Abstract The founding of the League of Nations marked a turning point in international governance. It entrenched great-power privilege by creating a bifurcated structure that separated an exclusive Council from a representative Assembly. Despite its significance, the origins of this institutional choice remain poorly understood. This article argues that the dual Assembly-Council design emerged through a process whereby policymakers, bound by historical experience, vetted and adapted alternative proposals in light of what we call “negative antecedents.” In particular, the separation of universal membership from great-power control reflected efforts to manage the legacy of pre-1914 demands for sovereign equality. Drawing on secondary literature and original archival research, the article shows how U.S. and British policymakers invoked the Second Hague Conference to resist pressure from smaller and often racialized states, especially those in Latin America, to participate on equal terms in international organizations. The League’s designers responded more directly to inherited political conflicts than to abstract, forward-looking considerations of institutional functionality. Since the League’s creation, trade-offs among membership, efficacy, and control have continued to shape debates over intergovernmental organizations. By engaging historical institutionalist scholarship in IR, this article offers new insights into how past conflicts constrain and channel contingent institutional choices.
Schulz et al. (2026) studied this question.
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