REVIEW 3

Chapter 4

The English School

ANDREW LINKLATER

‘The English School’ is a term coined in the 1970s to describe a group of predominantly British or British-inspired writers for whom international society is the primary object of analysis (Jones 1981; Linklater and Suganami 2006). Its most influential members include Hedley Bull, Martin Wight, John Vincent and Adam Watson whose main publica- tions appeared in the period between the mid-1960s and late 1980s (see Bull 1977; Bull and Watson 1984; Wight 1977, 1991; Vincent 1986; Watson 1982). Robert Jackson, Tim Dunne and Nicholas Wheeler have been among the most influential members of the English School in more recent years (Jackson 2000; Dunne 1998; Wheeler 2000). Since the late 1990s, the English School has enjoyed a renaissance in large part because of the efforts of Barry Buzan, Richard Little and a number of other scholars (Buzan 2001, 2003; Little 2000). The English School remains one of the most important approaches to international politics although its influence is probably greater in Britain than in most other societies where International Relations is taught.

The foundational claim of the English School is that sovereign states form a society, albeit an anarchic one in that they do not have to submit to the will of a higher power. The fact that states have succeeded in creating a society of sovereign equals is for the English School one of the most fascinating dimensions of international relations. There is, they argue, a surprisingly high level of order and a surprisingly low level of violence between states given that their condition is one of anarchy (in the sense of the absence of a higher political authority). They invite their readers to reflect on the probable level of violence, fear, insecurity and distrust in even the most stable of domestic societies if sovereign authority collapsed. A condition of chaos would be the most likely result, and yet this is not the central characteristic of world politics.

This is not to suggest that the English School ignores the phenomenon of violence in relations between states. Its members regard violence as an endemic feature of the ‘anarchical society’ (the title of Hedley Bull’s most famous work, 1977) but they also stress that it is controlled to an important extent by international law and morality. Even so, confusion

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about the central purpose of the School can result from the fact that its members seem distinctively realist at times. This is most obvious in Wight’s influential essay, ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ (1966), where he maintained that domestic politics is the sphere of the good life whereas international politics is the realm of security and survival (Wight 1966a: 33). Realism is also evident in his argument that interna- tional relations is ‘incompatible with progressivist theory’. In a statement that seems to place him squarely in the realist camp, Wight (1996: 26) maintained that Sir Thomas More would recognize the basic features of international politics in the 1960s since nothing fundamental had changed during the last few centuries. Some have argued that the English School is essentially a British variant on realism which exaggerates the importance of the veneer of society and pays too little attention to its role in safeguarding the privileges of the leading powers and other dom- inant interests (for a critique of this interpretation, see Wheeler and Dunne 1996).

Members of the English School are attracted by elements of realism and idealism, yet gravitate towards the middle ground, never wholly reconciling themselves to either point of view. This is precisely how Wight (1991) described ‘rationalism’ or the ‘Grotian tradition’, from which the English School is descended, in a famous series of lectures delivered at the London School of Economics in the 1950s. He argued in those lectures that ‘rationalism’ was the ‘via media’ between realism and what he called revolutionism – a group of perspectives which believed in the possibility of replacing international order with peace and justice (see also Wight 1966: 91). In this context, he refers to Grotius’ comment in his great work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis which was published in 1625, that those who believe that anything goes in war are as wrong as those who believe the use of force can never be justified. Grotius envisaged an international society in which violence between Catholic and Protestant states would be replaced by a condition of relative peaceful coexistence. In his lectures, Wight lamented the fact that the debates between realism and utopionism in the inter-war years had led to the neglect of the via media with its concentration on international society.

In short, members of the English School maintain that the international political system is more civil and orderly than realists and neo-realists suggest. However, the fact that violence is ineradicable in their view puts them at odds with utopians who believe in the possibility of per- petual peace. There is no expectation among its members that the inter- national political system will come to enjoy levels of close cooperation and the relatively high level of security found in the world’s more stable national societies. There is, they argue, more to international politics than realists suggest but there will always be much less than the cosmopolitan

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desires. This is why it makes sense to argue that members of the English School belief there has been a limited degree of progress in international politics.

The nature of the ‘via media’ can be explored further by noting the contrasts with realism and ‘revolutionism’ (as noted, a term Wight used to describe various perspectives including cosmopolitanism which aim to replace international order with a universal community of humankind) and by further clarifying the claim that members of the English School offer a limited progressivist account of world politics. As discussed in Chapter 3, realism emphasizes the unending competition for power and security in the world of states. Sovereignty, anarchy and the security dilemma are crucial terms in its lexicon; in the main, the idea of global progress is absent from its vocabulary. Moral principles and social progress are seen as relevant to domestic politics where trust pre- vails because security is provided by the state, but cosmopolitan projects are said to have little importance for international relations where states must provide for their own security and trust few of their neighbours. In the latter domain, moral principles serve to legitimate national inter- ests and to stigmatize principal competitors: they are not the basis for a new form of world political organization which will supersede the nation-state.

The existence of a more or less unbridgeable gulf between domestic and international politics is a central theme in realist and especially in neo-realist thought. By contrast, cosmopolitan thinkers envisage a world order – but not necessarily a world government – in which universal moral principles are taken seriously and the gulf between domestic and international politics is reduced or eliminated. Global political reform is not only possible but of vital importance to end the struggle for power and security. The tension between these two approaches has been crucial to the history of international thought and was clearly evident in the early twentieth-century debate between realists and idealists.

The characteristics of that debate need not detain us. Suffice it to note that it was largely about whether the development of a strong sense of moral obligation to human beings everywhere was the key to building peaceful International Relations. Liberal internationalists believed that realism was unjustifiably pessimistic about the feasibility of radical change and revealed a lack of political imagination. Realists thought that liberal internationalists were naively optimistic about the prospects for a new world order based on the rule of law, open diplomacy and collective security, and they thought their ideas were dangerous because they distracted attention from the main task of foreign policy which is to ensure the security and survival of the state. The violence of ‘the inter-war

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years’ and the tensions peculiar to the bipolar era secured the victory of realism.

Bull argued that realists focus on the struggle for power and security in an international system while their liberal or utopian opponents focus on the possibility of a world community. The English School recognizes that each approach contains insights about the condition of international politics. The realist’s claim that states, unlike individuals in civil society, are forced to provide for their own security in the condition of anarchy is valuable, as is its emphasis on how adversaries seek to outmanoeuvre, control and overpower one another. However, this perspective captures only part of the substance of world politics. The international system is not a state of war despite the fact that each state has a monopoly of control of the instruments of violence within its territory. Because of a common interest in placing restraints on the use of force, states have developed the art of accommodation and compromise which makes an international society possible.

