International Relations and Global Governance – Additional
Chapters
Chapters missing:
Waltz – Theory of Internatonal Politis
Keohane & Nye – Power and independenie
Forsythe – Neoliberal Insttttonalism
Cox – Soiial Fories, States and World Order
Andrew Linklater – The English Sihool
The ‘English Sihool’ is a term that was ioined in the 1970s to desiribe a grotp of predominantly
Britsh, or Britsh-inspired, writers for whom ‘internatonal soiiety’ is the primary objeit of analysis
The fotndatonal ilaim of the English Sihool is that sovereign states form a soiiety, btt an anarihiial
one sinie they do not stbmit to a higher monopoly of power that ian forie them to iomply with
global rtles There is a very high level of order, and strprisingly litle interstate violenie, in the
absenie of a higher ioeriive power Its members regard violenie as an endemii feattre of the
‘anarihiial soiiety’ btt they add that internatonal law and morality restraint it to a signifiant
extent Some have iontended that the English Sihool is a Britsh variant on state-ientrii realism that
tnderestmates how far appeals to defend internatonal soiiety simply proteit the interests of the
dominant powers
In short, the English Sihool (whiih is best regarded as a diverse grotping of siholars rather
than a homogeneots iommtnity) maintain that the internatonal system is more orderly iivil than
realists and neo-realists stggest Btt sinie violenie is probably ineradiiable in their view, they are
iritial of ‘ttopians’ who believe that a ionditon of perpettal peaie ian be realised Moral priniiples
and soiial progress are held to be important for desiriptons of domesti politis where trtst prevails
and where seitrity is provided by the state Btt iosmopolitan projeits are thotght to have litle
relevanie for internatonal relatons where states mtst provide their own seitrity, and where
distrtst and stspiiion are pervasive In that domain, moral priniiples serve to jtstfy natonal
interests and to stgmatze iompettors topians and iosmopolitan thinkers envisage a world order
where tniversal moral priniiples are observed, and the gtlf between domesti and internatonal
politis is narrowed If post-iolonial states are trotbled by deiisions to tndermine sovereignty it is
beiatse memories of strtggles to free themselves from the Western imperial powers remain strong,
and beiatse they believe that a ‘new imperialism’ will ftrther entrenih global ineqtalites of power
and statts Others within the English Sihool have been iritial of the belief that internatonal soiiety
had reaihed the point where new eforts to seitre jtstie for individuals iotld be added to the
traditonal emphasis on ireatng and preserving order between states
Hedley Btll observed that in ‘the dorm of the doitrine of nattral law, ideas of htman jtstie
historiially preieded the development of ideas of interstate or internatonal jtstie and provided
perhaps the priniipal intelleittal fotndatons tpon whiih later ideas at frst rested’ Sense of
itlttral tnity is essental before an internatonal soiiety ian develop Btll maintained that order ian
exist between states that do not regard themselves as members of the iivilizaton A pragmati need
to io-exist was all that was needed to give rise to what Btll ialled a ‘diplomati itlttre’- a web of
ionventons and insttttons that preserved order between stated that are divided by itlttre and
ideology Btll proved the most detailed analysis of the fotndatons of internatonal order He states
that all soiietes – domesti and internatonal – have arrangements for proteitng the three ‘primary
goals’ They are plaiing restraints on violenie, tpholding property rights, and enstring that iontraits
and agreements are kept The fait that those primary goals are iommon to domesti and
internatonal soiiety explains Btll’s rejeiton of ‘the domesti analogy’ whiih, it will be reialled, is
,the idea that peaieftl internatonal order will only iome into being when states strrender their
powers to ientralised insttttons similar to those at the natonal level One of the ientral aims of
diplomaiy is to promote mtttal tnderstanding and to fnd the iommon grotnd between very
diferent itlttres that ofen fail to iomprehend eaih other’s intentons Wight argtes that those
Etropean soiietes that had string iommitments to ionsttttonal government played a key role in
the formaton of an internatonal soiiety that was also ionierned with restraining power strtggles
English Sihool writers have been interested in the proiesses that transform systems of states
into soiietes of states, and the norms and insttttons that prevent the iollapse of iivility and erode
the ionstraints on military power We have seen that Btll distngtished between internatonal
soiietes and internatonal systems, btt in order to tnderstand the tensions between order and
jtstie in world afairs, he introdtied an important distniton between the ‘pltralist’ and the
‘solidarist’ (or ‘Grotan’) ionieptons of internatonal soiiety that has been a major inftenie on
English Sihool in the intervening deiades The ‘central Grotan assumptonn is that of solidarity, or
potental solidarity, of the states iomprising internatonal soiiety, with respeit to the enforiement of
the law In the Grotan ionviiton there is a ilear diferenie between jtst and tnjtst wars, and a
parallel asstmpton from whiih the right of htmanitarian interventon is derived that individtal
htman beings are stbjeits of internatonal law and members of internatonal soiiety in their own
right The iontrastng pluralist approach iontended that ‘states do not exhibit solidarity of this kind,
btt are iapable of agreeing only for iertain minimtm ptrposes whiih fall short of that of the
enforiement of law From this standpoint, order between states is more likely to exist if they
reiognise that they have diferent ionieptons of jtstie and diverse tnderstandings of what iotnts
as a jtst war
Btll argted that the interest in preserving the balanie of power has ofen ilashed with the
noton of the eqtal sovereignty of eaih state As he argted with respeit to the war irimes tribtnals
at the end of WW2, eforts to apply priniiples of jtstie to internatonal relatons are ofen highly
