The English School, History and Theory 1

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1 2011 Institute The of International English School, Relations History and and Area Theory SUGANAMI Studies, Ritsumeikan University 27 The English School, History and Theory 1 SUGANAMI, Hidemi * Abstract The purpose of this article is threefold: to give an account of the origins and development of the English School as a historically constituted entity; to distil from the writings of some of its early figures the English School s views about how historical knowledge relates to the theory and practice of international relations; and to study the English School s three major historical works and examine how their contributions relate to the theories of international relations. In its brief concluding discussion, it suggests what might be placed on the English School s research agenda on the theme of history and theory. Keywords: English School, history, international theory, rationalism RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol.9, pp (2011). * Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, UK. address: [email protected] 1 This is a revised version of the paper delivered at a Symposium on International Theory at the Crossroad: Critical Scrutiny from Western/Non-Western views, held on March, 2010, at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. I am grateful to Professors Tsugio Ando and Makoto Sato for their kind invitation and their hospitality during my stay at the Symposium. I am also grateful to Professor Kosuke Shimizu, of Ryukoku University, for acting as a discussant of this paper and for his insightful comments. Thanks are also due to Professor Giorgio Shani of ICU, formerly of Ritsumeikan, and Dr Josuke Ikeda, also of Ritsemeikan for the part they took in enabling my visit to Kyoto and making it a highly rewarding and very enjoyable experience. I would also like to thank my former research student, Dr Ching Chang Chen, of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, for chairing the session in which I delivered my paper. Afterwards, my Aberystwyth colleague, Andrew Linklater told me that I went far beyond the allocated time. I am grateful to Dr Chen and my audience for their patience.

2 28 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 INTRODUCTION In this paper, I wish to discuss three issues. First, by way of introduction, I want to say a few words about the English School as itself a historical entity and where it is at now. Second, I wish to outline what I have distilled from my reading of a number of English School authors regarding historical knowledge and its relation to the study and practice of international relations. Third, I move on to examine important historical accounts that emanate from the English School regarding the evolution of international society or, more broadly, inter-communal relations and discuss their relationships to international relations theory. At the end of the paper, I offer my view on the contribution the English School may make in the future on the theme of history and theory in the study of world politics. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL AS A HISTORICAL ENTITY There will be nothing particularly surprising in the claim that the English School is itself a historical entity. It is not my suggestion, however, that the English School has its history first and then it becomes the historians task to uncover it and represent it accurately. I mean rather the opposite of that: the English School has come into existence because people and by this I mean International Relations scholars in particular have been speaking and writing about it as a discrete entity with its own history. It is often said that, in order to count as a historical narrative, a story has to have the beginning, the middle and the end; perhaps more importantly, it has to be about something, some one thing, of which it is a narrative account. There may be some who disagree with this perhaps rather too rigid a notion of a narrative. However, it is this kind of narrative, or a linear narrative, that is relevant to the purpose of my argument. For it leads me to say that we cannot write a historical narrative, unless there is some unified subject-matter or substance. However, no subject-matter is present in the world in a pre-formed, pre-packaged way, like sandwiches on supermarket shelves. The subject-matter comes to be an entity, of which it is possible to give a historical account, through the very act of story-telling itself. I am of course not suggesting that those who engage in story-telling have to be historians by profession. Ordinary people giving accounts of

