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The responses given by the officials of the authoritarian regime in Hungary to the proposals for cooperation from the Rousseau Institute and the International Bureau of Education (IBE) show that the educational aspects of the invitations were of little importance to them. Their concern was whether a positive response to such initiatives could serve the ideological or political objectives of the regime. This study also shows that while the IBE leaders were keen to emphasize the scientific character of their activities, this could be biased by the intergovernmental mode of operation of the organization. Thus, the IBE documents of this period did not reflect the totalitarian tendencies that appeared in Hungary in the mid-1930s in the field of education.