scholarly journals International society is to international system as world society is to …? Systemic and societal processes in English School theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Lees
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Society ◽  
English School

The International Society – World Society Distinction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Williams
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Society ◽  
English School ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
State Organizations ◽  
The One

The English School, or society of states approach, is a threefold method for understanding how the world operates. According to English School logic, there are three distinct spheres at play in international politics, and two of these are international society and world society—the third being international system. On the one hand, international society (Hugo Grotius) is about the institutionalization of shared interest and identity amongst states, and rationalism puts the creation and maintenance of shared norms, rules, and institutions at the centre of international relations (IR) theory. This position has some parallels to regime theory, but is much deeper, having constitutive rather than merely instrumental implications. On the other hand, world society (Immanuel Kant) takes individuals, non-state organizations, and the global population as a whole as the focus of global societal identities and arrangements, and revolutionism puts transcendence of the state system at the centre of IR theory. Revolutionism is mostly about forms of universalist cosmopolitanism. This position has some parallels to transnationalism but carries a much more foundational link to normative political theory. International society has been the main focus of English School thinking, and the concept is quite well developed and relatively clear, whereas world society is the least well developed of the English School concepts and has not yet been clearly or systematically articulated.

6. The English School

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
North American ◽  
Social Order ◽  
International System ◽  
World Society ◽  
English School ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Social

This chapter examines the main assumptions of the English school, the principal alternative to mainstream North American theorizations of International Relations. It first provides an overview of what the English school is and how it emerged before discussing its methodology as well as its master-concept of international society. It then considers three concepts that are the primary theoretical contribution of the English school: the social order established by states and embodied in the activities of practitioners must be understood alongside the dynamics of the international system and world society. The chapter proceeds by exploring the English school's position on issue of human rights and its implications for justice in international relations.

6. The English School

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
North American ◽  
Social Order ◽  
International System ◽  
World Society ◽  
English School ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Social

This chapter examines the main assumptions of the English school, the principal alternative to mainstream North American theorizations of International Relations. It first provides an overview of what the English school is and how it emerged before discussing its methodology as well as its master-concept of international society. It then considers three concepts that are the primary theoretical contribution of the English school: the social order established by states and embodied in the activities of practitioners must be understood alongside the dynamics of the international system and world society. The chapter proceeds by exploring the English school’s position on the issue of human rights and its implications for justice in international relations.

A master institution of world society? Digital communications networks and the changing dynamics of transnational contention

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Lemke ◽  
Michael W Habegger
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
World Society ◽  
English School ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Communications Networks ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
Fundamental Challenge ◽  
Alternative Site

In English School theory, the putative change from an international society of states to a world society of individuals is usually associated with the diffusion of a benign form of cosmopolitanism and the normative agenda of solidarism. Consequently, the notion that world society might enable alternative expressions of transnational politics, independent from international society, remains underdeveloped. Drawing on the literature of contentious politics and social movements, this article challenges orthodox accounts and suggests that the global proliferation of digitally mediated linkages between individuals and nonstate actors constitutes a fundamental challenge to traditional dynamics of interstate communication in the form of the diplomatic system. This provides an opportunity to reconceptualize world society as an alternative site of politics distinct from mainstream international society and generative of its own logic of communication, mobilization, and action. The 2011 events in Egypt and the ongoing digital presence of the so-called Islamic State are used to demonstrate how massive increases in global interaction capacity are transforming the pathways for political contention and collective mobilization worldwide.

Sovereignty under attack: the international society meets the Al Qaeda network

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barak Mendelsohn
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
English School ◽  
State Actor

This article examines the complex relations between a violent non-state actor, the Al Qaeda network, and order in the international system. Al Qaeda poses a challenge to the sovereignty of specific states but it also challenges the international society as a whole. This way, the challenge that Al Qaeda represents is putting the survival of the system under risk. Consequently it requires that the international society will collectively respond to meet the threat. But challenges to both the practical sovereignty of states and to the international society do not have to weaken the system. Instead, such challenges if handled effectively may lead to the strengthening of the society of states: a robust international society is dynamic and responsive to threats. Its members could cooperate to adapt the principles and the institutions on which the system is founded to new circumstances. Through its focus on the preservation qualities of the international society this article also reinforces the significance of the English School to the study of international relations. It raises important questions that could be answered in the framework of the English School.