3 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 29 their village life of how it was earlier, what it has gone through, and where it is at now contribute to the coming-into-existence of the village as an entity. By the time professional historians enter the scene, the village may already have come to be a social reality rather than a mere category of analysis. But the historians writing a history of that reality reinforces its continued existence and reproduction into the future. Nations need their histories, as we all know. Even International Relations (or IR) as an academic pursuit, with a community of scholars taking part in it, is made possible partly by repeated narration of the community s origins and evolution. The case of the English School is no exception to this general rule. It has come into existence as an entity, a social reality, through repeated acts of narration about its origins and development, its past, present and future. As is usually the case with those entities which owe their emergence to historical recounting, the origins of the English School are a matter of some dispute. However, even to think of it as specifically a dispute is to buy into the idea that there are real origins of the English School concerning which there are more, or less, true representations. It is better to say that competing stories are told about how the English School emerged depending, among other things, on how the narrators want to position themselves in relation to the English School. 2) One such account suggests that the origins of the English School are found in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics headed by C. A. W. Manning and comprising his former pupils, such as Geoffrey Goodwin, Fred Northedge, and Alan James, plus two eminent scholars, Martin Wight and Hedley Bull, whom Manning had appointed from the outside to join his teaching team. Together, it is said, they formed a close-knit intellectual community whose main focus was the study of the anarchical society of states as an institutional framework of world politics (Wilson 1989). Another account claims, however, that the origins of the English 2) I was first alerted to the importance of the distinction between competition and dispute by F. S. Northedge and M. D. Donelan (1971), International Disputes: The Political Aspects (London: Europa, 1971). In a competition, contestants have irreconcilable desires; in a dispute, they argue about which of them has the right to possess what they desire, or which of their claims is true. A competition is a conflict of desires; a dispute is a conflict of claims about justice and truth.

4 30 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 School are found in the creation of the so-called British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, initially headed by the historian, Herbert Butterfield. Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson are the key figures of the Committee and hence of this story of the English School (Dunne 1998). Although Roy Jones (1981), who first referred to the English School by name, had Manning and his associates in mind as its members, and knew little about the British Committee, there is no denying that a number of key texts of the English School are those of the Committee and of its individual members. They include: Diplomatic Investigations edited by Butterfield and Wight (1966), The Expansion of International Society edited by Bull and Watson (1984), The Systems of States and Power Politics, two posthumously edited collections of essays by Wight (1977, 1978), and The Evolution of International Society by Watson (1992). Undoubtedly, the British Committee was an important site of what has come to be seen as the evolution of the English School research agenda and collaboration. This story is recounted in Dunne (1998) and, in more detail, in Vigezzi (2005). This does not mean that the other story, which locates the origins of the English School in Manning s work at the LSE, is to be rejected. There is no doubt either that Manning had a formative influence on the way IR has been taught at that institution and elsewhere in the UK (Suganami 2001). Perhaps I should put a little footnote here. It is sometimes wondered whether International Relations is an academic discipline. Manning was preoccupied with this question (1951a, 1951b, 1954). But what he was asking was a pedagogical question, namely, whether IR could have enough intellectual substance and social function to justify being taught as a university undergraduate programme leading to an award of a Bachelor of Arts degree in that subject. He was asking whether universities should offer an undergraduate degree course taught by a team of scholars specialising in the study of international relations. His answer, which involved much consideration on his part, was an unsurprising yes he was, after all, the head of an IR Department and he dedicated his life to making an undergraduate degree programme in IR intellectually respectable and socially useful according to his own understanding of how the contemporary world worked. Manning s understanding was based on his training as a student of law and jurisprudence and on his experience of the First World War, the League of Nations, the Second World War, the Cold War, and decoloniza-

5 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 31 tion and its aftermath, especially regarding the last of which he developed a strongly Euro-centric legalistic view (Suganami 2001). He was a firm believer in the importance of taking legal obligations seriously as a basis of international order (Manning 1975). The core of the undergraduate IR programme, as Manning set it up, was the idea of international society as a framework of world politics, anarchical in structure, yet capable of creating order and ensuring some degree of justice, through the working of its key institutions. Hedley Bull s The Anarchical Society (1977), which is arguably the single most important text emanating from the English School, is an elaboration of this central theme. The two accounts I have just outlined concerning the origins of the English School are not alternative hypotheses, from which one must be chosen as the true version; rather they point to two segments of what has now come to be seen as a single reality known in many parts of the world as the English School. Since the work of the school has come to be known in distant parts of the world, I should point out that the name the English School may be misleading. It should not lead people into supposing that the school represents the English or British way of thinking about international relations. There are many British IR scholars who are critical of or not even interested in what the English School scholars have to say. The English School was perhaps a dominant force in the teaching of IR in the UK in the 1970s, but now, even in Britain, it is more common to consider the body of work coming from that school as one among a number of alternatives in the study of world politics. Be that as it may, there is little doubt that the English School, or those, such as Ian Clark and Andrew Linklater, who have come under the direct or indirect influence of its early figures, such as Bull and Wight in particular, have produced a distinct and significant body of work and continue to do so. 3) Those who are associated with the early history of the English School, or its founding members as some would call them, include: C. A. W. Manning, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, Alan James and John Vincent. Herbert Butterfield is added to this list by some on account of his role in the British Committee (see Dunne 1998). 3) Ian Clark s and Andrew Linklater s works are found in staff/academic/iic/ and

