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International Relations in the UK 1919-2005:

Traditions, perspectives and destinations

Knud Erik Jørgensen & Tonny Brems Knudsen

December 2005

Institut for Statskundskab

Aarhus Universitet

Bartholins Allé

8000 Århus C

Tlf: 8942 1111

Fax: 8613 9839

Web: www.ps.au.dk

Department of Political Science

University of Aarhus

Bartholins Allé

DK-8000 Aarhus C ● Denmark

Tel: +45 8942 1111

Fax: +45 8613 9839

Web: www.ps.au.dk

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International Relations in the UK 1919-2005:

Traditions, perspectives and destinations

Knud Erik Jørgensen & Tonny Brems Knudsen

Introduction

From a continental European perspective Britain looks, in many respects, like ‘little America’. In

the UK we find the biggest and best organised International Relations (IR) community in Europe

with the biggest and best annual conference and a unique journal and book publication

infrastructure covering a variety of subjects and theoretical approaches. Furthermore, Britain has

become a global hub for teaching International Relations meaning that in terms of numbers alone,

there are reasons to claim uniqueness. In general, there is a cosmopolitan flavour to the enterprise

which is further underlined by the fact that foreigners regularly serve on the board of the British

International Studies Association (BISA).

Compared to the rest of Europe, these features are nothing but unique. But British IR is not

simply ‘little America’. Indeed, with reference to special characteristics like the integration of

history and theory, the inclusion of fields like international law, international ethics, diplomatic

studies, sociology, political theory and philosophy, and a tradition of theoretical pluralism and

tolerance, it can be argued that British IR has qualitatively even more to offer than American IR.

This also makes it a formidable task to analyse British IR in any comprehensive or exhaustive

fashion. Fortunately, there are several accounts available which try to accomplish this task in whole

or in part (Hill, 1989; Richardson, 1990; Olsen and Groom, 1991; Smith 1985, 1992, 2000; Holden

2003), and the existence of such a critical mass of self-reflection is in itself a sign of the

distinctiveness of British IR.

In contrast, the present study has an inescapable character of a view from abroad and the

approach is neither comparative nor particularly critical. Instead, we focus on the cultural,

institutional and theoretical aspects highlighted in the introduction to this book, and especially on

(1) the major debates that have unfolded within and around British IR from the initiation of an

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independent university discipline in 1919, and (2) original British contributions to the ongoing

development of IR theory. As a consequence of the latter point, a good deal of attention is paid to

the theoretical flagship of British IR, namely the English School which serves as an ongoing point

of reference and a structural device for our analysis of the discipline. We are acutely aware that this

will not be equally applauded in all quarters of British IR. However, although the theoretical and

scientific claims of the English School can be disputed, it can hardly be disputed that this school has

developed the best known and most influential distinctly British contribution to IR theory at the

international level, namely the international society approach. The school is also the back-bone of

British IR in the sense that it continues to give it identity and coherence. For many scholars, it is a

theoretical, methodological and normative position to write from, relate to or argue against much

like Realism has been it for American IR and for the global discipline. Consequently, the English

School has been at the centre of some heated debates in British IR and beyond, sometimes as a part

of a larger British movement as in the second great debate over methodology in the 1960s,

sometimes as the object of criticism from other British quarters including critical theory and

political theory, and sometimes in internal strife as for instance in the debate between conservative

pluralists and progressive solidarists.

The focus on the major debates of British IR takes us through (1) the foundational idealist-

realist confrontation which has played a central role as a catalyst for the evolution of the international

society approach no matter whether the confrontation is regarded as an historical reality or as a

subsequent linguistic construction; (2) the great debate over methodology in the 1960’s which re-

enforced and constituted British IR in the well-known multidisciplinary, interpretive and reflective

approach to knowledge; (3) the more or less friendly fire from solidarist and critical quarters from the

1980’s and up till today which has arguably reformed the theories and outlook of the English School;

and (4) the so-called reconvening of the English School enterprise including the supportive and critical

responses that has surrounded it, and the prospects of fruitful encounters.

The arguments are as follows: First, despite the recent scepticism concerning the historical

reality of the realist-idealist debate in western IR (Schmidt; Wilson) British IR has been heavily

informed by it. On the positive side, it has developed the international society approach and especially

the constitutive analysis of fundamental institutionalism as a reaction to it. On the negative side, its

theoretical flagship, the English School, has taken a very long time to get rid of its fear of becoming

directly associated with the inter-war internationalism which was (allegedly) destroyed by E.H. Carr,

although more recent encounters with solidarist and critical perspectives have played a constructive

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role in balancing conservative tendencies. Second, the comparative advantages of British IR over

American and (to some extent) continental European IR is not only a consequence of an ability to

combine political theory with IR theory as argued by Chris Brown (2000). It is, more broadly, a

consequence of a combination of the theory of international society and the multi-disciplinary classical

approach which allows the English School and British IR to draw on international law and

international ethics as well in original analyses of institutional change, political community and the use

of force to mention some leading examples. Third, the political theory of international society and its

historical foundation in constitutive and fundamental institutions, international rules and international

ethics provide British IR with a relatively stable and relatively objective platform for critical

evaluations of current political change. Most recently, this critical potential and comparative advantage

has been evident in evaluations of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention, the war against terror

following 9-11, and not least the war against Iraq. Fourth, the so-called reconvening of the English

School initiated by Barry Buzan (2001) has so far been successful and further progress is likely,

especially if British IR starts paying serious attention to related continental IR theory. However, it is

important to distinguish between the English School as a distinct and original IR theory and the

English School as a fruitful site for a great theoretical conversation.

The Formation of British IR: Idealism, Realism and the Third Way

According to the conventional account, the rise of an independent discipline of IR can be related to

a double institutional move following World War I: firstly, the creation of the League of Nations as

an attempt to secure the peace by means of international law and world organization; secondly, the

creation of IR departments or sub-sections in the UK and the US as a means of improving the

academic knowledge of this subject and thereby contribute to the prevention of another disastrous

world war (Zimmern, 1939: 7-8; Olson, 1972: 10-13, 16-18; Kennedy, 1987: 852-863; Dougherty

and Pfaltzgraff, 1971: 3-6).1

Institutionally and normatively, British IR was indeed launched in the years following World

War I as an attempt to do better in the study of IR and as a contribution to peace, order and

cooperation. Thus, having taken over (from Alfred Zimmern) the Woodrow Wilson Chair of

International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth - the first chair of international

relations in Britain established in 1919 on the initiative of David Davies who wanted academic

support for the League of Nations - Charles K. Webster said in his inaugural lecture in February

1 For a rejection of this conventional account with respect to the US see Schmidt, 1998.

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1923 that if an ordered and scientific body of knowledge had existed in 1914, “the catastrophe

might have been averted” (cited in Olson, 1972: 10). Two other leading British professors of

International Relations of the inter-war period, Charles A.W. Manning (London) and Alfred

Zimmern (Aberystwyth, Oxford) also believed in international law and organization, although

Manning never expected more of the League of Nations than the states were ‘willing and able to

practice at any one time’ (Northedge, 1979: 3). They also belived in the potential of the new

discipline although they differed on their views as to whether the field should be seen as unique and

independent (although it was to draw on elements from Sociology, International Law, Economics,

Diplomatic Studies, Ethics and Philosophy) as in the case of Manning (1962: ix-ii, 211-213), who

played with terms like ‘Social Cosmology’ and ‘Meta-diplomacy’ for the debutant discipline (Ibid:

x, 211), or rather as a ‘special branch’ of established university disciplines including Sociology,

History, Political Science and Philosophy as in the case of Zimmern (Zimmern, 1939; Olson, 1972:

13, 20).2

In spite of the leap forward following World War I the element of continuity in early British IR

should not be underestimated. Before 1919 the subject of international relations was taught in

British universities from inside the fields of History, International law, Philosophy, Ethics,

Government and Economics, and as early as 1916 scholars from these various disciplines were also

brought together to present their respective perspectives on the subject which had by then become

known as International Relations (Olson, 1972: 7, 16-17).3 Strikingly, when evaluating the

discipline in 1938, S.H. Bailey pointed to Diplomatic History, International Law and early Political

Science as the disciplinary sources of studies of International Relations, but without quite the

optimism of 1919: Diplomatic history was criticised for looking back, international lawyers for

preferring case studies (rather than theoretic analysis) when dealing with international relations, and

Political science for being too immature in Britain in contrast to the state of affairs in the USA

(Olson, 1972: 11-12). Bailey and others were apparently hoping for something more, but in Britain

the academic study of IR remained indebted to classical university disciplines like History,

International Law, Philosophy, Sociology and Economics. The list of contributors to Peaceful

Chance: An international problem edited by the Charles A.W. Manning (1937) is a case in point:

Arnold Toynbee and C.K.Webster, professors of International History; L.C. Robbins and T.E.

Gregory, Professors of Economics; Lucy P. Mair, Lecturer in Colonial Administration; Karl

Mannheim, Lecturer in Sociology; Hersch Lauterpacht, Reader in Public International Law, and

C.A.W. Manning, Professor of International Relations.

