Katana VentraIP

English school of international relations theory

The English School of international relations theory (sometimes also referred to as liberal realism, the International Society school or the British institutionalists) maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despite the condition of anarchy (that is, the lack of a global ruler or world state). 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[edit]

International system, international society, world society[edit]

English School scholars distinguish between international system and international society. The former is a quasi-physical realm, as proximate actors interact with one another.[1] The latter is an intersubjective realm where actors are bound together through rules, norms and institutions.[1]

History[edit]

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 (that of Hidemi Suganami) 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 (especially Tim Dunne and Brunello Vigezzi) 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 (an Australian teaching at the London School of Economics) 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' (Hidemi Suganami) - 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[edit]

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 (for example, a lack of discussion about research design), 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 (and in that sense causes them)".[12] 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.[13]


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 (or contingent generalizations) about world politics."[14]

Martin Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations (1966)

Herbert Butterfield

The Anarchical Society (1977/1995)

Hedley Bull

Martin Wight, Systems of States (1977)

Martin Wight, Power Politics (1978)

Bull, Hedley; , eds. (1984). The Expansion of International Society. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-821942-2.

Watson, Adam

James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (1990)

[15]

Martin Wight, International Theory (1991)

(1992) The Evolution of International Society, London: Routledge.

Adam Watson

Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998)

Tim Dunne

Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (2000). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Saving Strangers (2000)

Nicholas J. Wheeler

From International to World Society?: English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (2002)

Barry Buzan

Nicolas Lewkowicz, The German Question and the International Order, 1943-48 (2010)

Legitimacy in International Society (2005)

Ian Clark

Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (2004). Cambridge University Press.

Kalevi Holsti

Brunello Vigezzi, The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (1954–1985): The Rediscovery of History (Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2005)

Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory : Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, and Mazzini (2005)

and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2006)

Andrew Linklater

On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Andrew Hurrell

James Mayall, World Politics (2013)

[16]

Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (2014). Cambridge, Polity.

International community

Global village

World community

Global politics

of the English School compiled by Barry Buzan for the University of Leeds research project

Bibliography