Watson (1987) later argued that a ‘strong case can be made out, on the evidence of past systems as well as the present one, that the regulatory rules and institutions of a system usually, and perhaps inexorably, develop to the point where the members become conscious of common values and the system becomes an international society’. This might seem to give the utopian thinker hope that further progress is achievable, but this is not a position that the English School generally endorses. They argue that the utopian vision of a universal human community draws on the fact that concerns about human rights, peace and justice have long influenced the development of world politics. Like realists, members of the English School begin with the condition of anarchy but they are more inclined to take arguments for global reform seriously rather than to regard them as either peripheral issues in world politics or as simply one of the ways in which states compete for influence and power. But they stress that the visionaries are wrong in thinking that the current international order is merely a stepping stone to a universal community. The crucial point is not that states are obsessed simply with the struggle for power but that many have different conceptions of human rights and global justice and conflicting views about how such ideals can be implemented. The contemporary debate about whether the time has come to introduce a principle of humanitarian intervention where a state is guilty of the gross violation of human rights is a classic example of the kind of moral disagreement which the English School regards as typical of the society of states (Jackson 2000; Wheeler 2000). Indeed, members of the English School stress that efforts to improve international politics can produce major moral disagreements which sour relations between states and damage international order. Most have

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been sceptical of proposals for large-scale global reform and most have doubted that any of them will ever appeal to the majority of nation-states or to their most powerful members.

The crucial point is that neither realism nor revolutionism recognizes the extent to which states have succeeded in creating an international society. The English School insists, however, that the survival of international order can never be taken for granted because it can be undermined by revolutionary or aggressive powers. There is no guarantee that any inter- national society will survive indefinitely or succeed in keeping crude self- interest at bay, but for as long as international society exists it is important to ask whether it can be improved. Noting that demands for morality and justice have always formed an important part of the history of international relations, Wight (1977: 192) argued that ‘the fundamental political task at all times [is] to provide order, or security, from which law, justice and prosperity may afterwards develop’. Members of the English School were understandably inclined to stress the importance of order rather than justice or prosperity during the Cold War years, but since the mid-1980s many have taken a more explicitly normative stance on questions of poverty and human rights. In the more optimistic world of the 1990s, members of the ‘critical international society’ approach became particularly interested in the possibility that states could be ‘good international citizens’ promoting a more cosmopoli- tan world order (Dunne 1998; Wheeler and Dunne 1998).

Members of the English School have long argued that the great powers can be ‘great responsibles’ which do not place their own interests before the task of strengthening international order. However, it is usually the great powers that pose the greatest threat to the survival of international society (Wight 1991: 130). In the age of American hegemony, members of the English School have returned to one of its central concerns – whether international society can survive in the absence of a balance of power. Dunne (2003) highlights this question in his account of the contempo- rary phase of US hegemony with the stress on preventive war to deal with regimes which are believed to be prepared to share weapons of mass destruction with terrorist organizations. The threat to interna- tional society is stressed in this account. Other members of the English School continue to examine the ways in which international society can be improved. This is especially evident in Wheeler’s writings on the need to introduce a limited principle of humanitarian intervention and in Keal’s argument for changes which will improve the position of indige- nous peoples (Wheeler 2000; Keal 2003). Indeed, one would expect proponents of a perspective which is located between the poles of real- ism and utopianism to explore the prospects for improving international society and the constraints that stand in the way. No member of the

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English School is naïve about the possibilities for radical change; but increasing divisions between more ‘radical’ and more ‘conservative’ proponents have appeared in recent years, not least over the question of whether the society of states should introduce a principle of humanitarian intervention.

We will return to these themes later in this chapter which is organized under four main headings. The first focuses on the idea of order and society in core English School texts. The second considers the English School’s analysis of the relative importance of order and justice in the traditional European society of states. This is followed by an assessment of the ‘revolt against the West’ and the emergence of the universal society of states in which various demands for justice are frequently heard. The fourth section returns to the question of whether the English School remains committed to the notion that only limited progress is possible in international relations and whether its claim to be the via media between realism and revolutionism is convincing in the light of current debates and developments in the field.

From power to order: international society

We have seen that the English School is principally concerned with explaining the surprisingly high level of order which exists between independent political communities in the condition of anarchy. Some such as Wight (1977: 43) were fascinated by the small number of inter- national societies which have existed in human history and by their rel- atively short life-spans, all previous examples having been destroyed by empire after a few centuries. Wight (1977: 35–9) also noted the propensity for internal schism in the form of international revolutions which bring transnational political forces and ideologies rather than separate states into conflict. He posed the interesting question of whether commerce first brought different societies into contact and provided the context within which a society of states would later develop (1977: 33). In his remarks about the three international societies about which a great deal is known (the Ancient Chinese, the Graeco-Roman and the modern society of states) Wight (1977: 33–5) maintained each had emerged in a region with a high level of linguistic and cultural unity. Crucially, independent political communities felt they belonged to the civilized world and were superior to their neighbours. Their sense of their ‘cultural differentiation’ from allegedly semi-civilized and barbaric peoples facili- tated communication between them and made it easier to agree on the rights and duties which bound them together as members of an exclusive society of states.

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Writing on the evolution of the modern society of states Wight’s protégé, Hedley Bull (1977: 82) observed that in ‘the form of the doctrine of natural law, ideas of human justice historically preceded the development of ideas of interstate or international justice and provided perhaps the princi- pal intellectual foundations upon which these latter ideas at first rested’. This seems to echo Wight’s position that some sense of cultural unity is needed before an international society can develop but, in the end, this was not Bull’s position. He believed that international societies can exist in the absence of linguistic, cultural or religious agreement. To clarify the point, Bull introduced a distinction between an international system and an international society which does not exist in Wight’s own work. A ‘system of states (or international system)’, he argued, ‘is formed when two or more states have sufficient contact between them, and have sufficient impact on one another’s decisions to cause them to behave – at least in some measure – as parts of a whole’ (1977: 9–10). A ‘society of states’, on the other hand, comes into being ‘when a group of states, con- scious 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’ (1977: 13). This is an important distinction which highlights the need to give a more precise account of how international societies have evolved.

As we have seen, Bull maintained that order can exist between states which do not feel they belong to a common civilization. John Vincent (1984b: 213) made the same point when he argued that international society is ‘functional’ or utilitarian rather than ‘cultural’ or moral in char- acter. A pragmatic need to coexist is enough to produce what Bull (1977: 316) called a ‘diplomatic culture’ – that is, a system of conventions and institutions which preserves order between states with radically different cultures, ideologies and aspirations. He added that the diplomatic culture will be stronger if anchored in an ‘international political culture’ – that is, if states have a similar way of life. Illustrating the point, Bull and Watson argued that the modern society of states which is the first truly global one does not rest on an international political culture in the way that the European society of states did in the nineteenth century. However, the basic rules of the international society which originated in Europe have been accepted by a large majority of its former colonies, now equal sovereign members of the first global society of states. No interna- tional political culture underpins and supports the diplomatic culture, yet Bull (1977: 316–17) thought that this might change if different elites across the world came to share a ‘cosmopolitan culture’ of modernity.