2 Zimmern and Manning put forward their respective views on the young discipline at the

international conference on the University Teaching of International Relations in Prague, May 1938

(Zimmern, 1939). 3 A.J. Grant et al (London, 1916) presented work by scholars representing History, Law, Philosophy

and Economics under the title “An Introduction to the Study of International Relations”.

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Elements of continuity are not the same as a lack of progress, however. Firstly, much of the work

that has been associated with liberal and legal internationalism was not simply of an idealist or

speculative nature, it was also analytic, systematic and realistic. Thus, in early 1937 C.K Webster

systematically discussed the dimensions, sub-problems and requirements of peaceful change while

noting that the attempt to establish a system of collective security had failed (Webster, 1937: 3-24).

In the same volume Manning (1937: 178-190) carefully discussed how Hersch Lauterpacht’s (1937:

140-165) seemingly utopian proposal for the development of an international legislature could

realistically be given some political substance, namely in ways that foreshadowed much of the

content of the United Nations and its Charter.

Secondly, around World War II British IR fostered path-breaking classical realist work, most

notably by E.H. Carr, Georg Schwarzenberger, Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield. Most famous

is E.H. Carr’s attack on liberal and internationalist utopianism in the Twenty Year’s Crisis (first

published in 1939) which he contrasted with the detached realist analysis of power and conflicting

national interests, but not without warning against realist cynicism and a limited ability to identify

meaningful behaviour (Carr, 1964: 89-94). Furthermore, as pointed out by Tim Dunne (1998: 26-

31, 38) there was a critical potential in Carr’s argument that the defenders of the status quo were the

satisfied powers, who wanted to keep their privileges, and in the related but more fundamental point

that any international standard of right behaviour, be it politically, morally or legally, is of a

contingent nature, meaning that it could have at the most a relative validity.

Another highly influential British classical realist was the young Martin Wight who presented

his historically informed analysis of the basics and patterns of Power Politics in 1946. In this first

version of the book, the conception of an international society based on fundamental institutions

associated with his later work (including the expanded version of Power Politics edited by Hedley

Bull and Carsten Holbraad and published in 1978) was almost absent, but Wight’s systematic and

historically informed analysis of the bases and patterns of power politics was compatible with and

comparable to his later analyses of the institutional bases and patterns of international society

Herbert Butterfield was among the leading figures of British classical realism of the 1940’s and

50’s as well. Like Martin Wight, he had his roots in the discipline of history (with a touch of

theology) and like Wight (and Schwarzenberger4) he gradually moved towards a more Grotian

position with the concept of international society at the centre. Among Butterfield’s (1951: 19, 21)

most important theoretical achievements was his early insight into the security dilemma or the

´Hobbessian fear’ which he saw as ‘the absolute predicament and the irreducible dilemma’ namely

that ‘you yourself may vividly feel the terrible fear that you have of the other party, but you cannot

4 It is interesting to note the change in the subtitle of Schwarzenberger’s Power Politics over the

three editions of 1941, 1951 and 1964: “An Introduction to the Study of International Relations and

Post-War Planning” (1941), “A Study of International Society” (1951), and “A Study of World

Society” (1964). The unfolding of history and the evolution of the international society tradition in

Britain are, so it seems, directly reflected in the subtitles.

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enter into the other man’s counter-fear. Butterfield (1949: 89-91; 1951: 17-29) developed his work

on the security dilemma in parallel with, but independent of, John Herz’s (1950) work on this

subject on the other side of the Atlantic, both being informed by the early Cold-War climate.5

Strikingly, Butterfield’s approach was historical and interpretative although he had at the same time

a clear image of the dilemma as a consequence of the anarchical structure of the international

system combined with the ideologically informed mutual fear; a dilemma which could hardly be

escaped by human creation or reason.6

At the beginning of the 1950’s, British IR had, in its legal, historical, institutionalist and

classical realist quarters become more systematic, more scientific and more theoretical. At the same

time British IR remained indebted to the interdisciplinary tradition that followed from the still

dominant intellectual sources of classical disciplines like history, law, sociology and philosophy,

the common denominator of most of them being an interpretive and historical approach. This shows

- as later British achievements - that the classical interpretive approach can perfectly well lead to the

development of IR-theory in spite of some American scepticism (Keohane, 1988; 1989: 8).

As for theoretical debate, the most important encounter was E.H. Carr’s famous attack on

utopian idealism in Twenty Year’s Crisis (1939) which played a central role in paving the way for

the academic triumph of detached realism. In fact, the idealist-realist debate did not gain real

strength until after World War II, although the distinction, and sometimes the direct encounter,

between the utopians and the realists were present in interwar publications on both sides of the

Atlantic.7 However, in the years after World War II the resentment of the internationalists over the

rhetoric of realists like E.H. Carr was outspoken. Thus, in 1953 the distinguished international

lawyer and a champion of mid-twentieth century neo-Grotian internationalism, Hersch Lauterpacht

(who left Germany for England before World War II) formulated his counter-attack on Carr and the

leading American realists including Morgenthau, Kennan and Herz as follows:

“For what is the method of the typical realist who confronts us in argument? He says: ‘I

am a realist; I am a sound person; I am a practical man; I look to realities; I see things as

they are and not as I would like them to be.’ To his opponents he says: ‘You are a Utopian;

5 It was John Herz (1950) who suggested the term ‘security dilemma’. Later, he became aware of

Butterfield’s work and paid tribute to it in his own (Herz, 1958: 231-243). 6 But a potential answer was later given by the British international society theorists (some of

which he later joined in the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics): Norms, rules

and institutions of international society as means of reducing uncertainty and creating common

expectations. 7 See Kennedy’s (1987: 873-878; 896-898) account of the clashes of (allegedly) utopian and

pragmatic-realist thinking during World War I and the interwar period, his point being, however,

that the there was a ‘continual historical relocation of the boundary between utopian aspiration and

pragmatic realism’ (Ibid: 877).

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you are a dreamer; you see people and events as what you think they ought to be and not as

what they are’” (Lauterpacht, 1975: 53).8

According to Lauterpacht, the realist thus only sees ‘the conspicuous fact of organized national

society and the amorphous international community’, the state being ‘the guardian of a whole moral

world, but not a factor within an organized world’ (Ibid: 61). Clearly, the internationalist quarters of

British legal institutionalism had from an early point an image of international relations as grounded

in an international societal reality, an image of international society which grew out of the Grotian

tradition in international law (Lauterpacht, 1946).

However, in between Lauterpacht’s (1946) insistence on the potential of international society,

international law and international organization and Carr’s (1939) for internationalism so

destructive insistence on the fallacies of utopianism and the relativist nature of any standard of

international conduct, there was from an early point in time a conscious search for an academic via

media in British IR. As already indicated one of Manning’s early attempts to promote the idea of

international society (1937: 169-190) was shaped mainly as a response to the more internationalist

position taken by Lauterpacht (1937: 135-165), whereas Carr (1964: 162-169, 211-212) rejected both

Lauterpacht and the idea of international society. In other words, there was a conversation between

Carr’s realism on the one hand and Lauterpacht’s and Manning’s ideas of international society on the

other already before World War II, but whereas Lauterpacht went on to write his masterly essay about

“The Grotian Tradition in International Law” (1946) and Manning (1962) continued towards a genuine

theory of international society, Carr remained sceptical about the possibilities of identifying or

grounding a firm institutional and normative basis of an international society as anything more than the

legitimization of principles benefiting the ‘haves’ (Dunne, 1998: 30, 38).9

Serious progress in this search for a theoretical via media capable of integrating history and law

into a basically political theory of international society and its constituent parts began to take shape

in the work of early English School writers during the first two decades after World War II: Charles

Manning starting out from international law and ideas derived from the discipline of sociology and

Martin Wight, and Herbert Butterfield, starting out from classical realism and history. It is sometimes

indicated that the English School has evolved primarily from classical realism (Dunne, 1998;

Hoffmann, 1990), and this is not an unreasonable thesis: Firstly, founding members like Wight and

Butterfield took, as we have seen, a classical realist position on the nature of the international system in

their younger days (Wight, 1946; Butterfield, 1949 and 1951). Secondly, the majority of the members

8 Lauterpacht’s attack on the realists in his paper “On Realism, Especially in International

Relations” from 1953 was originally presented to a small circle of prominent scholars only, but it is

representative of the scepticism towards realism that Lauterpacht expressed also elsewhere. For

other counter-attacks on Carr and the realists, see Wilson, 1998. 9 For a further discussion of the roots of the English School and the international society approach,

see Knudsen, 2000: esp. 197-198.

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of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (established in 1959), which played a

central role in the evolution of the English School, were of a realist orientation and E.H. Carr had a

strong influence on these scholars (Dunne, 1998). Thirdly, classical realist ideas about great power

politics, the balance of power and war play an important role in Hedley Bull’s highly influential book

on The Anarchical Society from 1977.

