Historical accounts of the social sciences have too often accepted local or national institutions as a self-evident framework of analysis, instead of considering them as being embedded in transnational relations of various kinds. Evolving patterns of transnational mobility and exchange cut through the neat distinction between the local, the national, and the inter-national, and thus represent an essential component in the dynamics of the social sciences, as well as a fruitful perspective for rethinking their historical development. In this programmatic outline, it is argued that a transnational history of the social sciences may be fruitfully understood on the basis of three general mechanisms, which have structured the transnational flows of people and ideas in decisive ways: (a) the functioning of international scholarly institutions, (b) the transnational mobility of scholars, and (c) the politics of trans-national exchange of nonacademic institutions. The article subsequently examines and illustrates each of these mechanisms.

The study of international relations (IR) took an important disciplinary turn in the 1950s, when a number of scholars sought to develop a distinct theory of international politics. This turn, however, should not be understood as a tendency toward specialization, but rather as a separatist movement, meant to insulate the study of international politics from the behavioral revolution that was transforming the practice of political science in postwar America. Promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation, the “theorization” of IR encapsulated a very specific intellectual and ultimately political agenda at odds with the kind of liberalism dominant at the time.

Philanthropic practices allow the dominant classes to generate knowledge about society and regulatory prescriptions, in particular by promoting the development of the social sciences. Th e 19th century industrialists had often invested their resources in the definition and treatment of relevant social issues, in order to institutionalize the new form of capitalism they represented. In the late 20th century, the new transnationalized social strata representing the hegemony of financial capital, whose power depends on their capacity to perpetuate the new socioeconomic order, used similar strategies. Philanthropy offers a privileged strategy for generating new forms of "policy knowledge" convergent with the interests of their promoters. Focusing on the Central European University founded by the financier George Soros, the paper argues that, far from seeking to curb the excesses of economic globalization, such efforts are actually institutionalizing it by laying the foundations of its own regulatory order.