Bull’s The Anarchical Society (1977) provides the most detailed analysis of the foundations of international order. He argues that all

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societies – domestic and international – have arrangements for protecting the three ‘primary goals’ of placing constraints on violence, upholding property rights and ensuring agreements are kept (Bull 1977: 53–5). The fact that these primary goals are common to domestic and international society explains Bull’s rejection of ‘the domestic analogy’ which is the idea that order will come into being only if states surrender their sovereign powers to centralized institutions of the kind that provide order within nation-states (Suganami 1989). As we have seen, English School writers break with realism because they believe that states can enjoy the benefits of society without surrendering their sovereign powers to a higher authority. Bull’s approach argues that states are usually committed to limiting the use of force, ensuring respect for property and preserving trust not only in relations between citizens but in their dealings with one another as independent political communities. This shared ground rather than any common culture or way of life is the real foundation of international society.

Domestic societies and international society are both concerned with the satisfaction of primary goals but the latter is distinctive because it is an ‘anarchical society’. Citizens of the modern state are governed by the ‘primary rules’ of society which set out how they should behave, and also by ‘secondary rules’ which determine how these basic rules concerning conduct should be created, interpreted and enforced (Bull 1977: 133). In the modern state, central institutions have the right to make primary and secondary rules whereas, in international society, states create pri- mary rules as well as secondary rules pertaining to their creation, inter- pretation and enforcement. A related point is that international society has a set of primary goals which are uniquely its own (1977: 16–20). The idea that entities must be sovereign to be members of international society is one of its distinctive features, as is the conviction that the society of states is the only legitimate form of global political organization and the belief that states have a duty to respect the sovereignty of all others. These goals may conflict with one another, as Bull observed in his writings on order and justice which will be considered later in this chapter.

Societies of states exist because most political communities want to place constraints on the use of force and bring civility to their external relations. An interesting question is whether some national societies are more likely than others to attach special value to international society and to take care of its institutions which include diplomacy, interna- tional law and the practice of balancing the military power of states that may aspire to lay down the law to others. English School writers argue that international society can be multidenominational and include states with different cultures and philosophies of government. A central task of diplomacy in their view is to find some common ground between radically

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different and often mutually suspicious states. They are unconvinced by those who believe that the members of the society of states should have identical political ideologies, a point Wight (1991: 41–2) made against liberals such as Kant. However, writers such as Wight have also argued that societies with a strong commitment to constitutional politics and a history of resistance to political absolutism played a vital role in the for- mation of the European society of states and in the development of inter- national law (Linklater 1993). It is worth considering this theme in the light of neo-realist and liberal discussions of the relationship between the states-system and its constituent parts.

The neo-realist argument of Kenneth Waltz (1979) maintains that the international system compels all states to take part in the struggle for power and security irrespective of regime type and ideological commit- ment. In opposition to neo-realism, Michael Doyle (1986) has argued that liberal states have a strong predisposition towards peace with each other, though not with non-liberal states to the same extent. The crucial question here is how far the ‘inside’ affects the ‘outside’, or how far domestic national preferences are overridden by the need to promote power and security in the condition of anarchy. For members of the English School it is essential to understand how the ‘inside’ influences the ‘outside’ and vice versa. Wight’s work (1977) on international legitimacy illustrates the point. One part of this essay deals with the move from the dynastic prin- ciple of government to the conviction that the state should represent the nation as a whole, and with how the rules governing membership of inter- national society changed in the process. In this context Wight (1977: 153) noted that ‘these principles of legitimacy mark the region of approxi- mation between international and domestic politics. They are principles that prevail (or are at least proclaimed) within a majority of the states that form international society, as well as in the relations between them’ (emphases in the original). Exactly the same point can be made about con- temporary claims that the legitimate members of international society should respect human rights or be committed to democracy. This is one of the respects in which the English School differs from neo-realism. From the latter standpoint, the relations between states are rather like the relations between firms in a marketplace – all actors are caught up in a world of quasi-physical forces. The English School rejects this systemic approach to international politics which ignores the way in which domestic and inter- national principles of right conduct or reasonable behaviour interact to shape the society of states. This focus on the ‘normative’ and ‘institutional’ factors which give international society its own ‘logic’ ultimately distin- guishes the English School from neo-realism (Bull and Watson 1984: 9). This focus makes the English School a natural ally of constructivism, which is discussed in Chapter 8.

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Order and justice in international relations

The English School is interested in the processes which transform systems of states into societies of states and in the norms and institutions which prevent the collapse of civility and the re-emergence of unbridled power. It is also concerned with the question of whether societies of states can develop means of promoting justice for individuals and their immediate associations. Bull in particular distinguished between inter- national societies and international systems, but he also identified different types of international society in order to cast light on the relationship between order and justice in world affairs.

In an early essay (1966a), Bull distinguished between the ‘solidarist’ or ‘Grotian’ and ‘pluralist’ conceptions of international society. He maintained that the ‘central Grotian assumption is that of the solidarity, or potential solidarity, of the states comprising international society, with respect to the enforcement of the law’ (Bull 1966a: 52). Solidarism is apparent in the Grotian conviction that there is a clear distinction between just and unjust wars, and in the assumption ‘from which [the] right of humanitarian intervention is derived … that individual human beings are subjects of international law and members of international society in their own right’ (1966a: 64). Pluralism, as expounded by the eighteenth-century international lawyer, Vattel, rejects this approach, arguing that ‘states do not exhibit solidarity of this kind, but are capa- ble of agreeing only for certain minimum purposes which fall short of that of the enforcement of the law’ (1966a: 52). A related argument is that states rather than individuals are the basic members of international society (1966a: 68). Having made this distinction, Bull asked whether there was any evidence that the pluralist international society of the post-Second World War era was becoming more solidarist. His answer in The Anarchical Society was that expectations of greater solidarity were seriously ‘premature’ (Bull 1977: 73).

To understand the reasons for this conclusion it is necessary to turn to Bull’s discussion of the conflict between the primary goals of interna- tional society (1977: 16–18, Chapter 4). Bull argued that the goal of preserving the sovereignty of each state has often clashed with the goal of preserving the balance of power and maintaining peace. Polish inde- pendence was sacrificed on three occasions in the eighteenth century for the sake of international equilibrium. The League of Nations chose not to defend Abyssinia from Italian aggression because Britain and France needed Italy to balance the power of Nazi Germany. In such cases, order took priority over justice which requires that each sovereign state should be treated equally. Contemporary international society contains other examples of the tension between order and justice. Order requires

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efforts to prevent further additions to the nuclear club, but justice suggests all states have an equal right to acquire weapons of mass destruction (1977: 227–8).