However, while these realist sources of inspiration should not be dismissed the English School

evolved more in opposition to the realist tradition of thought than as an addendum to it. This is very

evident from Butterfield and Wight’s introduction to Diplomatic Investigations (1966: 11-13) and from

Hedley Bull’s (1966a) masterly essay “Society and Anarchy in International Relations” from the same

volume which is a self-confident and formidable attack on the domestic analogy regarding the

Hobbesian state of nature in international relations and the associated fundamental elements of the

realist position.10

While the early thinking of the English School was to some extent a reaction to the realist school

of thought, it was at the same time a rejection of the post-war habit of describing IR as a debate

between realism and idealism (Bull, 1966b; Dunne, 1998: 38, 54, 58-61). The rejection of this dualism,

which excluded the Grotian via media as a third and equally viable tradition of thought in between

realism and idealism, was at the heart of Wight’s lectures on ‘international theory’ at London School

of Economics from the 1950’s and onwards11

. Although these lectures on the three traditions of

thought were not published in full until many years after Wight’s death (Wight, 1991) they were highly

influential on British IR, firstly because the core of Wight’s ideas was published a number of times in

his own work and in the work of Hedley Bull from the mid-1960’s and onwards (Wight, 1966, Bull,

1966a and b; Bull, 1976; Bull, 1977: 24-27; Porter, 1978), and secondly because they made a strong

impact on a whole generation of scholars who had attended his lectures at the LSE (Bull, 1976: 108;

Stern, 1995; Dunne, 1998: 54). Drawing on the classics of political theory, international law and

diplomacy Wight found something useful in all three traditions. However, he favoured the Grotian

position in most questions (Wight, 1991: 268; Wight, 1966) stressing that the most fundamental

question for the theory of international politics is ‘what is international society’ (Wight, 1991: 30, 30-

48). It is thus plausible to see this school as founded in an original and classical tradition of thought,

namely the Grotian one, although realism has played an important role as well.

Charles Manning was lecturing at the LSE in the 1950’s as well. His course on The Structure of

International Society was initiated in 1949, and generation after generation of students attended it until

he stopped teaching and Alan James took over in the early 1970’s, some ten years after Manning’s

formal retirement (Northedge, 1979: 1-5; Stern, 1995: 6-8; Suganami, 1999: 1). In 1962, Manning

10

On the domestic analogy see also Suganami (1986). 11

According to Dunne (1998: 54) Wight began his lectures on ‘international theory’ at the LSE in

1957, but as indicated also by Dunne, his ideas about the three traditions and international society

must have taken shape earlier.

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finally published his ideas about The Nature of International Society which is regarded by many as the

first general account of the international society perspective of the English School (Manning, 1962).

More recently, Geoffrey Stern (1995) published a textbook entitled The Structure of International

Society which is a testimony to the combined teaching and writings of Manning and Wight, his former

colleagues at the LSE. It seems that F.S. Northedge, Hedley Bull, Alan James, Geoffrey Stern,

Geoffrey Goodwin, Peter Lyon and many other scholars at the LSE12

all got the same strong input on

subjects like international society, law, order, justice, the traditions of thought and the history of the

states system from the combined forces of Wight and Manning.13

The central role played by Wight and

Bull in the establishment of the English School and its international society perspective is undisputable

whereas there has been some discussion about Manning14

(and F.S. Northedge15

). However, there is no

doubt that the IR department at the LSE was and remains a power-house of the English School and

British IR.

Having established The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (another

important institution in the history of British IR) together with Martin Wight in 1959 Herbert

Butterfield became another leading figure in the English School in the 1960’s. As pointed out by Tim

Dunne (1995: 130-131; 1998: 71-88), Butterfield gradually left his tragic realist position (cf. the

discussion of the security dilemma above) in favour of a more Grotian outlook. However, this was

probably considerably later and slightly more hesitating than in the case of Martin Wight, whose realist

manifesto - the original version of Power Politics from 1946 - soon gave way to the more balanced

lecture course on the three traditions of thought at the London School of Economics in the early

1950’s, during which he moved towards a Grotian outlook. However, as it has been stressed by Adam

Watson (1992: 2-5) and Tim Dunne (1995: 130-131; 1998: 71-88) among others, Butterfield’s

12

Dunne (1998: 54) mentions Brian Porter, Maurice Keens-Soper and Jack Spence as well. 13

It is interesting to compare Hedley Bull (1966a, 1977) and Alan James (1973: 60-84; 1978: 91-

106) on international society, international order, international law and international rules. Both

writers draw on a combination of Manning and Wight, James owing most to Manning and Bull

most to Wight, but with an end-product which shows strong similarities. 14

For the debate, see Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2000, Symposium, pp.191-238 and

the follow-up in Vol. 37. 15

Northedge’s theory of international politics differed from Manning’s and Wight’s in some

respects. Firstly, he started out primarily from Political Science when making the case for the

existence of an orderly international political system (Northedge, 1976: 11-33). Secondly, he

favoured the term international system over international society. However, when defining this

system, Northedge (1976: 24) emphasised ‘the existence of an intelligible, regulated and orderly set

of relationships between the parts such that they form a coherent, though complex, whole’.

Furthermore, he paid much attention to international rules distinguishing here between technical

and normative rules ‘as in other social situations’ (25). These and a number of other aspects of his

theoretical conception of international relations associate him to some extent with Manning, Wight

and the rest of the English School.

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contribution to the English school, especially concerning the ambitious attempt to compare the

normative foundations of all historically known states systems, was by no means modest.

What united scholars like Manning, Wight, Butterfield, Watson, Bull and James was the point

that international politics unfold inside a social and political order in which states as well as peoples,

individuals, international organizations and a number of other actors are engaged in habitual and

regularized interaction based on shared interests and values, shared norms and rules, and shared

institutions and practices.16

It is an idea which exists inside the minds of state leaders, diplomats and

ordinary citizens, and which is shared by them and often appealed to in national and international

dialogues at all levels (Manning, 1962; Butterfield and Wight, 1966; James, 1973; Bull, 1977;

Watson, 1982). More importantly, however, the fundamental institutional analysis developed by

especially Wight and later Bull, but discernible also in the work of Manning, James and Watson,

was a powerful way to escape the traps of earlier idealist organizational studies. International

organizations like the League of Nations and the United Nations are obviously much more

vulnerable to change than fundamental meta-institutions like the mutual recognition of sovereignty,

diplomacy, international law, the balance of power, the great power role and war. Fundamental

institutions are grounded in the very history of the states system and to some extent in its political

and social logic, the point being that as soon as you have inescapable interaction between political

units you are also likely to see the institutionalization of claims to independence (sovereignty)

practices of recognition (sovereignty, diplomacy, non-intervention), practices of dialogue

(diplomacy), practices of balance (balance of power, equality), practices and customs limiting the

use of force (war as an institution) and attempts at maintaining and underlining the authority and

standing of such fundamental customs and principles (international law).

The historical and theoretical robustness of fundamental institutions over organizations like the

League of Nations - the prime object of early inter-war optimism and of post-war institutional

scepticism – can thus be explained by their constitutive nature and by the point that the impact of such

fundamental institutions are more to enable than to restrict state behaviour as it has been pointed out by

Wendt and Duval (1989) in an evaluation of British and American institutionalism. This is why Hedley

Bull following Martin Wight referred to international organizations as ‘pseudo institutions’ (Bull,

1977: xiv), an observation which should serve to highlight the entirely different nature of fundamental

institutions and not as an encouragement to disregard international organizations.17

However, as a non-

idealist restatement of the international society envisaged by the legal internationalists, the concept

16

It should be noted that the primacy ascribed to the state over other actors in international politics

varies from writer to writer. 17

Wight devoted a chapter to both the League and the UN in his second version of Power Politics,

and in Hedley Bull’s main work on The Anarchical Society there are numerous references to

international organizations, especially as supportive machineries and instruments for the working of

fundamental institutions. Wight and Bull had no intention of doing without international

organizations in their account of twentieth century international society.

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of fundamental institutions were crucial in spite of the fact that the English School has never

finished the task of accounting for the boundaries, the working, the processes and the effect of such

institutions (Buzan, 2004). Another analytical and strategic advantage of the concept of fundamental

institutions is that it brings power politics and state reason back in, but in a way which makes these

aspects of international politics internal to and ultimately contingent upon international society and its

most fundamental practices.

For these reasons, fundamental institutions are a stronger basis of theory-construction and

analysis than international organization, although this is a point that has been hard to accept for the

American champions of neo-liberal institutionalism (Keohane, 1988). In any case the concept of

fundamental institutions has been crucial to the British attempt to identify and develop a theoretical

position in between realism and idealism. More generally, the theory of international society can be

seen as the primary British contribution to IR theory given the influence of these ideas not only in

Britain and the Commonwealth countries but also on the continent and increasingly in the US.

