5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 453as the ISC’s secretariat on the basis that this would impair its ‘liberty of
expression’. Leaving aside this question for the moment, the idea that
the ISC should become a regional organisation met with opposition
from Mayoux who argued that to adopt a regional approach would be
to ignore the social and economic unity of the world. Mayoux further
argued that the adoption of such an approach entailed the risk that the
study of certain questions would be confined to groups defined, not only
by a common geography, but also by a common ideology.^90
An AdministrAtive session: PAris, 1946
For administrative reasons and doubtless in order to demonstrate
that the ISC was a going concern, Mayoux initially had been keen to
hold a plenary administrative session of the conference before the first
UNESCO Assembly commenced. However, as he communicated to
Potter, the meeting he attended at UNESCO on September 27 where
the question of the timing of the plenary administrative session was dis-
cussed had convinced him that holding the session after the UNESCO
conference had commenced would not hamper the realisation of his aim:
that ‘some kind of contract’ would be drawn up between UNESCO
and the ISC. Mayoux told Potter that he wanted to see such a contract
adopted at the administrative session which he hoped could be held on
December 3 and 4, just a week before the UNESCO Assembly termi-
nated on December 10.^91
In the event, the administrative session of the conference, the last
international meeting of savants organised by the IIIC before the ter-
mination of its legal existence, was delayed until December 16 and 17,
the venue for it being the offices of the Centre d’études de politique
(^90) Mayoux to Davis, June 22, 1946, enclosure no. 2, Conversations de Londres avec le
Comité de coordination Britanique de la Conférence permanente des hautes études inter-
nationales, AG 1-IICI-K-V-2.d, UA. See also Vranek to Davis, October 26, 1946, AG
1-IICI-K-V-2.d, UA.
(^91) Mayoux to Potter, May 14, 1946, AG 1-IICI-K-I-24, UA, and Mayoux to Davis,
September 30, 1946, AG 1-IICI-K-V-2.d, UA. See also International Studies Conference,
Verbatim report of the XIIIth Administrative session, December 16 and 17, 1946, at the
Centre d’études de politique étrangère de Paris, IICI-K-XIV-12, UA, 4. A plan to hold
a plenary administrative conference in June and then a plan to hold one in October were
postponed.