A related point is that states have different and often conflicting ideas about justice, and that there is a danger they will undermine international society if states try to impose their views on others. Efforts to apply prin- ciples of justice to international relations are often highly selective in any event, as was the case with the war crimes tribunals at the end of the Second World War (1977: 89). What some thought was the reasonable response of the civilized world was ‘victor’s justice’ to others. The same point has been made by Milojevic and Saddam Hussein in recent times. The different responses to NATO’s action against Serbia in 1999 also illustrate the point. What leaders such as Blair regard as essential if the world is to be rid of murderous regimes is for others nothing other than the promotion of Western norms and interests which results in a new imperialism. Significantly, Bull was keen to stress that Western liberal conceptions of human rights had to recognize their values did not appeal to many non-Western groups. His argument was that the advocates of universal human rights had to appreciate that tensions over the meaning of such rights were unavoidable in a multicultural society of states; they had to try to understand these deep moral and cultural differences rather than conclude that other peoples were less rational and enlightened (1977: 126; see also Bull 1979a).

States may not agree on the meaning of justice but, Bull argued, they can concur about how to maintain order among themselves. Most agree that each state should respect the sovereignty of the others and observe the principle of non-intervention. Each society can then promote its notion of the good life within its own territory, recognized as an equal by all others. But although Bull drew attention to the tension between order and justice, he also argued that international order has moral value since ‘it is instrumental to the goal of order in human society as a whole’. ‘Order among all mankind’, he argued, ‘[is] of primary value, not order within the society of states’ (1977: 22), and ‘a world society or community’ is a goal which all ‘intelligent and sensitive persons’ should take seriously (1977: 289). This apparent cosmopolitanism stands uneasily alongside his conviction that there is little evidence that different societies are about to agree on what it would mean to build a world community. But the implication seems to be that states should try to improve international society whenever circumstances allow (see Buzan 2004 for a recent discussion of the relationship between international society and world society in the English School).

Wight’s claim that ‘rationalism’ is the via media between realism and revolutionism is worth recalling at this point. Read alongside Bull’s

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writings on order and justice, this can be taken to mean that the English School believes that the existence of a society of states is evidence that progress has been made in agreeing on some basic principles of coexistence and rudimentary forms of cooperation. The tension between order and justice is a reminder that progress has not advanced very far. Revolutionists or Kantians are accused of failing to recognize the diffi- culty that states face in progressing together in the same normative direction. It follows that the English School must always be interested in how naked power or a lack of prudent diplomacy can undo the limited progress that has occurred; and it must also be interested in whether there are any signs that states are making progress in creating a more just international society.

The development of English School thinking about human rights is fascinating in this regard. Bull (1977: 83) argued that in the recent history of international society pluralism has triumphed over solidarism. In recent centuries, the solidarist belief in the primacy of individual human rights had survived albeit ‘underground’. It might even appear that states had entered into ‘a conspiracy of silence … about the rights and duties of their respective citizens’ (1977: 83). In addition, most states – and Europe’s former colonies since the end of the Second World War – have feared that human rights law might be used as a pretext for interfering in their domestic affairs. Bull was concerned that Western arrogance and complacency about human rights might damage the deli- cate framework of international society. He also noted that relative silence on the importance of human rights had produced a strong counter- reaction, and that states in the twentieth century had come under increasing pressure to ensure their protection (Bull 1984a).

This is the starting-point of John Vincent’s book, Human Rights and International Relations (1986), which argued that the right of the indi- vidual to be free from starvation is one human right on which all states can agree despite their ideological differences. Vincent argued that global action to end starvation is essential since the absence of the basic means of subsistence should always shock the conscience of humankind. Consensus on this matter would be a significant advance in relations between the Western world, which has traditionally been concerned with order rather than justice, and the non-Western world, which has stressed the need for greater justice. In one of his last essays Vincent returned to the theme of his first book which defended the principle of non-intervention. He observed that states are increasingly open to exter- nal scrutiny and under pressure to comply with the international law of human rights (Vincent and Wilson 1994). Some violations of human rights might be so shocking that states have to set aside the conven- tion that they should not intervene in each other’s internal affairs.

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Whether and how they should do so are questions that became central to international relations with the destruction of Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda (Dunne and Wheeler 1999). International action to try persons suspected of war crimes and gross human rights violations has progressed but, as the debate over NATO’s military action against Serbia demonstrated, there is no global consensus about when sovereignty can be overridden for the sake of human rights.

In fact, two very different tendencies have appeared in the English School in recent years. Dunne and Wheeler (1999) argued in the late 1990s that the end of bipolarity made it possible that states could agree on how to introduce new principles of humanitarian intervention into the society of states. They added that the aspiring ‘good international citizen’ should be prepared to intervene in societies where there was a ‘supreme humanitarian emergency’ even though their action was in breach of international law. This argument has been rejected by Jackson (2000: 291ff.) who stresses, citing the example of Russia’s long-standing affinity with Serbia, the danger that humanitarian intervention might disturb order between the great powers. Jackson (2000) argues that the greatest violations of human rights take place in times of war, and so preserving constraints on violence between states should have priority over the use of force to safeguard human rights, whenever it is necessary to choose between them.

The ‘revolt against the West’ is a subject for the next section, but one of its dimensions, namely the demand for racial equality, is pertinent to the present discussion. Bull (in Bull and Watson 1984) and Vincent (1984b) argued that the rejection of white supremacism has been a central theme in the transition from a European to the first universal society of states. The demand for racial equality demonstrated that international order may not endure unless Third World peoples realize their basic aspirations for justice. Although order was also an issue – disorder in Southern Africa was possible while white supremacist regimes endured – the deeper matter was the immorality of apartheid. This dimension of the revolt against racial equality adds force to Wight’s point that the modern society of states differs from its predecessors in making the legitimacy or illegitimacy of particular forms of government a matter of importance for the entire international community (Wight 1977: 41). Disgust with apartheid was a matter on which the whole of international society was agreed. Mindful of the ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, Bull added, however, that agreement on apartheid was about as far as the global moral consensus extended in the 1970s and 1980s (Bull 1982: 266).