British IR and the Second Great Debate: Closing the US or Closing the ES

In contrast to Charles Manning, Martin Wight continued his work inside the institutional framework of

The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics along with Herbert Butterfield, Adam

Watson and Hedley Bull among others. It was the American realist, Kenneth W. Thompson, who got

the idea that the Rockefeller Foundation should support the establishment of a British committee on the

theory of international politics just like it has supported the establishment of the American one in 1954,

the idea being to promote the development of theory on the British side of the Atlantic (Butterfield and

Wight, 1966: 11-13). The London School of Economics remained a powerful centre for the

development of international society theory, but with the establishment of the British Committee at

Peterhouse, Cambridge, in the late 1950’s,18

this line of inquiry now had two main institutional homes

with Wight and Bull participating in both settings.19

The British Committee was a highly important phase in the history of British IR as evident from

Butterfield and Wight’s (eds. 1966) Diplomatic Investigations - a collection of essays in the theory of

international politics written my members of the committee – as well as Wight’s Systems of States

(1977), Bull and Watson’s The Expansion of International Society (1984) and Watson’s The Evolution

18

The Committee was attached to the University of Cambridge because it was formed around

Butterfield who invited Wight to act as co-organizer. For a splendid account of the British

Committee and its English School writers see Dunne, 1998: esp. chapters 5 and 6. 19

But the international society approach was from an early point spread all over Britain (and the

former empire) not only through publication, but also because of the mobility of first and second

generation English School scholars. Former and current English School bastions include the LSE,

Sussex, Oxford, Aberystwyth, Keele, Leicester, Cambridge and the Australian National University.

13

of International Society (1992) which were the main products of the committee’s research agenda on

the historical and comparative study of states systems. This original line of inquiry was launched in

order to answer a number of big and highly ambitious questions: Does the history of mankind imply

that any states system (or system of political units) is likely to develop societal structures such as

common rules, practices and institutions? How do such societal elements vary across different

historically known states-systems from the Sumer and to the modern European and global states

systems? Does order among political units require a degree of hierarchy such as great power concert,

hegemony, dominion, suzerainty or empire? Is a common culture a necessary condition for the

establishment of common societal structures? What happens to the modern international society in the

process of universal expansion? Obviously, this agenda is not an easy one to join in on, but many

scholars have paid attention to these original cultural and historical contributions by English School

writers, and there have also been some interesting follow-ups inside and outside British IR including

Clarke, Gong (1984), Neumann and Welsh (1991), Wæver (1993), Buzan and Little (2000) and

Mozaffari (2002).

It was to some extent also under the impression of the discussions of the committee that Hedley

Bull (1969) led the traditionalist side (which included international society scholars, classical

realists and scholars from area studies) in the great methodological debate with the behaviouralists

in the 1960s.20

The members of the British Committee could not help noticing that the view on

science and methodology held by many of their American colleagues was inhibiting any serious

investigating into exactly the political, historical, societal and moral questions concerning the

contemporary international society and its forerunners that British international society theorists

found important. These were questions which required the interpretive and inductive methods of

what Wight and Butterfield (1966: 11, 12) called the ‘classical’ disciplines of history, philosophy,

political theory, international law and military studies.

The classical approach was favoured by other British international society theorists as well,

among them Manning (1962), who paid much attention to shared language and meanings (the mental

and discursive aspects of international society), James, who stressed the role of international rules,

international law and the principles and practices of sovereign statehood when accounting for

international society (1973, 1978, 1986) and Northedge (1976: 9-33), who focussed on the

intelligibility of international relations, diplomatic communication, international rules and the

systematic and orderly nature of international politics. Like Bull, Northedge was not exactly

diplomatic when rejecting the behavioralist and positivist movement in the US:

20

Tim Dunne (1998: 117, 122-124) has drawn attention to the role played by the British Committee

as a whole in stimulating Bull’s attack on American behavioralism in 1966. His detailed analysis is

convincing, and sits well with some central remarks on methodology in Butterfield and Wight

(1966: 11-12).

14

I do not believe that much is added to the understanding of the international system by the sort of

obfuscation of its basic features and tortured jargon which today in so many quarters passes as

the ‘scientific’ approach to the subject. I have tried to be scientific in my understanding of the

international system in the sense of being as emotionally detached from it as possible. But that

any field of human behaviour can be made the subject-matter of a science in the sense of an

aggregate of laws stating that if such and such conditions exist, such-and-such results must

follow, I strongly beg leave to doubt (Northedge, 1976: 9).

This attitude was by all indications shared by the majority of British IR in the 1960’s and 70’s.21

But

it was Hedley Bull who stepped forward to confront the American champions of behavioralism,

system analysis and the positivist approach to science more generally the main targets being, among

others, Morton Kaplan, Thomas Schelling, Karl Deutsch, Bruce Russett, George Modelski and

Kenneth Boulding (Bull, 1969). His essay “International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach”

which was first published in World Politics in April 1966, is legendary for initiating the debate

between traditionalism and behavioralism which was unfolded in, for instance, the anthology edited

by Klaus Knorr and James N. Rosenau (1969) Contending Approaches to International Politics in

which a number of leading American theorists including Kaplan, Singer and Vital more or less

directly stroke back on Bull’s attack which was included as chapter two. At the end of the 1950’s, the

ideals of positivism and behaviourlism had indeed conquered the scene of IR the offspring being the

increasingly self-confident American departments of Political Science which imported methods

from the natural sciences and hard social sciences: Objective observation, construction of

hypotheses and models, techniques for verification and falsification, deduction, simulation,

quantification, system-analysis, and prediction (Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, 1971: 36-45 102-137

312-378, Olson: 25-29).

According to Hedley Bull (1969: 26-38), most of these methods were not applicable in any

strict sense on central questions regarding international order, international society, fundamental

institutions and normative dilemmas. It was like walking to the streetlight to search for something

you had lost out in the dark. Furthermore, by reducing international politics to an experimental

game of identifying problems and designing solutions and by cutting themselves off from history

and philosophy, the Americans had deprived themselves of the means of self-criticism (Bull, 1969:

37). Instead he advocated the classical methods of judgment and interpretation derived from

philosophy, history and law (Bull, 1969: 20) to which he later added the Weberian demand for an

explicit formulation and critical investigation of ones own assumptions and values as well as the

argument that verification and falsification was possible, but not without historical interpretation

(Bull, 1972: 32; 1977: xv).

21

In his attack on the behaviouralists, Bull (1969: 20) pointed to Zimmern, Carr, Morgenthau,

Schwarzenberger, Aron and Wight as examples of the classical approach.

15

There is not doubt that Bull – who had the backing of the great majority of British IR22

and

strongholds also on the continent and in some American quarters - managed to bring the

traditionalists back on even. As a matter of fact, Bull ended his forceful 1966 attack on the

American behaviouralists with an appeal to the (British)23

traditionalists that they ‘should remain

resolutely deaf’ to the calls from the Americans to follow them down the so-called scientific road

(Bull, 1969: 38). According to some accounts, it became common wisdom among the British

traditionalist school and its offshoots in Australia, Canada and elsewhere that Bull ‘saved

everybody else the trouble of taking the behaviouralists seriously’.24

Clearly Bull’s self-confident

and polemical attack on the behaviouralists amounted to a call for a closure of this new

methodological turn in American IR. However, in his generally sympathetic evaluation of Bull’s

legacy James Richardson (1990: 154) argues that Bull’s forceful rejection of American

behaviouralism was regrettable, since it helped to confirm and preserve the dominating British view

that it was safe to abstain from any serious examination of the work of the behaviouralists, a school

by which British IR might have been enriched.

In the 1980’s, this complaint was also raised in a less friendly way by some British critics of

the English School and the traditionalist camp, most notably in Roy E. Jones’ (1981: 1-13)

polemical call for a closure of the English School, but also in Michael Nicholson’s critique of

Martin Wight (1981, esp. 21-22). Among Jones’ arguments against the English School - the name

that he chose for the circle of international society theorists that he attacked and thus brought into

public knowledge as a school with a name – was a lack of precision, absence of central methods of

the social sciences such as statistic analysis and models, and a habit of formulating research

questions and theses which could not be answered or falsified with any certainty (Jones, 1981: 1, 8).

Clearly, Jones’ 1981 critique of the English School echoed the counter-arguments against Bull and

the traditionalist camp raised by the American behaviouralists 15 years earlier (Kaplan, 1969: 43-

44, 55-57; Vital, 1969: 146-147, 153). In this way, British IR got its own internal version of the

second great debate; somewhat delayed but no less polemical, although the tone was perhaps

sharper among the still marginalized British followers of the so-called scientific approach than

among the younger representatives of the English School who answered Jones more or less directly

(Suganami, 1983; Grader, 1988; Wilson, 1989). It should be noted, however, that Bull did not

attack the American behavioralists without second thoughts and acknowledgements. In the first

round of exchanges (1969: 36) and in subsequent reflections (1972: 51-52; 1976: 115) Bull

admitted that the behavioralist demand for rigor, precision and structure as well as a coherent and

22

According to Bull (1969: 22), the work of the American behavioralists (also called the scientific

school) had, with one or two exceptions, failed to command the respect or even the attention of

British IR theorists. 23

Bull’s article was first presented at the Tenth Bailey Conference on the University Teaching of

International Relations at the London School of Economics in January 1966. 24

Martin Indyk cited in Richardson, 1990: 154.

16

orderly body of theory was agreeable, but he hasted to add that these ideals were attainable and

indeed attained within much work done in the classical approach; a postulate that most observers

would agree that Bull managed to live up to in his own main work The Anarchical Society (1977).

