5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 485Quincy Wright, the first president of IPSA, in his opening address at
IPSA’s conference of 1950. Wright charged political science with the task
of combating ‘inhuman tyranny and total war’ through bringing to bear
on political problems ‘the universal application of scientific method’. He
stated that the study of ‘world society’ or ‘world community’ fell within
the scope of political science and noted that throughout the conference’s
programme ‘special reference’ would be made to international affairs.^193
Nonetheless, Wright, who as we have seen had been a participant in
the 1937 session of ISC study conference, did not discount the idea that
international relations might form a distinct discipline and, indeed, main-
tained that the subject was not restricted to political science because it
also dealt with economic and social questions.^194
Unfortunately for the future of the ISC however, Wright’s successor
as president of IPSA, William A. Robson, was of the view that interna-
tional relations was an ‘indivisible part’ of political science. Robson raised
this issue at a meeting which took place on September 12, 1952 in the
midst of an IPSA congress that was held at The Hague. The meeting was
convened in order to discuss the detailed inquiry into the teaching of
political science that was being directed by Robson on behalf of IPSA.^195
This inquiry had been initiated by UNESCO as a result of a General
Conference resolution in 1950, concerning the following: Enquiry into
the Teaching of the Social Sciences.^196 At the meeting at The Hague,
Robson, a professor of government at the LSE, complained of that fact
that in many countries there was resistance to the idea of the ‘unity of
political science’: he complained that its ‘various branches were scattered
among different disciplines.’^197
Unsurprisingly given the its contested status, leaders in the field
of political science had a strong interest in seeing its boundaries con-
solidated. With this end in view, Robson turned his attention to the
(^193) Wright, ‘The Significance of the International Political Science Association,’ 275, 279.
(^194) Jean Meynaud, ‘The Teaching of Political Science,’ International Social Science
Bulletin 5, no. 1 (1953): 104–12, 109.
(^195) Ibid., 104–05.
(^196) ‘The Enquiry into the Teaching of the Social Sciences: General Report submitted
to UNESCO’s General Conference, 1952,’ International Social Sciences Bulletin 5, no. 1
(1953): 151–57, 151.
(^197) Meynaud, ‘The Teaching of Political Science,’ 105.