The revolt against white supremacism reveals how progress towards greater solidarism can be made. As Bull (1977: 95) put it, if ‘there is

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overwhelming evidence of a consensus in international society as a whole in favour of change held to be just, especially if the consensus embraces all the great powers [then] change may take place without causing other than a local and temporary disorder, after which the inter- national order as a whole may emerge unscathed or even appear in a stronger position than before’. Whether Bull thought that a global moral consensus could emerge in other areas is unclear although Watson (1987: 152) maintains that Bull and he ‘inclined [towards the] optimistic view’ that states in the contemporary system are ‘consciously working out, for the first time, a set of transcultural values and ethical standards’. Perhaps a growing consensus about the need for democratic government – or at the very least for constitutional safeguards for human rights – reveals that further progress has been made. As noted earlier, exactly how far this consensus can extend is disputed in recent writings by mem- bers of the English School. It is worth adding that Bull (1983: 127–31) wrote in the 1980s that neither superpower seemed to have the requisite ‘moral vision’ for dealing with the central problems between ‘North’ and ‘South’. At the present time one crucial question is whether the United States and the United Kingdom have displayed a similar lack of vision which threatens to deepen the divisions in international society by combining the defence of liberal-democratic values with a ‘war against terror’ which included regime change in Iraq without UN approval.

It is hard to tell whether Bull and Watson believed the expansion of international society to include the West’s former colonies would lead to greater solidarism or demonstrate that aspirations in that direction were still ‘premature’ – and few contemporary members of the School have built on their comments (Wheeler 2000; see also Mayall 1996). An exception is Jackson (2000: 181), who believes that the diverse nature of international society in the postcolonial era makes it all the more important to defend the pluralist conception of international society which Jackson regards as the best arrangement yet devised for promoting peaceful relations between societies which value their differences and independence. For his part, Bull (1977: 317) did think that a elite cosmopolitanism was emerging – and observers might now add that he was touching on the impact of globalization on the society of states – but he was quick to add that this ‘nascent cosmopolitan culture … is weighted in favour of the dominant cultures of the West’. Incorporating non-Western ideas in international law would help to overcome this problem but, Bull (1984a: 6) argued, there was clear evidence that the West and the Third World were drifting further apart:

we have to remember that when these demands for justice were first put forward, the leaders of Third World peoples spoke as supplicants in

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a world in which the Western powers were still in a dominant position. The demands that were put forward had necessarily to be justified in terms of … conventions of which the Western powers were the principal authors; the moral appeal had to be cast in terms that would have most resonance in Western societies. But as … non-Western peoples have become stronger … and as the Westernised leaders of the early years of independence have been replaced in many countries by new leaders more representative of local or indigenous forces, Third World spokesmen have become freer to adopt a rhetoric that sets Western values aside, or … places different interpretations upon them. Today there is legitimate doubt as to how far the demands emanating from the Third World coalition are compatible with the moral ideas of the West.

Intriguing questions about the future of solidarism are raised by these comments, which foreshadowed the more recent analysis of the coming ‘clash of civilizations’ and discussions about whether the rise of ‘indige- nous’ values and the development of radical or militant Islamic groups will deepen rivalries with the West (Huntington 1993). Yet nothing in Bull’s writings suggests that the breakdown of international society is imminent. As we shall see in the next section, Bull believed that the majority of new states accepted the basic principles of international soci- ety including the ideas of sovereignty and non-intervention. Despite cultural and other differences which seemed to be increasing, new states and old could agree on some universal principles of coexistence and on some moral universals such as the principle of racial equality. How dif- ferent societies come to agree on the universal principles pertinent to either a pluralist or solidarist conception of international society is the central theme in a form of analysis which steers clear of the fatalism of neo-realism and a naïve belief in the inevitability of global progress which occasionally surfaces in triumphalist forms of liberalism. In the end, diplomatic practice decides how far states can agree on moral and political universals which transcend cultural and other differences. On such foundations does the claim to be the via media between realism and revolutionism finally rest.

The revolt against the West and the expansion of international society

The impact of the revolt against the West upon the modern society of states was central to Bull and Watson’s writings in the 1980s. Their key question was whether the diverse civilizations which had been brought together by the expansion of Europe have similar views about how to

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maintain order and belong to an international society rather than an international system. To answer this question it was necessary to recall the world of the late eighteenth century. In that era, there were four dominant regional international orders (the Chinese, European, Indian and Islamic). Moreover, ‘most of the governments in each group had a sense of being part of a common civilization superior to that of the others’ (Bull and Watson 1984: 87). Although European states were committed to the principle of sovereign equality within their own continent, they rejected the view that other societies had the same sovereign rights. Exactly how Europe should behave towards its colonies was always a matter of dispute. Some claimed the right to enslave or annihilate con- quered peoples while others argued that they were equally members of the universal society of humankind and entitled to be treated humanely. The dominant theories of empire in the twentieth century, as expressed in the League of Nations’ mandates system and the trusteeship system of the United Nations, maintained that colonial powers had a duty to pre- pare non-European peoples for their eventual admission into the society of states on equal terms with Western members (Bain 2003).

The Europeans believed that this transition would take many decades if not centuries, in part because other civilizations had to divest themselves of a hegemonial conception of international society in which they were believed to be at the centre of the world. China, for example, saw itself as the Middle Kingdom which deserved tribute from other societies which were thought to be at a lower stage of development. Traditional Islamic views of International Relations distinguished between the House of Islam (Dar al Islam) and the House of War (Dar al Harb) – between believers and infidels – though the possibility of a temporary truce (Dar al Suhl) with non-Islamic powers was allowed. No less committed to a hegemonial view of international order, the European powers believed that membership of the society of states was impossible for those that had yet to reach their ‘standard of civilization’ (Gong 1984).

What this meant was that different civilizations belonged to an inter- national system in the eighteenth century. With the expansion of Europe, other peoples were forced to comply with its conception of the world and, gradually, most of those societies came to accept European principles of international society. But they came to enjoy equal membership of the international society of states only after a long struggle to dismantle Europe’s sense of its own moral superiority and political invincibility.

Bull (in Bull and Watson 1984: 220–4) called this struggle ‘the revolt against the West’ and argued that it had five main components. The first was ‘the struggle for equal sovereignty’ undertaken by societies such as China and Japan which had ‘retained their formal independence’ but were considered ‘inferior’ to the Western powers. These societies were

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governed by unequal treaties ‘concluded under duress’; because of the principle of ‘extra-territoriality’, they were denied the right to settle dis- putes involving foreigners according to domestic law. As a consequence of the legal revolt against the West, Japan joined the society of states in 1900, Turkey in 1923, Egypt in 1936 and China in 1943. The political revolt against the West was a second phase in this process. In this case, the former colonies which had lost their former independence demanded freedom from colonial domination. The racial revolt against the West which included the struggle to abolish slavery and the slave trade as well as all forms of white supremacism was the third part of the quest for freedom and dignity; a fourth dimension was the economic revolt against the forms of inequality and exploitation associated with a Western-dominated global commercial and financial system. The fifth revolt, the cultural revolt, was a protest against all forms of Western cultural imperialism, including the West’s assumption that it was entitled to decide how other peoples should live, not least by universalizing liberal- individualistic conceptions of human rights.