As a matter of fact, many theorists of the English School and the broader traditionalist camp

(among them Manning, Wight, Schwarzenberger, Bull, Watson, Butterfield, Northedge and James)

shared the interest of the (American) behaviouralists in systems analysis. It is true that Kaplan was

informed by positivism and behaviouralism leading to the goal of prediction, testing and

hypothesis-construction, while Bull was informed by the classical techniques of history, law and

philosophy leading to interpretation, historical and sociological institutional analysis, and a search

for patterns and practices. However, both were in fact in debt to the discipline of Political Science at

a more fundamental level. Holism, system-analysis, construction of middle-range theory,

institutional analysis, precision, distinction and comparison are not techniques that require either an

explanatory or an understanding approach (to take the terms favoured by Hollis and Smith).25

This

does not mean that it is necessarily a good idea to mix these two methodological and

epistemological positions. The point is that many of the scientific standards of Political Science can

be accomplished by taking both roads. This point is perhaps not fully recognized in British IR

which sometimes seems to regard Political Science as a superior science offering the possibility of

the attainment of higher academic standards. But scholars like Northedge and Bull recognized that

what they were doing on the basis of the classical approach was also Political Science. For instance,

Northedge (1976: 11-33) made his systematic and carefully defined case for the existence of an

orderly international political system with references to classics of Political Science like Laswell

and Simmel, and Bull found that weighing the pros and cons of the evolution of international

society along either pluralist or solidarist principles was a ‘matter of Political Science rather than

International Law’ (Bull, 1966b: 69-70) in spite of the fact that these two streams of thought were

first cultivated inside International Law.

Holistic theory, system analysis, comparison, and historical and sociological institutionalism

are methods and approaches that have been cultivated in British IR for a long time. However, the

case can be made – not least by reference to Bull’s The Anarchical Society – that it was the

conscious attempt to strive for the methodological ideals of Political Science and incorporate them

into a still basically interpretive and hermeneutic approach that pushed British IR theory forward.

The British have tended to prefer questions to hypotheses; institutional analysis to structural

analysis; the identification of practices to the determination of processes; the formulation of general

25

Main elements of the debate between the traditionalists and the behaviouralists have been

repeated again and again in various versions: scientific explanation and interpretive understanding

(Hollis and Smith), rationalism (as rational choice) vs. historicism, positivism vs hermeneutics

(Richardson, 156).

17

principles and likely scenarios to prediction; interpretation of meaning to observation of behaviour;

and induction over deduction. But the goal has still remained the construction of general theory

(international society, international order, international justice) and middle-range theory

(fundamental institutions, state-behaviour, constitutive analysis), and the establishment of a

theoretical and analytical discipline. More recently, some British theorists have gone considerably

further than Bull in order to profit from the concepts and approaches of Political Science in the

study of IR as evident for instance in Suganami, On the Causes of War, Linklater, The

Transformation of Political Community, Buzan, Jones and Little, The Logic of Anarchy and, to a

lesser extent, Watson, The Evolution of International Society and Buzan, From International

Society to World Society. A number of contributions from the more critical quarters of British IR

are indebted to old and new directions of Political Science and Sociology as well.

Although the contributions mentioned here are not all based on an exclusively classical and

interpretive approach, it might be argued that the greatest theoretical success and potential of British

IR lie in a unique combination of the classical disciplines of history, law, sociology and philosophy

and the younger one of Political Science with its natural scientific pretensions, but more often than

not still basically interpretive approaches. On a positive reading, the American behaviouralists and

British followers like Roy Jones did the traditionalist British IR and English School a favour when

they called for either a more ambitious view on science or a closure. Jones created identity for the

international society theorists in a way that their opponents with respect to substance, the realists

and the utopians, had only done to a degree that made them more than a (Grotian) international

society tradition, and less than a school. After the second great debate, the British international

society theorist became more aware of their distinctiveness when compared to American IR, and

after the ambush-attack by Roy Jones, some of them accepted more or less willingly that they were

part of a theoretical school.

It should also be noted that the English School was in a strong position when the post-positivist

turn in IR and the fall of the Berlin Wall send the structuralist and positivist accounts on the

defensive in the late 1980s. The classical approach and the analytical framework of international

society became quite fashionable again as a methodological and a theoretical position to work from,

and as a source of inspiration for newer and mostly more critical approaches like constructivism,

critical theory and post-structuralism. Critical voices such as those of Andrew Linklater and Martin

Shaw are present inside or on the borders of the English School, and there is also a strong

constructivist element in its view on international politics in so far that the institutional and normative

bases of international order and society are open for change: they can be reshaped or complemented

with different ones. This gives rise to questions about what kind of international society we are living

in at a particular point in time or place, and how strong this society is in terms of order and justice.

18

Pluralist, Solidarist and Critical Perspectives: Friendly Fire from Booth and Brown

In his paper on “The Grotian Conception of International Society”, Hedley Bull (1966b) re-launched

the classical discussion between adherents of the naturalist and the positivist position on the sources of

international law the former deriving it from human nature and common reason, the latter from the

actual agreement among states (Bull, 1966b; Vincent, 1974: 20-44). Under the labels solidarism and

pluralism, Bull traced this controversy beyond the disagreement on the sources of international law and

into some more substantial questions of law and politics, such as the status of the individual in

international society, the place of war and the possibility of collective enforcement of common prin-

ciples (Bull, 1966b).26

According to Hedley Bull, the question at issue between the solidarists and the

pluralists is not so much one as to what is actually contained in international law at a given point in

time. Rather, it is a question as to what kind of legal rules and principles are most appropriate to the

working of international society: rules and principles reflecting an assumption of a relatively high

degree of international solidarity, cooperation and unity (solidarism), or rules reflecting a belief that

international society is a pluralist order in which states agree on the requirements of coexistence, but

not on collective enforcement of common standards or the content of the ‘good life’ (pluralism). In

Hedley Bull’s view, this question is a matter of political science rather than international law (Bull,

1966: 70) meaning in fact that when it comes to the basic organization of international society the

debate enters the common ground of international law, international politics and political science.

Unfortunately, the intention and effect of Bull’s essay was not to stimulate any real or broad

English School inquiry into the nature and potential of the Grotian or solidarist conception of

international society, although he to some extent managed to make up for this towards the end of his

career (Bull, 1983; Bull, Kingsbury and Roberts, 1990). On the whole there has, at least until the

beginning of the 1990s, been a tendency among key members of the English School including not

least Hedley Bull (1966b; 1977) to dismiss the possibility of an international society organized more or

less systematically along the principles of solidarism (Dunne, 1998: 100-104, 106-107, 144-152;

Knudsen, 1999; 2000). Bull argued that solidarist ideas concerning human rights, the use of force and

collective enforcement of international law were principles that, in the absence of sufficient

international solidarity, could have the effect of ‘undermining those structures of the system, which

might otherwise be secure’ (Bull, 1966b: 70). Similarly, Herbert Butterfield and most of the members

of the British Committee were uncomfortable when confronted with overtly solidarist ideas as

illustrated by Tim Dunne in a fascinating passage on Martin Wight’s attempt to defend the solidarist

26

On the pluralist side, Bull referred to Emer de Vattel, William E. Hall and Lassa Oppenheim among

others. On the solidarist side, he pointed to Hugo Grotius, Cornelius Van Vollenhoven and Hersch

Lauterpacht.

19

conception against the hostile reaction from the majority of the British Committee (Dunne, 1998: 100-

104). Thus, in spite of Wight’s forceful intervention in favour of the solidarist position and in spite of

John Vincent’s (1986) careful reopening of the solidarist conception as a not entirely utopian

possibility, the distinction between pluralism and solidarism remained an analytical bastion from which

caution and prudence could be encouraged, and ideas of human rights and world governance could be

exposed to what was seen as a necessary critique and warning.

Clearly, this attitude towards human rights and international organization played a part in

giving the English School a conservative flavour in the 1960s and 1970s. Apparently, Bull felt that

the dismissal of solidarist ideas was to some extent a logical consequence of his theoretical account

of international order (Bull, 1966b: 68-73; Bull, 1977: 77-98). However, the fundamental English

School point that the principles and institutions of international society is shaped and reshaped as

history unfolds runs against such clear-cut rejections of international change along solidarist lines.

The real explanation for the scepticism of the English School towards solidarist ideas is rather to be

found partly in the divisive international climate of the Cold War which seemed to leave little room

for progress along solidarist lines, and partly in a widely existing fear among English School writers

of becoming associated with the allegedly utopian interwar internationalism. Writers like Bull and

Butterfield wanted to show where and how realism had got things wrong, but without risking being

accused of throwing themselves in the arms of the idealist streams of thought so terribly discredited

by Carr and others in the middle of the 20th

century. They wanted to recapture the Grotian theory of

international society in a non-utopian form (Bull, 1966a: 36-40; Bull, 1977). They wanted to avoid

any risk that they could be accused of reducing the problems of international order and justice to a

question of international regulation and organization (Bull, 1966b: 69-73; Bull, 1977: xiv, 40-52,

142-151). Arguably, the shadow of Carr’s 1939 attack on the utopians continued to inform

mainstream British IR right up to the end of the Cold War and possibly even longer, and so did the

unfortunate British tendency to group idealism and internationalism (including its Grotian and

solidarist sources) together (Olson, 1972: 23).