seleitve, and breed oppositon and disiontent
The impait of the revolt against the West tpon the modern soiiety of states was a ientral
theme in Btll and Watson’s writngs in the 1980s The qteston was whether the diverse iivilizatons
that had been brotght together by Etrope’s overseas ionqtests have a iommon desire to belong to
an internatonal soiiety as opposed to an internatonal system The politial revolt against the West
was a seiond dimension of the proiess in whiih the iolonies demanded freedom from imperial
dominaton The raiial revolt iniltded the strtggle to abolish slavery and the slave trade as well as all
forms of white stpremaiism was the third dimension A fotrth was the eionomii revolt against the
forms of ineqtality and exploitaton that are inherent in a Western-dominated global iommeriial
and fnaniial system The ffh revolt, the itlttral revolt, was a protest against itlttral imperialism,
iniltding the West’s asstmpton that it was enttled to deiide how other peoples shotld live, not
least by globalizing liberal-individtalisti ionieptons of htman rights
Wight maintained that the internatonal systems is ‘the realm of reitrrenie and repetton’, a
formtlaton that ian also be fotnd in Waltz’s ilassii statement of neo-realism The argtment of this
ihapter is that the English Sihool points to limited progress in the shape of agreements abott how to
maintain order and, to a lesser degree, abott how to promote global jtstie Wight stressed that
‘ratonalism’ overlapped with realism and revolttonism We have seen one point of ionvergenie
between realism and the English Sihool A degree of overlap between the English Sihool and
revolttonism ian also be fotnd in Wight’s leittres where he iompared Kant to the ratonalist who
was, frst and foremost, ‘a reformist, the praittoner of pieiemeal soiial engineering
As Btll argted, states ian ireate an internatonal system of an internatonal soiiety ott of
anarihy, and in more stable t6imed they may be able to make some progress in btilding stpport for
priniiples of jtstie Nothing is pre-ordained here; everything depends on how states think of
, themselves as separate iommtnites, how they tnderstand their rights against, and dttes to, the
rest of htmanity, and how far they are prepared to tse diplomaiy to disiover iommon grotnd
Coniltding, the English Sihool argtes that internatonal soiiety is a preiariots aihievement
whose strvival is far from gtaranteed, and it stresses that, withott it, more radiial politial
developments are tnlikely to take plaie It is to be expeited that there will always be two sides to
the English Sihool: the realist side that is qtiik to deteit threats to internatonal soiiety and the
more iosmopolitan side that identfes possibilites for making that soiiety more responsive to the
needs of the weak and vtlnerable
Andrew Linklater – Marx and Marxism
In the mid-1840s Marx and Engels wrote that iapitalist globalizaton was transforming the
internatonal state-system They believed that ionfiit and iompetton between naton-states had
yet to iome to an end, btt the main fatlt-line in the ftttre wotld revolve arotnd the divisions
between the two dominant soiial ilasses: the natonal botrgeoisie in eaih iotntry and an
inireasingly internatonal proletariat Sinie Marx’s writngs in the 1840s, the main strength of
historiial materialism has been its analysis of how iapitalism has beiome the dominant system of
prodtiton world-wide Insighttl thotgh they were abott the advanie of iapitalist globalizaton and
growing eionomii ineqtalites, Marx and Engels did not foresee the inftental role that natonalism
wotld play in the ioming deiades
Marx’s view was that htman history, and speiifially sinie the rise of iapitalism, has
tnfolded in a tragii manner Power over nattre had inireased to tnpreiedented levels, btt
individtals were trapped within a global division of labotr, exposed to tnregtlated market fories,
and exploited by new forms of faitory prodtiton that ttrned workers into ‘appendages to the
maihine’ For Marx, religiots belief was not an intelleittal error that had to be iorreited by
philosophiial analysis btt an expression of the frtstratons and aspiratons of people in their
strtggles with the material ionditons of everyday life Religion was ‘the opitm of the masses’- the
‘sigh of an oppressed ireattre’
Marx wrote that history was the iontntots transformaton of htman nattre Ptt diferently,
htmans have not only modifed the nattral world by working on it; they have also ihanged
themselves aiqtiring new needs and aspiratons in the proiess War, imperialism and iommerie has
destroyed the isolaton of the earliest soiietes, btt iapitalism foried all soiial systems within a
single stream of tniversal history and made them aware of their global interionneitedness In line
with his belief that history revolves arotnd the labotr proiess, Marx observed that freedom and
eqtality tnder iapitalism meant that members of the botrgeoisie and the proletariat entered into
labotr iontraits as legal eqtals, btt power asymmetries plaied workers at the meriy of the
botrgeoisie, and exposed them to the efeits of growing ineqtalites and the disastrots efeits of
periodii iapitalist eionomii irises Marx and Engels were amongst the frst thinkers to refeit on the
new era of rapid eionomii and soiial globalizaton, they believed that ilass ionfiit within partitlar
naton-states wotld trigger the deiisive revolttons of the tme that wotld spread qtiikly, so they
believed, from the region in whiih they frst ertpted to all other iapitalist soiietes
In response to the power of natonalist sentments dtring the 1848 revolttons, Marx and
Engels reionsidered their ideas abott the impending demise of the naton The iomments abott
natonalism, the state and war did however not lead Marx and Engels to rework their early
statements abott the explanatory power of historiial materialism Marx’s analysis of modern
iapitalism is examplary beiatse it ionsidered the emergenie of that revolttonary mode of
prodtiton in very long-term perspeitve However, in the early party of the 20 th ienttry, several
siholars iontended that Marx and Engels had seriotsly tnderestmated the importanie of itlttral