Bull maintained that the first four dimensions of the revolt of the Third World appealed to Western conceptions of freedom and equality and tried to make the colonial powers take their own principles seriously in their relations with the non-European parts of the world. This seemed to signify a desire to emulate the West’s path of social and political devel- opment. But as already noted the cultural revolt was different because it was often ‘a revolt against Western values as such’ (Bull and Watson 1984: 223). The inevitable question was whether the expansion of interna- tional society which occurred because of the revolt against the West would lead to new forms of conflict and disharmony. The importance of this question has been underlined by the religious revolt, and specifically by certain Islamic forms of revolt against the West, embodied in Al-Qaeda, which are opposed to American support for Israel, to its policy of sup- porting what are held to be corrupt pro-Western elites in the Middle East and to the spread of Western secular values. Significantly, the ‘September 11’ terrorist attacks on the United States were not followed by diplomatic demands which are usually compromised as part of the usual ‘give and take’ of politics. This was a new form of revolt against the West, one in which the use of force did not conform with Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Where this new revolt against the West will lead, and what it means for the future of international society, will be central questions in the field for years to come. For some, there is no sharper reminder of the value of Samuel Huntington’s controversial thesis that, contrary to Francis Fukuyama’s belief in the triumph of liberal democracy, new

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fault-lines are emerging around ancient divisions between civilizations (Fukuyama 1992; Huntington 1993). Some who find Huntington’s view of civilizations too simplistic stress that it is important not to lose sight of what the larger cultural revolt against the West means for international society. Chris Brown (1988) has argued that the revolt against the West has challenged ‘the modern requirement’, which is the belief that the West can assume that it has the right to make other societies live in accor- dance with its values. This raises the interesting question of whether an agreement about pluralist principles of world political organization is all that very different societies can achieve, and perhaps all they should aim for.

Bull and Watson’s view in the 1980s was that growing cultural conflict and an emerging cosmopolitan culture of modernity were developing in tandem. This is to suggest, contrary to the views summarized in the pre- ceding paragraph, that tensions between the ‘pluralist’ and ‘solidarist’ conceptions of international society might well deepen in future. If this was their prediction, then it has turned out to be broadly correct, as we can see from the widening gulf between those who believe in promoting universal human rights (by force if necessary) and those who believe it is necessary to strengthen respect for national sovereignty in the face of the new imperialism. Bull and Watson believed that an international order which reflected the interests of non-Western states had been largely con- structed by the 1980s. They were also clear that international society would not command the support of the majority of non-Western peoples unless more radical change took place (Bull and Watson 1984: 429). In particular, there would need to be a radical redistribution of power and wealth from North to South (Bull 1977: 316–17). This is important, given Bull’s earlier thinking about the tension between order and justice. Although Bull continued to argue that ‘justice is best realised in the context of order’, he was much more inclined in his last writings to argue that greater justice is needed to ensure the survival of international order. We see this in his claim that the ‘measures that are necessary to achieve justice for peoples of the Third World are the same measures that will maximise the prospects of international order or stability, at least in the long run’ (Bull 1984a: 18).

Bull did not live to witness the further expansion of international society through the fragmentation of the Soviet bloc and the disintegration of several Third World societies. New challenges for international society have been posed by national–secessionist movements which argue that sometimes justice can be realized only ‘at the price of order’ (Keal 1983: 210). New problems have been created by the appearance of ‘failed states’ (Helman and Ratner 1992–3), by gross violations of human rights in civil conflicts, by regimes which are in a state of war with sections

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of their own population, by governments such as the Taliban in Afghanistan which provided a safe haven for terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda and by authoritarian regimes such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein where the United States and the United Kingdom feared that WMD might end up in the hands of terrorist organizations dedicated to causing as much suffering as possible to civilian populations. But, as we shall see, such developments reinforce Bull and Watson’s claim that modern international society is increasingly divided between pluralist and solidarist principles of world political organization (Hurrell 2002).

Robert Jackson’s Quasi-States (1990) offered a new approach to the expansion of international society by focusing on what has become a core issue of world politics, namely the problem of the ‘failed state’. Jackson’s starting-point was that Third World states were admitted into the society of states as sovereign equals without any assurance that they could govern themselves effectively. Indeed, in 1960 the UN General Assembly consciously departed from the long-standing principle that a people had to demonstrate a capacity for good government before its claim for self-government could hope to succeed. Many new states acquired ‘negative sovereignty’ – the right to be free from external interference – when they clearly lacked ‘positive sovereignty’ – the ability to satisfy the basic needs of their populations. One consequence of the acquisition of sovereignty was that ruling elites were legally free to do as they pleased within their respective territories. Violators of human rights were then in a position to appeal to Article 2, para.7 of the UN Charter, which asserts that the international community does not have the right ‘to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state’.

Jackson (1990) raised the question of whether a more effective sys- tem of global trusteeship could have prepared the colonies for political independence, and some have argued that the international community has to take responsibility for governing states which are no longer economically or politically viable (see also Helman and Ratner 1992–3). A related question in this context was whether the consent of the gov- ernment of the target state is absolutely necessary before the interna- tional community can take action of this kind (1992–3).

Genocide in Rwanda, violence against the people of East Timor, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan in 2004–5 and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans have reopened the debate about the rights and wrongs of humanitarian intervention. The debate over NATO’s involvement in Kosovo in 1999 revealed there is no consensus on whether the right of sovereignty can be overridden by an allegedly higher moral principle of protecting human rights. Some observers supported NATO’s actions on the grounds that states have duties to the whole of humanity and not just

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to co-nationals (Havel 1999: 6). Others criticized NATO for what they saw as a breach of the UN Charter, for its highly selective approach to dealing with human rights violations and for acts of violence which compounded the misery of the local population (Chomsky 1999a). The debate over the war against Iraq has deepened these divisions, with some such as Blair arguing that the war was justified not only because the regime was a danger to other societies but because it was guilty of gross violations of human rights. Others argue that the American and British governments are guilty of placing themselves above international society by acting outside the UN system where each state has legal equality (although Bush and Blair have maintained that they are defending that society by developing new principles such as the doctrine of preventive war in the face of previously unimagined threats). The echoes of an older tension between the ‘pluralist’ and ‘solidarist’ conceptions of interna- tional society can be heard in these different reactions to how to deal with human rights violators and with regimes that are deemed to be ‘outlaws’ in international society. It remains to be seen whether the society of states can agree on the need for intervention in the case of supreme humanitarian emergences while at the same time resisting any more general attempt to weaken respect for the principle of non-intervention’ (Roberts 1993; see also Vincent and Wilson 1994). In examining the diplomacy which surrounds such debates, the English School comes into its own.