Unsurprisingly, this internal tension between a conservative pluralism and a progressive and

potentially critical solidarism has given rise to a good deal of criticism of the English School and

some doubt regarding its merits, not least in the ethical and critical quarters of British IR. Chris

Brown, who might adequately be seen as a friendly critic of the English School and British

mainstream IR more generally, has – to take one leading example - sometimes put forward an

ambivalent evaluation of the school including its founding figures Manning, Wight and Bull.

On the one hand, Brown seems to be unwilling to forgive Martin Wight for his famous essay

“Why is there no International Theory” which was presented to the British Committee at its first

meeting in 1959 (Wight, 1966a). Wight (Ibid: 32-33) argued that whereas political theory has to do

with the promotion of the ‘good life’ in domestic society and thus with governance and progress,

international theory is inherently about repetition and thus the domain of the historian rather than

20

the philosopher (international theory = historical interpretation). Brown (2000: 116-117) finds this

position disappointing arguing that David Boucher’s Political Theories of International Relations is

one ‘very good reason for scepticism about the English School’ since Boucher ‘comprehensively

destroys the notion that there is no classical international theory’. This statement overlooks the fact

that in his lectures on the three traditions of thought developed in the late 1950s and published piece-

mal in the 1960s and fully in 1991 (Wight, 1991), Wight gave an original and ground-breaking answer

to his own call for the construction of an independent discipline and theory of international politics, a

call which was according to Wight himself (Butterfield and Wight, 1966: 13) formulated in a

deliberately provocative way. Wight’s International Theory: The Three Traditions is one long and rich

excursion into the theories of international politics cultivated by the classical political theorists and

writers on international law and philosophy including a majority of the ones that Chris Brown (2000:

117) finds adequately discussed in the much more recent work of Boutcher: from Thucydides over

Aquinas, the scholastics and Vattel to Locke, Kant, Rosseau and Burke. Everything that Martin Wight

did as a theorist was, in a sense, a rejection of what some (for instance Nicholson, 1981) have turned

into the defining postulate about Wight’s view on the discipline of International Relations, namely that

there was (or is) no such thing as a coherent body of international theory and that international politics

was necessarily about repetition. Wight’s approach was indeed historical, but his formulation of

alternative forms of world order - including not least the theory of international society – owed a lot to

the classical writers of philosophy, political theory and international law. On this point, Brown gives

Wight too little credit.

On the other hand, Brown finds much hope in the English School. Having consented to the main

conclusion of Stanley Hoffman (1977) and Ole Wæver (1998) that IR remains – more or less – an

American Social Science, Brown (2000: 115) argues that owing partly to the general British preference

for the classical approach, partly to the continuing importance of the English School, British IR has a

comparative advantage over American IR when it comes to the point where IR theory meets political

theory, his main examples being humanitarian intervention and the changing nature of political

community (Brown, 2000: 115).

Humanitarian Intervention and Political Community

On humanitarian intervention, Brown’s focus on the kind of analysis that includes the moral

responsibility of the international community to act - and its responsibility for doing it in accordance

with international law and organization – is in accordance with the views of other more or less friendly

critics of the English School like Ken Booth, Fred Halliday and Martin Shaw. These scholars have

posed the challenging question whether international society as accounted for and defended by the

English School is more of a tolerator of human wrongs (Booth’s expression) than a protector of human

21

rights as Nick Wheeler and Tim Dunne (1995) have put it when addressing this challenge. Likewise,

Booth and Halliday have argued that the theory of international society has to some extent served to

mask the elements of great-power repression and the absence of any real will to recognize and honour

the rights and duties of the individual, while Shaw has called for the protection and enforcement of

these rights.27

With this focus on the individual, democratic society, international law and international

organization the critics of the English School and British mainstream IR are repeating some of the

central views of the solidarist writers of the mid-twentieth century including Hersch Lauterpacht whose

solidarist conception of international society Bull (1966b) rejected. The critique of the theory and

practices of contemporary international society raised by Booth, Haliday and Shaw is, of course, based

on critical theory and thus considerable doubts (though especially in Booth’s writings) about the

possibility that states can be the agents of progress, a role they are more inclined to ascribe to global

civil society and global institutions. In comparison, Lauterpacht (1946) and other traditional

representatives of the solidarist position were drawing on older, but not that distant, ideas and sources

such as the legal philosophy of a society of mankind based on both states and individuals and with

international rules and institutions as its machinery, and national and international public opinion as a

source of moral action. Traditional solidarists have thus a little more faith in the modern liberal state

than the above mentioned critics of the English School, but the calls for a defence of the individual, the

minority and the people, and the call for binding universal international law and global international

organization come down to the same.

The ability of the English School to face up to these solidarist and critical challenges – and thus to

fulfil the potential identified by Chris Brown - hangs continuingly on the ability of its theory of

international society to expose the state and the international order to critical evaluation, and its ability

to point to, rather than exclude or suppress, possibilities of progressive chance which are either right at

hand or not entirely out of the question in the longer run. As already indicated, the criticism of the

English School when it comes to human rights, human justice and humanitarian intervention is not

without substance. The idea that individuals can have rights and duties which other states or

international organizations may champion can easily be seen as a threat to the kind of inter-state

society and order that Bull and other English School scholars were focussing on in the tense climate of

the Cold War (Bull, 1966b: 63-64; 1977: 83-84). On the other hand, Bull later came to the conclusion

that a right of humanitarian intervention might be safely based on the collective will of international

society and especially the great powers after all, and this viewpoint has recently been given some

careful support by a leading Canadian follower of Bull’s pluralism (Jackson, 2000: 249-259).

Still, among the first two generations of English school writers Martin Wight remained the only

one to give the solidarist conception of international society a whole-hearted and unconditional

27

For accounts and discussions of the views of these critics of the English School see Dunne, 1995:

137-140, 143-144; Wheeler, 1996: 129-133; Sofer, 2002: 148-151.

22

support. He considered the solidarist view that individuals, peoples and international organizations are

bearers of international rights and duties along with the state to be more fruitful and more ‘flexible and

true to the variety of international life’ than the theoretically more clear-cut state-focused positivist

doctrine (Wight, 1966b: 101-102; see also Wight, 1977: 172.). Like Hersch Lauterpacht had done

before him, he applauded the point made by the British international lawyer John Westlake, that states

are the immediate, but men the ultimate members of international society (Wight, 1966b: 102). Wight

also referred to ‘a law behind the law’ (a term he ascribed to Charles Manning) arguing that ‘there are

fundamental or natural norms, even though the way in which they are conceived, and the nature of the

appeal to them, may change’ (Wight, 1991: 234). In contrast, he dismissed the positivist (and pluralist)

position as simply realism by another name because it derived international law exclusively after the

will and practice of states at any given point in time (Wight, 1991: 233-235). Moreover, at a time when

the general opinion was that it had been discredited in theory and practice, Martin Wight gave his

support to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention. In Wight’s view, humanitarian intervention must

be seen in light of the general responsibility that states have for human society. Accordingly,

intervention ‘may present itself as an exercise, not simply of the right of self-preservation, but of the

duty of fellow-feeling and cooperation’ and in that case ‘the theory of the rightful occasions for

intervention falls at once into the same pattern as the theory of the just cause of war’ (Wight, 1966:

116). Martin Wight was, to our knowledge, the first English School writer to pay serious attention to

the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, and with his combination of international history,

international law and international political theory, he did it with exactly the kind of originality that

Chris Brown has rightly located in the English School and British IR more generally.

Human rights and humanitarian intervention have also been defended by third generation English

School scholars, most notably John Vincent and Adam Roberts. Vincent endorsed the strengthening of

human rights in the 1970’s and 80’s, but his conclusion was the careful one that ‘there is now an area

of domestic conduct ... that is under the scrutiny of international law’ (Vincent, 1986: 152). Similarly,

Roberts has written with sympathy about the development in international humanitarian law (Roberts

and Guelff, 2000: 1-46) and the evolution of a practice of humanitarian intervention at the UN, but not

without warning us that the central problems of humanitarian intervention – especially without UN

Security Council authorization – have not yet been solved (Roberts, 1993; 1999). The strongest

English School (and British) case for humanitarian intervention against genocide and atrocities has

probably come from Nick Wheeler whose Saving Strangers (2000) stands out as a forceful challenge

to all relevant actors in international politics to turn moral consciousness into moral action.

A theory of humanitarian responsibility and humanitarian intervention informed by the

solidarist conception of international society and substantiated by reference to international history,

international humanitarian law and international organization thus runs in the English School from

Wight to Vincent and Wheeler. Adding pluralist insights to this, there is also a basis for discussing

the political and ethical dilemmas that humanitarian intervention gives rise to (Roberts, 1993, 1999;

23

Jackson, 2000: 249-293).28

However, the writer cannot honour the humanitarian and solidarist

obligations of states and international society. At the most, he can point to the national, trans-

national and international bases of such responsible action, and he can bring failure to public

attention.