5. International Society

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jackson ◽  
Georg Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
International Society ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
World Politics ◽  
World Society ◽  
English School ◽  
International History ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli

This chapter examines the International Society tradition of international relations (IR). International Society, also known as the ‘English School’, is an approach to world politics that places emphasis on international history, ideas, structures, institutions, and values. After providing an overview of International Society's basic assumptions and claims, the chapter considers the three traditions associated with the leading ideas of the most outstanding classical theorists of IR such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Immanuel Kant: realism, rationalism, and revolutionism. It then explores International Society's views regarding order and justice, empire and world society, statecraft and responsibility, and humanitarian responsibility and war. It also discusses several major criticisms against the International Society approach to IR and concludes with an overview of the current research agenda of International Society.

International Society: Global/Regional Dimensions and Geographic Expansion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis A. Stivachtis
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Society ◽  
European Society ◽  
International System ◽  
Boundary Line ◽  
English School ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
International Systems

To understand the global and regional dimensions of the contemporary international society, one must become familiar with the English School literature related to the historical expansion of the European society of states and its gradual transformation to the global international society of today. There is a distinction between an international system and an international society. English School scholars have accepted that this distinction is valid, but the boundary line between the two concepts is problematic. According to the English School literature, before and during the establishment of the European society of states, the world was divided into many regional international systems/societies—each with its own distinctive rules and institutions reflecting the dominant regional culture. The global international society of the early twentieth century was the result of the expansion of the European international society, which gradually brought other regional international systems/societies into contact with one another. However, World War I led to the destruction of the European society of states. Moreover, the emergence of a bipolar world in conjunction with the imperial Soviet policies during the Cold War led to the division of the global international system into two separate international societies. Nevertheless, with the end of the Cold War, a united global international society emerged. Within the confines of the global gesellschaft international society, one can find several gemeinschaft types of regional international societies—some of which are more developed than others.

Order and Justice

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hurrell
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Community ◽  
English School ◽  
Value Conflict ◽  
Theoretical Understanding

Order and justice are deeply intertwined in English School writing. The central concern of the English School is with the problem of order and with the question: To what extent does the inherited political framework provided by the international society of states continue to provide an adequate basis for world order? This kind of question links closely with the debates on international institutions and global governance that have been so prominent since the end of the Cold War. But the English School focus is less on theoretical understanding of particular institutions and more on assessing the overall character of institutionalization in world politics, the normative commitments inherent in different ways of governing the globe, and the adequacy of historical and existing interstate institutions for meeting practical and normative challenges. There are four specific themes that are central to the pluralist wing of English School writing on order and justice. The first theme concerns power and the conditions of order, while the second concerns diversity and value conflict. Meanwhile, a third theme emerges from the idea that moral values should, so far as possible, be kept out of international life and of particular international institutions. Finally, the fourth theme concerns the argument that international society has the potential not just to help manage international conduct in a restrained way but also to create the conditions for a more legitimate and morally more ambitious political community to emerge. As power diffuses away from the Western, liberal developed core, and as the intractability of the international system to liberal prescriptions becomes more evident, so one can detect new changes in the way in which global justice is understood.

The International System–International Society Distinction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne ◽  
Richard Little
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
English School ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
British Committee

The central feature of the English School is now usually considered to be its commitment to the proposition that international relations (IR) take place within an international society of shared norms and some shared values. However, an exclusive focus on norms has the effect of denuding the school of the more pluralistic dimensions that were advocated by some of the founding members of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics. Hedley Bull, in particular, stressed that to account for international order it is necessary to view IR from three divergent perspectives: the international system, the international society, and world society. The early British Committee discussions, directed toward delineating the “fundamentals” of international theory, used the terms international society, international system, and states system interchangeably. But the idea of a states system was distinctive to the emerging English School. A distinguishing marker of the English School is the claim that not only is there a need to accommodate societal norms in theoretical accounts of world politics, but that there is also a systemic logic, and that these analytics together have explanatory power in considering how the world hangs together. The essential elements of the school’s thinking were most fully and effectively realized in The Expansion of the International Society, the central work where the international system–international society distinction is employed. This grand narrative represents a crucial contribution to the field of IR but one that has been very generally underappreciated across the discipline. To generate a deeper understanding of the two concepts, it is clear that much more research needs to be carried out on international societies and systems around the world.

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