Progress in international relations

Quite how far progress in international relations is possible is one of the most intriguing questions in the field. In one essay, Wight (1966: 26) maintained that the international system is ‘the realm of recurrence and repetition’, a formulation which is repeated in Waltz’s classic statement of neo-realism (Waltz 1979: 66). The argument of this chapter is that the English School is principally about progress in the form of agreements about how to maintain order and, to a lesser degree, about how to promote support for principles of justice. Bull’s writings on this subject often suggested that order is prior to justice, the point being that inter- national order is a fragile achievement and that states have been unable to agree on the meaning of global justice. At times, Bull seems to be aligned with what Wight described as the ‘realist’ wing of rationalism but, on other occasions, he is much closer to its ‘idealist’ wing (Wight 1991: 59). Towards the end of his life, it has been argued, Bull moved significantly towards a more ‘solidarist’ point of view (see Dunne 1998: Chapter 7).

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This apparent change of heart is most pronounced in the Hagey Lectures delivered at the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1983 (Bull 1984b). It is illustrated by the comment that ‘the idea of sovereign rights existing apart from the rules laid down by international society itself and enjoyed without qualification has to be rejected in principle’, not least because ‘the idea of the rights and duties of the individual person has come to have a place, albeit an insecure one’ within the society of states ‘and it is our responsibility to seek to extend it’ (Bull 1984b: 11–12). The ‘moral concern with welfare on a world scale’ was evidence of a ‘growth of … cosmopolitan moral awareness’ which amounted to ‘a major change in our sensibilities’ (1984b: 13). The changing global agenda made it necessary for states to become the ‘local agents of a world common good’ (1984b: 14).

It would be a mistake to suggest that Bull had come to think that solutions to global problems would be any easier to find and that ‘terrible choices’ would no longer have to be made (1984b: 14). Scepticism invariably blunted the visionary impulse. This is clear from his observation that new, post-sovereign political communities might yet develop in Western Europe. An intriguing passage in The Anarchical Society (1977) states that the time may be ripe for new principles of regional political organization which recognize the need for sub-national, national and supranational tiers of government but reject the notion that any of them should enjoy exclusive sovereignty (Bull 1977: 267). A ‘neo-medievalist’ Western Europe could ‘avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states’ by encouraging ‘overlapping structures and criss-crossing loyalties’ (1977: 255). But such a world would not be free from dangers. Medieval international society, with its complex structure of overlapping jurisdic- tions and multiple loyalties, had been even more violent than the modern system of states (1977: 255). Bull (1979b) set out a qualified defence of the society of states which argued, against the revolutionists, that most states still play a ‘positive role in world affairs’. Despite its many faults, the society of states was unlikely to be bettered by any other form of world political organization in the foreseeable future.

We have considered how the English School differs from realism and neo-realism; it is now necessary to turn to its assessment of ‘revolutionism’ and the various critiques of the international society of states which have been developed by advocates of that perspective. Bull (1977: 22) argued that the essence of revolutionism can be found in the Kantian belief in ‘a horizontal conflict of ideology that cuts across the boundaries of states and divides human society into two camps – the trustees of the immanent community of mankind and those who stand in its way, those who are of the true faith and the heretics, the liberators and the oppressed’. The Kantian interpretation of international society believed that diplomatic

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conventions should be set aside in the quest for the unification of humankind. ‘Good faith with heretics’ had no intrinsic value; it had no more than ‘tactical convenience’ because ‘between the elect and the damned, the liberators and the oppressed, the question of mutual accep- tance of rights to sovereignty or independence does not arise’ (1977: 24).

Many writers, including Stanley Hoffmann (1990: 23–4), have argued that Kant was ‘less cosmopolitan and universalist in his writings on international affairs than Bull suggests’. Indeed, for all his cosmopoli- tanism Kant defended a society of sovereign states which respected the principle of non-intervention. For this reason, ‘Kantianism’ seems an inappropriate term for describing a group of visionary perspectives which Bull and Wight ultimately rejected. The idea of revolutionism is also troubling because it groups together thinkers as diverse as Kant, Lenin (who defended the violent overthrow of the bourgeois interna- tional order) and Gandhi (who believed in non-violent resistance). However, what most troubled English School thinkers such as Bull and Wight was the ‘revolutionist’ belief that peace will not come about in international relations until all societies share the same universal ideology. Wight thought that Kant believed that peace would exist only when the whole world consisted of republican states (Wight 1991: 421–2), although recent scholars have challenged this interpretation (MacMillan 1995). The important point to comprehend, however, was that the English School has defended international society from those who are intolerant of its deficiencies, impatient to see change and keen to use force and chi- canery to bring other societies round to their preferred ideology. There is a parallel here with those classical realists who were opposed to the cru- sading mentality in international relations (see Chapter 3 in this volume).

Wight always stressed that ‘rationalism’ overlapped with realism and revolutionism. We have seen one point of convergence between realism and the English School. One point of overlap between the English School and revolutionism can be found in Wight’s lectures where he described Kant as like the rationalist who is first and foremost ‘a reformist, the practitioner of piecemeal social engineering’ (Wight 1991: 29). The classic works of the English School tended to shy away from visions of how the world could or should be organized. In Bull’s case, this was because there was no reason to suppose that political philosophers would succeed where diplomats had repeatedly failed, namely in identifying moral prin- ciples which all or most societies could regard as the foundations of an improved international order. On the other hand, Bull’s argument that international order must ultimately be judged by what it contributes to world order, and Wight’s claim that the main political task is to promote order and security ‘from which law, justice and prosperity may afterwards develop’, both suggest that something can be said about the direction

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which international society should ideally take. Interestingly, this might have taken Bull and Wight closer to Kant, who thought the challenge was to build law and civility not only within or between separate states but across the whole of world society. Some thinkers such as Habermas (1997), who see their task as building on Kant’s thought, believe this goal is best achieved by developing international criminal law and by creating cosmopolitan democratic institutions which will work to ensure that all global actors (states, multinational corporations (MNCs) and so forth) are accountable to those they affect.