On the transformation of national and international political community – the second stronghold of

the English School and British IR identified by Chris Brown (2000) – one central question is whether

the English School and the theory of international society can deal with the development from a

primarily inter-state and western European Community to a European Union comprising much of

Central- and Eastern Europe and some of the Balkans as well as further zones of cooperation including

Turkey, which might also become a full member. At the same time, European integration has become

deeper in terms of citizenship, the common foreign- and security policy, the legal cooperation and the

economic and monetary union following the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, just as it has in the field of

human rights over a long period with the Council of Europe, the European Convention on Human

Rights, the European Commission of Human Rights, and the European Court on Human Rights as the

primary institutions. As indicated by Chris Brown, such developments which involve dynamics of

inclusion as well as exclusion, the stipulation of rights and duties of the individual alongside and over

those of the state, and structures of government alongside and over those of the state have been desired

and foreseen in the work of Andrew Linklater for a long time, although The Transformation of

Political Community is perhaps his strongest statement concerning the potential of contemporary

international society on these points the common denominator being an extension of political

community and citizenship above and below the state (Linklater, 1998: esp. 184-203). Although

Linklater’s work is rather unique, there has been other theoretically informed studies, and calls for

studies, of the EU under the auspices of the so-called reconvening of the English School, most notably

by Barry Buzan (2001: 485; 2004: 195-204, 206, 211), Thomas Diez and Ian Manners.

Again Martin Wight has proven to be a valuable source of inspiration, for instance for Andrew

Linklater who is combining English School and critical theory with a clearly solidarist leaning. As

already argued Wight has wrongly been accredited with a conservative view on the states system. With

respect to political community, he even argued that in an international society ‘it becomes possible to

transfer to international politics some of the categories of constitutionalism’ (Wight, 1966b: 103), an

argument which can be substantiated by reference to his work on the classical European international

society on the one hand and imperial and suzerain state systems on the other (Wight, 1977). In this

work, Wight grounded a study of order and society as circles of political community organized and

held together by principles of legitimacy, cultural bonds and practices of inclusion and exclusion. Gerit

Gong’s (1984) work on the European standard of civilization is another original English School

28

This raises the difficult question whether solidarist and pluralist assumptions about humanitarian

intervention can be reconciled into a consistent theory of humanitarian intervention (Knudsen,

1999).

24

contribution on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. There has also been some interesting follow-

ups, for instance on Europe and the other (Neumann and Welsh, 1991), human rights as a potentially

inclusive standard of civilization (Donnelly, 1998; Gong, 2002) and economic and environmental

cooperation as a standard of civilization (Gong, 2002). Some of these writers take us beyond British

IR, but their sources are not least British.

Institutional Changes and Institutional Challenges: ICC and the War Against Iraq

The comparative advantages of British IR can possibly be taken beyond humanitarian intervention and

political community in a narrow sense, the point being that most significant changes in, developments

of, and challenges to the institutional bases of international order and international society call for

related analyses. One obvious example could be the establishment of the ad hoc war crimes tribunals

for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the 1990’s. Today,

there is a complementary national and international court system for the prosecution of war crimes,

genocide and crimes against humanity as called for by the solidarist tradition of thought since the

Second World War (Lauterpacht, 1946; 1950). This calls for a study informed by the international

society approach and international law focussing on the international political consequences of such

legal and institutional changes. Marc Weller’s (2002) analysis of the attempt by the US first to prevent

the establishment of the ICC and then to limit its practical importance is a good example of such a line

of inquiry.

Another example is the de facto revival of international trusteeship arrangements in the late

1990’s with Kosovo and East Timor as the primary examples. This development invites a

combination of international society theory, international ethics and international law, although

solidarist and progressive analyses by scholars like Peter Lyon (1993) and Mervin Frost (1991)

have been balanced by pluralist ones by Robert Jackson (2000: 294-315) and Will Bain (2002).

Thus, conservatism and a defence of the status quo run in the English School alongside solidarism

and progressivism. Together, however, these two strands of British IR provide a platform for a

theoretically informed debate about the responsibility of the international community for war-torn

and failed societies.

It should also be noted that there is a special English School tradition for a critical evaluation of

great-power behaviour, not only in the solidarist-progressive quarters, but also in the pluralist-

conservative ones. The theoretical starting point for such analyses is not least Hedley Bull’s

argument that the great powers are to be seen as a fundamental institution of international order and

international society the argument being that the great powers have not only special rights, but also

special duties (Bull, 1977: 200-229, 297-301). Consequently, the great powers can act more or less

as great responsibles or great irresponsibles at a given point in time (Bull, 1980). In the 1990’s, the

25

focus of such analyses was the will (or lack of will) of the great powers to intervene politically and

militarily against atrocities, civil war and state failure around the world (Shaw, 1994; Gow, 1994;

Wheeler and Morris, 1996; Wheeler, 2000). After the terror attacks on New York and Washington

on 11 September 2001 the obvious focus of attention has been the way the US has handled the

challenge from terrorism and rogue states in the so-called war against terror which has triggered a

number of critical reactions from British scholars focussing on the intervention in Afghanistan in

2001 and the war against Iraq in 2003 as well as the violations of international humanitarian law

and human rights in connection with both engagements.

To begin with the doctrine of preventive use of force launched by the Bush-administration in

the 2002 National Security Strategy and in successive State of the Union speeches has been

deplored or condemned in both pluralist, solidarist and critical quarters of British IR. To claim a

right of preventive warfare comes close to rejecting the general ban on the use of force in

international law as well as the principle of non-intervention. The US National Security Strategy

therefore presents a serious challenge to one of the institutional bases of international order

according to the theory of international society, namely that there must be legal and political

restrictions on the use of force. For these reasons, Adam Roberts (2003: 45-48), who might be seen

as a moderate pluralist in most questions, deplored that the war against Iraq was fought partly on the

basis of (and inevitably in the light of) the US attempt to revive the old right of preventive use of

force in self-defence. On the other hand, Roberts did not arrive at any clear condemnation of the

attack on Iraq in spite of the fact that there was no authorization from the UN Security Council to

use force in order to disarm Iraq, and in spite of the fact that only a minority of the members of the

Security Council and the General Assembly were of the opinion that the time had come to give up

the weapons inspections and resort to force (Knudsen, 2004).

A clear condemnation of the war against Iraq has come from other English School writers,

however, most notably Tim Dunne (2003: esp. 309-317). According to Dunne, the war against Iraq

amounted to an attack on some of the constitutive principles of international order and international

society including the principle of non-intervention, the ban on the use of force, and the obligation to

respect international rules and share in the working of international institutions. Furthermore, the

US has attempted to lay down the law to others and it has rejected the fundamental institutions of

formal equality and great-power cooperation. In Dunne’s sharp conclusion this amounts to an attack

on international society itself and at the least, the US has for the moment ‘contracted out of

international society’ (Dunne, 2003: 316). The critique of the US for disrespecting international law

regarding the use of force (ius ad bellum) as well as international humanitarian law (ius in bello)

following 9-11 on the basis of a belief that the US stands above the law or that it can legitimately

claim unique exceptions from it has been expressed by other English School scholars as well

already before the war against Iraq (although naturally in a more moderate form), among them

Andrew Hurrell (2002) and Nick Wheeler (2002).

26

Some would argue that Dunne has taken his argument concerning the US assault on international

society to the limit. However, there is no doubt that US policy since 9-11 amounts to a rejection of

at least the solidarist conception of international society and its assumptions concerning the role of

international law and international organization. It is also obvious that some important pluralist

foundations of international society have been shattered as argued by Dunne. However, to believers

in international society a lot of comfort can be found in the fact that the war against Iraq and the

arguments on which it was based were turned down by a clear majority of states inside and outside

of the UN Security Council. Consequently, the US has not succeeded in a unilateral change of the

norms and rules of international society. It has merely succeeded in breaking international law, but

under widespread international protest, something that can be handled inside the theory and practice

of international society (Knudsen, 2004). On the other hand, it was surrender to unilateral great

power dictate concerning changes of constitutive principles and institutions of international society

which was at stake under the confrontation over Iraq in the UN Security Council and beyond.

Therefore, the article by Tim Dunne is a formidable testimony of the critical potential of the English

School, and of its theory of the fundamental institutional bases of international order and society as

a relatively stable platform for such a critical analysis.

In conclusion, Chris Brown’s well-taken point about the comparative advantages of British IR can

be taken considerably further, if we do not stop where IR theory meets political and normative theory.

International law is the third important leg in many strong British analyses of international use of force,

political community and institutional innovation. Furthermore, it makes much of a difference whether

the IR-theory in question is the international society approach or the American flagships of realism,

liberalism and constructivism although the last-mentioned positions do not exclude analyses as the

ones discussed above.29

The ‘Reconvening’ of the English School and the Prospects of Fruitful Encounters

The question is, however, whether this comparative advantage is uniquely British? Traditionally,

international law and political theory have been important elements in some continental IR

communities along with the classical approach, and continental Europe has proud traditions when it

comes to the study of political community and humanitarian intervention - from the scholastics over

Antoine Rougier to the humanitarianism of Bernard Kouchner and Mario Bettati (Knudsen, 1997). If

there is ‘fog in the channel’ as argued by Chris Brown (2001), it is more by choice than by necessity.