6 32 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 I think of this close-knit grouping of scholars as a kind of Gemeinschaft. It consists of teachers and pupils (e.g., Manning and James; Bull and Vincent; and Butterfield and Watson); mentors and mentees (e.g., Butterfield and Wight; and Wight and Bull); colleagues in the same university departments (e.g., Manning, Wight, Bull and James; and James and Vincent); and members of an exclusive club, the British Committee (e.g., Butterfield, Wight, Watson, Bull and Vincent). But this initially Gemeinschaftlike community of scholars took a globalizing turn at the end of the last century and a new English School was born as a kind of Gesellschaft. This has to do with Barry Buzan s call in 1999, as he put it, to reconvene the English School (Buzan 2001). In characterizing his move as the reconvening of the English School, what Buzan had in mind was the resurrection of the British Committee and its practice of holding seminars regularly to discuss the members papers on various aspects of world politics. But, of course, this was to be done in a globalized age of the Internet and frequent large-scale international conferences. What was convened was nothing like a replica of the small and exclusive British Committee but a global network of likeminded scholars all interested in developing the study of world politics beyond what the founding figures of the old English School had done. In addition to this Gesellschaft-like global network of scholars, however, there were also a new generation of scholars who grew out of the Gemeinschaft of the old English School after the untimely deaths of Hedley Bull and John Vincent. These younger scholars included Andrew Hurrell, one of the last of Bull s students and now himself the Montague Burton Professor at Oxford University; Tim Dunne, a former doctoral student of Hurrell s at Oxford, now a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, and Nick Wheeler, Dunne s close collaborator at one time, now a professor of international politics at Aberystwyth University. The English School as it now stands consists of these two strands, the Gesellschaft-like global network and a smaller number of scholars who grew out of the Gemeinschaft-like old English School. The latter group would have continued to produce a distinct body of writings, regardless of Buzan s call to reconvene the English School, but has now become part of the worldwide movement to go beyond the old English School. That is where, in my story, the English School is currently at. I now want to move, without further delay, to my second topic: how the English

7 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 33 School writers, by which I mean some of its earlier figures, saw the relationships between historical knowledge, on the one hand, and the study and practice of international relations, on the other. Here I develop my argument from a study I conducted some years ago when I was writing a book with Andrew Linklater on the English School (Linklater and Suganami 2006, 84-97). THE ENGLISH SCHOOL ON HISTORY AND IR The English School is united in acknowledging the importance of historical knowledge to the study of international relations. This, of course, does not mean that scholars outside of the school (even across the Atlantic) have attached little importance to history: think of Hans Morgenthau or Ned Lebow, among many others. 4) Neither does it mean that everyone associated with the English School has made an extensive use of historical knowledge in their writings. Manning did not. He used metaphors and analogies extensively, but hardly any historical examples, to illustrate his argument, which alienated some more empirically-minded scholars, but not the more conceptually-oriented. I count myself among the latter as I learnt much from his book, The Nature of International Society (1975) and got to know his way of thinking quite closely by attending his lectures on philosophical aspects of international relations which he continued to deliver at the LSE into the early 70s. Even for Manning, however, there was no point in denying the linkage between International Relations and International History (1951a:17) and international history is, for the student of international relations, essential underpinner number one (1954:44). By an underpinner, Manning meant a body of knowledge which gives IR its foundation. Moreover, Butterfield and Wight, unlike Manning, were historians. For the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, led by the first two, history was not only a foundation on which to build a theory, but also a main avenue through which to explore what the theory of international politics might possibly comprise. Let me explain. For Wight, in particular, the theory of international politics, or what he preferred to call international theory, was a body of 4) On Morgenthau, see Watson (1992: 9). Lebow s recent works include Lebow (2003, 2008).

