Hayekian economists occupied the most influential reform positions at GATT.

Evidence

The three most impor­tant GATT reformers in Geneva ­were all devotees of Hayekian thought. First was Jan Tumlir, the head of the research division from 1967 to 1985, remembered by some as the “resident phi­ los­o­pher” of GATT. Tumlir was born in Czecho­slo­va­kia in 1926 and studied law in Prague before emigrating in 1949. ­After two years in West Germany, he moved to the United States, where he earned a PhD in economics from Yale in 1964. He moved to the research position at GATT that year, and was also a faculty member at the Gradu­ate Institute of International Studies from 1968 ­until his premature death by heart attack at the age of fifty-­nine. The library of the Gradu­ate Institute was ­housed in the Centre William Rappard, and Tumlir’s library of several hundred volumes is still ­housed as the “Jan Tumlir Legacy Collection” in the building that is now the home of the WTO. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 799

Categorization

• XREF: The institutional embedding of Hayek’s ideas inside GATT/WTO parallels Milgrom’s account of private order institutions — rules as ideology made operational. — connects to: Freiburg-trained Hayekian lawyers staffed GATT’s legal reform position after Tumlir. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 800; GATT legal experts scaled Hayek’s cognitive hierarchy to world economic order — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 833

Broader Connections

• Freiburg-trained Hayekian lawyers staffed GATT’s legal reform position after Tumlir. #exemplifies (0.95) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 800
• GATT legal experts scaled Hayek’s cognitive hierarchy to world economic order #expands (0.80) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 833