But British IR has, as a matter of fact, been guilty of a certain lack of interest in continental

scholarship in recent years. With the exception of different ECPR sessions and the Standing Group

conferences through the 1990s encounters with continental IR theory have been individual rather

29

See for instance Nye, 2003.

27

than institutional. Examples include Barry Buzan who has been cultivating links with the

Copenhagen Peace Research Institute for more than a decade and John Groom who has been

developing relations with the French scene. However, Barry (1999: 462) reports how not a single

British academic has found it worthwhile to write a book about Jürgen Habermas. His reception in

the UK has come via the United States. Likewise, only a relative few IR scholars, among them

Booth, Halliday and Linklater have found inspiration in Critical Theory. According to one critic, the

occasional British use of critical theory can even be described as somewhat superficial (Holden

2003). Similarly, English School theorists have never systematically contemplated whether their

key ideas have representatives across the Channel. A traditional “Southern notion” like “the

sociology of international relations” – widespread in France, Italy and Spain - suggests that there is

some commonality between the English School and this southern category as evident also from the

contributions to the present volume. In textbooks, a leading French theorist like Raymond Aron is

typically “boxed” (when included at all) as a realist, although an “awkward realist”, but Martin

Wight and Hedley Bull have a considerable experience in such a fate meaning that at least in this

respect Aron shares something with the school. There is also the flaring similarity between Aron

and E.H. Carr (and, yes, also some differences) in the sense of being multi-facetted, hence

impossible to box and therefore the source of enduring debate. Within epistemology, the triangle

Aron, Carr and Karl Mannheim is crying for further exploration.

It should, of course, be acknowledged that the British Journal of Politics and International

Relations has as one of its main aims to draw attention to the contribution “that British and

European researches have made, and are making, to the development of political science more

generally” (Marsh et al. 1999: 1). The editors therefore ask contributors to assess both sets of

literature when they review a particular field within political science. However, this is a contested

approach to assessing the state of the art of various sub-fields. Moreover, Steve Smith points out

that “the UK IR profession has a very ambiguous relationship with the development of a European

IR community” (Smith, 2000: 398). Some conclude that the UK cannot constitute a credible

counter-hegemonic force on its own (whereas a common European community potentially can)

while others fear the European road “threatens the cohesion of the Anglo-American intellectual

tradition by involving other very different intellectual communities and traditions” (ibid.). Smith’s

(ibid: 394-400) own sympathy is clearly with those who see British IR as being already very

different from and much healthier than American IR, and with those (like Wæver, 1998) who argue

that continental European and British IR are moving together to form a counterweight to the

predominantly realist and rational choice inspired American hegemony.

This is also part of the idea of the current attempt led by Barry Buzan to ‘reconvene’ the English

School, a formulation that should be read as a commitment to continue and strengthen the work in this

28

tradition.30

One of Buzan’s key ambitions is that the English School should now fulfill its potential

as a general perspective on International Relations comparable to realism, liberalism, constructivism

and post-positivism on a world-wide scale. This project sits well with the publication of a number of

articles, books and textbooks which present the English School as such a general perspective on

international politics.31

This represents a major change in the School’s fortunes compared with the 1980s. In an era

where mainstream IR was dominated by materialist and rationalist thinking, the School’s master

concept ‘international society’ appeared out of touch conceptually, methodologically and

empirically. In contrast, the current revitalization of English School research can find much support

in Britain and beyond. Theoretically, the English School’s emphasis on inter-subjectively shared

constitutive norms and rules as well as its interpretative methodology are consonant with at least a

part of the increasingly influential constructivist IR literature as pointed out in a number of

contributions since the late 1980’s (Wendt and Duvall, 1989; Dunne, 1995: 383; Wæver, 1998;

Reus-Smit, 2005). However, the English School can hardly approve of American attempts to build a

constructivist theory of IR on a positivist position on methodology. As pointed out in a sharp

critique of mainstream (American) constructivism by Steve Smith (2000: 389-392), Alexander

Wendt’s (and Emmanuel Adler’s and Jeffrey Checkel’s) version of constructivism can be seen as an

attempt to conquer the middle ground of IR by means of a combination of a post-positivist position

on ontology (ideas and meanings) and a positivist position on methodology and epistemology

(observation, causal analysis and empiricism). In this way, constructivism becomes the third leg in

the rationalist neo-neo research programme founded in the 1980’s, and thus an integrated part of the

American dominated mainstream.

In contrast, the English school combines its historical and sociological analysis of inter-

subjectively shared norms, rules and institutions with an interpretive approach. Consequently, it has

basically the same quarrels with the more positivist version of constructivism as it had with

American behaviouralism in the 1960’s. For these reasons, the international society approach of the

English School seems to have the closest relationship with what Steve Smith (2000: 391) calls ‘neo-

classical’ social constructivism derived from Weber and Durkheim, and with the interpretive IR

variant developed by Nicholas Onuf and Friedrich Kratochwill focussing on language, rules and

choices. In any case, an open-minded encounter between the English School and American as well

as continental European constructivism promises to add historical and conceptual depth to what is

increasingly recognized within mainstream IR as a common productive alternative to materialist,

rationalist approaches.

30

Buzan, 2001. See also the associated website: http://www.ukc.ac.uk/politics/englishschool/

31 See Evans and Wilson, 1992; Buzan, 1993; Jackson, 1995; Stern, 1995; Linklater, 1996; Wæver,

1998; Jackson and Sørensen, 1999; Sterling-Folker, 2005.

29

Similarly, there has been fruitful encounters between the English School and post-positivist

approaches inside British IR and beyond as evident for instance in the work by Rob Walker (1993)

on sovereignty, Der Derian (1987) on diplomacy, and Der Derian’s (1995) International Theory:

Critical Investigations which is a collection of essays by classical English School and contemporary

critical writers on IR theory with the rejection of elements of realism as the common denominator.

Encounters with constructivism and critical perspectives are a part of the ambitious English

School program suggested by Barry Buzan in the 2001 symposium in the Review of International

Studies. Other aims include encounters with political economy, the development of theoretical

categories as world society and regional societies (Buzan, 2004) and the solidarist-pluralist

framework. To that come further studies on traditional English School strongholds as international

ethics, international law, international intervention and war as well as studies on subjects where the

English School is behind such as the European Union and the international economic system.

The greatest ambition, however, is to create a ‘great conversation’ about IR theory and

international politics around the English School (Buzan, 2001: 481). In this view, the English

School provides a platform and a framework for disciplinary integration, not necessarily as a source

of a grand theory – which has been a burning ambition behind several of Buzan’s major works - but

more as a site for a meaningful dialogue between perspectives which might find it difficult to

communicate outside the international-society framework. Following the excursions into British IR

of the present article, the English School has (historically or currently) been capable of bringing

critical and solidarist perspectives into contact with conservative and pluralist ones, realist

perspectives into contact with internationalist ones, and political theory and philosophy with

systemic and holistic theory.

However, as a distinct theory about international politics the English school must at the same

time be able to remain faithful to its key concepts of international society, international order and

international justice, and possibly also the central analytical and methodological elements of

historical interpretation and institutional analysis, if it is going to continue to prosper as a distinct

and original platform of analysis alongside realism, liberalism, constructivism and critical theory.

Conclusion

In terms of major debates the leading quarters of British IR have acted both as a forceful and critical

challenger of the American dominated mainstream, and as a more conservative defender of the

theoretical and political status quo. On the one hand the largely home-grown international society

perspective has for a long time served as a clear (and potentially radical) challenge to realism and

neo-realism as well as to the realist-idealist dualism associated with the ‘first great debate’ in IR.

Likewise, the general British preference for interpretive and reflectivist approaches have

persistently offered an alternative to behavioralism and positivism. Currently, this points to a

30

natural alliance between the English School and ‘classical’ or critical constructivism (with

strongholds both in Europe and the US) as a counterweight to a possible cooptation of mainstream

constructivism into the neo-neo programme.

On the other hand the pluralist quarters of the English School have at times been in opposition to

solidarist and critical scholarship calling for and pointing to elements of progressive change. This

pluralist conservatism is by all indications to be explained partly by a long lasting fear of being

associated with the discredited liberal institutionalism of the inter-war period, partly by a strong

belief in the theoretically derived requirements of international order. However, with its solidarist

and critical quarters and its special institutional background, which has led to a fruitful combination

of international society theory, political theory, legal analysis and historical interpretation, British

IR has a strong potential for critical analysis conducted from a relatively stable theoretical platform.

This is evident from a number of recent contributions on humanitarian intervention and the war

against terror following 9-11; analyses informed not by anti great-power feelings, but by a theory of

the institutional and normative bases of international society.

Finally, it should be possible for British IR to come to terms with its difficult relationship with

Political Science. The scientific ideals and standards of Political Science are perfectly attainable

within an interpretive and multidisciplinary approach, and in much British work such standards are

also well reflected. Indeed, the most influential British and European contribution to the theory of

international relations, namely the international society perspective, has been developed on the basis

of the classical approach. But a better knowledge of Political Science and a greater belief in the

value of a closer relationship might be constructive.

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