What is principally at stake here is the question of how states and other actors can create a world community without jeopardising the existence of the society of states. Interestingly, Bull (1969/1995) thought that Karl Deutsch’s writings on ‘security communities’ (communities whose members have renounced the use of force in their relations with one another in accordance with a heightened sense of ‘we-feeling’) were ‘pregnant with implications for a general theory of international relations’. Deutsch, Bull argued, was unusual in reflecting on different types of political community, on their ‘distinguishing features’, on the ‘elements’ that provide for their ‘cohesion’ and, crucially, on the extent of their ‘responsiveness’ to the interests and well-being of other peoples (Bull 1966b). This interest in Deutsch’s thinking is unsurprising because a society of states can exist only if independent political communities are sensitive to one another’s legitimate economic and political interests and tolerant of diverse moral and cultural standpoints (Wight 1991: 120, 248). Similarly, the development of the elements of a world community, however rudimentary, depends on the extent to which states are moved by ‘purposes beyond themselves’ – not only by maintaining order between separate, sovereign states but by promoting a world order which is concerned with security and justice for individuals (Bull 1973: 137). These are themes which became more important to the English School with Bull’s later solidarism, Vincent’s defence of the universal human right to be free from starvation, in Dunne and Wheeler’s essays on human rights and good international citizenship and in Wheeler’s argument for intervention in the case of ‘supreme humanitarian emer- gencies’ and for stronger protection for civilians in times of war. The common theme here is the need for greater international cooperation, not to impose a set of moral principles on reluctant states but to do as much as possible to help what Dunne and Wheeler (1999) have called ‘suffering humanity’.

Before drawing this chapter to a close it is useful to note how the English School stands in relation to some other current branches of International Relations theory. There is a parallel between the English School’s study of international society and neo-liberal institutionalist

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arguments about how cooperation is possible even in the context of anarchy. Members of the English School have not followed neo-liberal institutionalists by using game theory to explain how cooperation can evolve between rational egotists (Keohane 1989a). Indeed, the notion that international theory can start with rational egotists is anathema to members of the English School, who believe that the interests of states are always defined in relation to, and shaped, by the moral and legal principles of international society. There is a parallel with constructivism (see Chapter 8 in this volume) which claims that state interests are socially constructed and influenced by global norms. Similarly, members of the English School agree with constructivism that anarchy is to use Wendt’s famous phrase, ‘what states make of it’ (Wendt 1992). Likewise, both schools see sovereignty not as an unchanging reality of world politics but as a phenomenon whose meaning alters in accordance with shifting ideas about, for example, the place that human rights should have in international society. As Bull points out, states can make an international system or an international society out of the condition of anarchy, and there are times when they may be able to make their society conform with some basic principles of human justice (see also Wight 1977 and Reus-Smit 1999). Nothing is pre-ordained here; every- thing depends on how states think of themselves as separate political communities and what they take to be their rights against, and duties to, the rest of humankind. This is why members of the English School have been especially interested in the legal and moral dimensions of world politics, in the relationship between order and justice in international affairs, in how much progress states have made in creating society and whether or not they are likely to succeed in building a world community.

Reference was made earlier to the extent to which critical approaches have influenced the English School (see p. 88). It is also the case that different branches of critical theory (whether derived from the Frankfurt School or from postmodern approaches – see Chapters 6 and 7 in this volume) have also drawn on English School writing (Der Derian 1987; Linklater 1998). Members of the English School have long had an interest in cultural diversity in international politics and in some ways predate postmodern inquiries into ‘otherness’. The fourth chapter of Wight’s International Theory: The Three Traditions (1991) reveals a close interest in approaches to the ‘colonized other’. As noted, Bull and Watson’s analy- sis of the expansion of international society displays a special concern with the revolt against the West and poses a question which has drawn the attention of various critical approaches to international relations, specifically whether culturally diverse societies can agree on any universal legal and moral principles or are destined to be divided over how far these express sectional interests and parochial preferences.

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Understandably, the English School has devoted much attention to the ‘diplomatic dialogue’ between states (Watson 1982), while recognizing that states are often tempted to use force to realize their objectives or to resolve major differences. It is important to stress that Bull’s analysis of the revolt against the West brought out moral differences between ‘North’ and ‘South’ which cannot be resolved by force but require the search for agreement through a process of dialogue. It has been argued that Bull’s claim that the modern society of states should come to rest on the consent of all peoples, the majority of whom live in the poorest regions of the world, has been developed further in notions of ‘cosmopoli- tan conversations’ which hold that all human beings have the moral right to participate in making decisions that may adversely affect them (Linklater 1998: Chapter 6; Shapcott 1994). But it is important not to press these points too far. It is essential to remember that Bull had little time for visions of alternative forms of world political organization which stray too far from the practicalities of foreign policy; that Jackson gives expression to a powerful element in the English School approach when he argues that the role of the analyst is to understand the actual world of international politics rather than give vent to moral prefer- ences; and that most members of the School doubt whether states – even the best-intentioned – have the political will, vision and competence to create a better form of world political organisation (Mayall 2000). It is perfectly possible that had they lived, Wight, Bull and Vincent would have applauded recent attempts to promote human rights, to weaken the principle of sovereign immunity and to prosecute those accused of com- mitting war crimes; but they might not have been wholly surprised that the new humanitarian discourse has resulted in forms of violence such as the war against Iraq which have created new divisions in international society.

Conclusion

In The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939, E. H. Carr (1939/1945/1946: 12) argued that international theory should avoid the ‘sterility’ of realism and the ‘naivety’ of idealism. The English School can claim to have passed this test of a good international theory. They have analysed elements of society and civility which have been of little interest to realists. Although they have been principally concerned with understanding international order, they have also considered the prospects for global justice and some have made the moral case for creating a more just world order. Members of the English School are not convinced by utopian or revolutionist arguments which maintain that states can settle

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their most basic differences about morality and justice. The idea that the English School is the via media between realism and revolutionism rests on such considerations.

The English School argues that international society is a precarious achievement but the only context within which more radical develop- ments can take place. Advances in the global protection of human rights, they argue, will not occur in the absence of international order. It is to be expected that there will always be two sides to the English School: the side that is quick to detect threats to international society and the side that identifies ways in which that society might become more responsive to the needs of individuals and their various associations. The relationship between these different orientations changes and will continue to change in response to historical circumstances. The Cold War years did little to encourage the search for alternative principles of world order; the ‘solidarist’ conception of international society was deemed to be ‘premature’. In many respects the passing of bipolarity was more conducive to the development of solidarism although discussions about whether states should intervene to prevent human rights viola- tions have brought the ‘solidarist’ concern with individual rights into conflict with the ‘pluralist’ stress on the dangers involved in breaching national sovereignty. The age of American hegemony inevitably raises the question of whether the ‘solidarist’ theme has been hijacked by the dominant political interests in the United States and the United Kingdom, and whether the society of states now confronts new challenges to its survival. In contemporary debates about such matters, one can see echoes of the English School’s long discussion about the relative importance of ‘system’, ‘society’ and ‘community’ in international affairs. Its reflec- tions on these matters look certain to remain important for future efforts to understand the shifting sands of world politics.