-matter from similar processes at other places. Methodologically it will enter the field through a conceptual analysis of key terms in the relevant languages and used by the relevant individuals under study. International organizations, understood as arenas in which Czechoslovakian (later Czech), Hungarian and Polish liberals articulated and elaborated their reasoning, serve as a point of entry for the research. For the inter-war period the League of Nations, in particular its Economic and Financial Organization with its diverse conferences and its counter-committees, such as the Bruce-Commission, will be studied. For the second half of the 20th century the focus will be on the United Nations, more precisely on its Economic and Social Council, the GATT and WTO as well as the UNCTAD, leading into the discussion of the New International Economic Order, in which East Central Europeans had their share and which marks the beginning of the neo-liberalism of the 1980s. To approach the actors in question through international organizations is promising for at least two reasons: It allows to reveal the global context in which the issue of free markets was negotiated, thus it helps to situate the European thinking in a broader context, and it permits to see it placed in the sphere of politics, therefore to study conceptual history including its social and political dimension. This is especially important since many of the studied actors have been practitioners and scholars, which accounts to the fact that further to the already mentioned political organizations the International Economics Association and the International Economic History Association (including its forerunners) will be relevant institutions for Katja‟s project.