English school of international relations theory


The English School of international relations theory maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despite the condition of anarchy. The English school stands for the conviction that ideas, rather than simply material capabilities, shape the conduct of international politics, and therefore deserve analysis and critique. In this sense it is similar to constructivism, though the English School has its roots more in world history, international law and political theory, and is more open to normative approaches than is generally the case with constructivism.

Overview

International system, international society, world society

English School scholars distinguish between international system and international society. The former is a quasi-physical realm, as proximate actors interact with one another. The latter is an intersubjective realm where actors are bound together through rules, norms and institutions.

International system

The classical English School starts with the realist assumption of an international system that forms as soon as two or more states have a sufficient amount of interaction. It underlines the English school tradition of realism and Machtpolitik and puts international anarchy at the center of international relations theory. Hedley Bull defined the international system as being formed "when two or more have sufficient contact between them, and has sufficient impact on one another's decisions to cause them to behave as part of a whole."

International society

Hedley Bull, however, argued that states share a certain common interest that lead to the development of a certain set of "rules". He thus defined an international society as existent when:
In Bull's view, any type of society needed to have rules about restraints on the use of force, about the sanctity of agreements, and about property rights. Without elements of these three there would be no society.
These rules are expressed in a set of institutions that capture the normative structure of any international society. In the classical English School these were: war, the great powers, diplomacy, the balance of power, and international law, especially in the mutual recognition of sovereignty by states. To these could be added: territoriality, nationalism, the market, and human equality. Since these rules are not legally binding and there is no ordering institutions, speaking of norms would probably be more appropriate. States that respect these basic rules form an international society. Brown and Ainley therefore define the international society as a "norm-governed relationship whose members accept that they have at least limited responsibilities towards one another and the society as a whole". States thus follow their interests, but not at all costs. Another way of looking at this would be through Adam Watson's term 'raison de système', a counterpoint to 'raison d'état', and defined as 'the idea that it pays to make the system work'.
There are differing accounts, within the school, concerning the evolution of those ideas, some arguing their origins can be found in the remnants of medieval conceptions of societas Christiana, and others such as Hedley Bull, in the concerns of sovereign states to safeguard and promote basic goals, especially their survival. Most English School understandings of international society blend these two together, maintaining that the contemporary society of states is partly the product of a common civilization - the Christian world of medieval Europe, and before that, the Roman Empire - and partly that of a kind of Lockean contract.
English School scholars vary in terms of the claims they make about the "thickness" of the culture of the international society is, as well as the content of international society.

World society

Based on a Kantian understanding of the world, the concept of world society takes the global population as a whole as basis for a global identity. However, Buzan also argued that the concept of World Society was the "Cinderella concept of English school theory", as it received almost no conceptual development.

Reexamination of traditional approaches

A great deal of the English School of thought concerns itself with the examination of traditional international theory, casting it — as Martin Wight did in his 1950s-era lectures at the London School of Economics — into three divisions :
  1. Realist and thus the concept of international system
  2. Rationalist, representing the international society
  3. Revolutionist representing world society.
In broad terms, the English School itself has supported the rationalist or Grotian tradition, seeking a middle way between the 'power politics' of realism and the 'utopianism' of revolutionism.
Later Wight changed his triad into a four-part division by adding Mazzini.
The English School is largely a constructivist theory, emphasizing the non-deterministic nature of anarchy in international affairs that also draws on functionalism and realism. It has been argued that, "the English School embodies the notion of a middle course between practical demands and moral claims. In contrast to the realist approach, the English School maintains that states are not entangled in a permanent struggle for power and that they limit their conflicts through common rules, institutions and moral imperatives. Unlike the revolutionist tradition, the English School accepts the realist premise that the state is the primary reality of the international political system and maintains that these imperatives foreswear the replacement of the society of states by a universal community of mankind." In this manner, the English School succeeds in incorporating the salient elements of the main traditions of International Relations theory.

Internal divisions

The English School is often understood to be split into two main wings, named after two categories described by Hedley Bull:
  • The pluralists argue that the diversity of humankind - their differing political and religious views, ethnic and linguistic traditions, and so on - is best contained within a society that allows for the greatest possible independence for states, which can, in their forms of government, express those differing conceptions of the 'good life'. This position is expressed most forcefully by the Canadian academic Robert Jackson, especially in The Global Covenant.
  • The solidarists, by contrast, argue that the society of states should do more to promote the causes of human rights and, perhaps, emancipation - as opposed to the rights of states to political independence and non-intervention in their internal affairs. This position may be located in the work on humanitarian intervention by, amongst others, Nicholas Wheeler, in Saving Strangers.
There are, however, further divisions within the school. The most obvious is that between those scholars who argue the school's approach should be historical and normative and those who think it can be methodologically 'pluralist', making use of 'positivist' approaches to the field.

Affinities to others

The English School does have affinities:
Contemporary English School and English School-adjacent writers draw from a variety of sources:
The 'English-ness' of the school is questionable - many of its most prominent members are not English - and its intellectual origins are disputed. One view is that its roots lie in the work of pioneering inter-war scholars like the South African Charles Manning, the founding professor of the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Others have located them in the work of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, a group created in 1959 under the chairmanship of the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield, with financial aid from the Rockefeller Foundation. Both positions acknowledge the central role played by the theorists Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and R J Vincent.
The name 'English School' was first coined by Roy Jones in an article published in the Review of International Studies in 1981, entitled "The English school - a case for closure". Some other descriptions - notably that of 'British institutionalists' - have been suggested, but are not generally used. Throughout the development of the theory, the name became widely accepted, not least because it was developed almost exclusively at the London School of Economics, Cambridge and Oxford University.

Criticisms

According to George Washington University political scientist Martha Finnemore, who notes that she is an admirer of the English School, the English School has not been received positively in American IR scholarship because there is a lack of clarity in the methods used in English School scholarship, as well as a lack of clarity in the theoretical claims made by the English School. She notes that the English School is reluctant to clarify its causal claims, which she contrasts with Constructivist research in the American IR tradition where there is an emphasis on constitutive causality – "how things are constituted makes possible other things ". She also notes that the English School does not engage in hypothesis testing, and that their works mirror the detailed narratives of historians rather than typical works in the social sciences.
In a 1992 review of Martin Wight's work, Keohane criticized it, saying "Wight's greatest oversight... is his neglect of the scientific or behavioral search for laws of action about world politics." This has been since considered a misunderstanding of Wight's epistemology and methodology by critics of Keohane, with Keohane and Wight sitting on distinct sides of the 'Rationalist'/'Reflectivist' divide.