Chapter 6 Revision Guide

  • The English School (hereafter ES) represents an approach to the study of IR that reaches back to the 1950s. 
  • Since the late 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the ES such that it is increasingly regarded as a distinctive position in the field of IR. 
  • Those who identify with ES today see it as occupying the middle ground alongside constructivism, in offering a synthesis of different theories and concepts in IR.
  • While maintaining scepticism towards the rigid application of scientific methods, ES is thought to be an important voice in IR today as it avoids the explanatory (vs) interpretive dichotomy, that marks the mainstream (neo)realist vs. (neo)liberal binary. 
  • Instead, ES purports to offer an account of IR which combines theory and history, morality and power, agency and structure. The polemicism underlying some of their interventions on methodology masked over a deeper and more sophisticated guide to the study of IR.
  • ES interpretive approach rests on the following key points:
    1. The subject matter of IR ought not to be restricted to inter-state relations, but to the global political system as a whole. Particular emphasis needs to be placed on theory because our understanding of the world is mediated by concepts and values.  A great deal of knowledge about IR will not be gained from framing testable hypotheses, as positivists insist upon.
    2. Historical understanding is crucial to the study of IR. Knowing the USA has strategic superiority over its rivals is less significant than whether it is a status quo power or a revisionist power.
    3. There is no escape from values.  They inform the selection of topics to be researched and taught, and therefore they need to be upfront and subjected to critical scrutiny.
    4. IR is fundamentally a normative enterprise.  Values are not simply a matter for individual researchers; they are at the heart of the discipline. This does not mean entering a world of ‘ideal theory’ with fictional assumptions and make-believe states.  What matters are the ideas that practitioners believed in and how they sought to implement them.
  • Those writers most closely associated with the ES often argue that the distinguishing power of the school rests on the significance it attaches to the idea that states, through their actions as agents, have generated a society with its own unique institutions and rules.  Or to borrow Hedley Bull’s oxymoron: states inhabit an ‘anarchical society’.
  • Writers of the ES are concerned with three main ‘elements’: international system, international society, and world society (explained in more detail below).
  • It is important to note here, however that rather than an understanding of theory as ‘operationalizing’ concepts and formulating ‘testable’ hypotheses, the emphasis upon contending concepts is driven by a search for defining properties which mark the boundaries of different historical and normative orders.
  • System is defined by Bull as an arena where there is interaction between communities to the extent that ‘the behaviour of each a necessary element in the calculations of the other’ (Bull 1977/1995: 10). The presence of an international system is therefore a vital prerequisite for international society, though the two are fundamentally distinguished.
  • International society, according to Bull, comes into being when ‘a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions’ (Bull, 1977: 13).  Note the importance of the unique character of the membership (primarily sovereign states), the importance of common interests, and the fact that the identity of being a member confers upon states an expectation that they will follow the rules and uphold the values.
  • International society needs to be understood as being a dynamic arrangement which is compatible with different ensembles of rules, values and institutions.  Thus, different types of international societies are distinguished:
  • At the more minimal end of the spectrum of international societies, we find an institutional arrangement that is restricted solely to the maintenance of order.  This is called a pluralist international society, where the institutional framework is geared towards the liberty of states and the maintenance of order among them.  The rules of the game are complied with because fidelity to them is relatively cost free but the collective benefits are enormous.
  • At the more maximal end of the spectrum of international societies we find an institutional arrangement that desires a form of order that is also just (and not just tolerable or efficient).  This is called a solidarist international society. In a solidarist international society, individuals are entitled to basic rights.  This in turn demands that sovereignty norms are modified such that there is a duty on the members of international society to intervene forcibly to protect those rights.
  • The third element in the ES triad is world society.  This concept runs in parallel to international society albeit with one key difference – it refers to the shared interests and values among ‘all parts of the human community’.  With human rights at the centre of the meaning of world society, it is apparent that the membership is universal and the institutions are not the agents of state authority.
  • Case study: Human Rights. The extension of international law, which recognizes the rights of all individuals by virtue of their common humanity, is one of the most significant normative shifts in the history of world politics. 
  • Human rights indicate a move beyond a pluralist international society and its exclusive interest in the pursuit of order and the limitation of justice claims to demands by sovereign states to be treated equally as discussed above. 
  • Nonetheless, human rights have been as much a source of division as a marker of the emergence of a solidarist international society.
  • Case study continued. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN Charter as early as 1948, systemic factors  prevented its effective evolution until the mid-1970s.
  • The final three decades of the 20th Century, however, were marked by an increased power of the human rights regime, expressed most substantially through: the growing legalization of human rights norms; the emergence of human rights international non-governmental organizations; and the increased priority accorded to human rights in the foreign policies of key Western states
  • Case study continued.  Thus emerged the idea of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’, where governments must ensure the protection of their citizens from: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Failure to do so shifts the responsibility to protect (or R2P) onto regional or international organizations.
  • Nonetheless, the international community remains faced with the challenge of grafting solidarist norms of universal human protection, evident in the fact that: first, the enforcement machinery is still heavily dependent on the consensus of sovereign states; second, international bureaucracy debate as to whether external intervention effectively brings more protection than harm to those in need, continues to stall such measures.
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