8 34 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 questions and answers about the nature of interstate relations which has crystallized over many centuries to form historically repeated patterns of thought. These included what he called the Hobbesian, Grotian and Kantian traditions all of which, however, are unfortunate misnomers as I hint at in relation to the first two traditions and Andrew Linklater expounds more fully in relation to the third in our book (Linklater and Suganami 2006: 35, note 13 and ch. 5). Wight also called these three traditions realism, rationalism and revolutionism, respectively (1991). For those who are unfamiliar with the English School terminology, I should add that rationalism in Wight s sense derives from the Lockean idea that even in the state of nature human beings can follow reason, act rationally, and behave reasonably towards one another (Wight 1991:13-14). By extension, rationalism in international thought points to the capacity of sovereign states to coexist under anarchy and develop properly societal relations. Vattel ([1758]1916), a well-known international lawyer of the 18 th century, is an archetypal rationalist, but rationalism, itself a broad spectrum of international thought, can be seen to stretch to Hobbes at one end and Kant at the other (Suganami 1989:ch 1; Linklater and Suganami 2006:ch 5). What historically contingent conditions have enabled states to realise their potentiality for coexistence and co-operation, and what other conditions must be met to enhance the extent to which this is realised in the contemporary world, is a central concern of the rationalist research project, which is at once sociological and normative. I shall touch on this theme again later in this paper, but let me, for now, return to the main theme of this section. The relationship between historical knowledge, on the one hand, and the study and practice of international relations, on the other, is a complex one, and the early figures of the English School exhibited a wide variety of views on this issue. First of all, according to Butterfield (1972:338), Wight (1977:16), and Bull (2000a:253), approaches to the study of international relations which are a-temporal must be considered inadequate because its subject-matter is intrinsically historical. According to this way of thinking, one important way to understand the present world is to locate it as the latest phase in the unfolding of world history along certain discernible trends. As I shall discuss later, this approach has been followed by Barry Buzan and Richard Little in their major work, International Systems in World History (2000). Second, according to both Watson (1992:1) and Bull (2000a:253), em-

9 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 35 pirical studies of international relations, even by IR specialists, are inadequate if they ignore the idiographic dimension of their subject-matter. That is to say, students of international relations must pay attention to the uniqueness of each entity and each event they examine rather than simply seek generalizations. Third, according to both Bull (2000a:253, 254) and Watson (1992:319), it is not wrong to search for historical generalizations; but we must be aware that in order to arrive at a sound generalization, the scope of investigation needs to be wide, and that there may be differences, as well as similarities, in the cases compared. Fourth, while drawing attention to the usefulness of historical knowledge in enabling us to decipher the direction of human social development, Wight (1977:191-92) and Bull (1977: ) warn that historical knowledge not only enables, but also constrains, our speculations about future options. They suspect that in our thinking about international relations, there may be little or nothing that is radically new (Bull 1969:37; 1977:255-6; Wight 1991:6). Bull (1977:275) therefore speaks of the tyranny of the concepts, the difficulty we find in thinking outside the historically dominant conceptual framework. Wight even suggests that historical knowledge does not necessarily provide a good guide to political action (1977:191-92). Fifth, Wight (1966:26) and Bull (2000b:232-3; 244) believe that the history of international politics can be written as a story of recurrence and repetition, but that in writing a history of modern international society, it is also possible to discern some signs of progress towards a more rational world. They hold that historical narratives about world politics are intertwined with the theories (or interpretations) about the fundamental characteristics of world politics (Wight 1966:33; Bull 2000a:253, 254). As this summary shows, the English School writers views on history and its relation to the study and practice of international relations are quite diverse. However, their thinking crystallizes around two general propositions, each with a main clause and a qualification: (1) that generalizing attempts in the study of international relations have serious limitations but may yield some knowledge; and (2) that historical knowledge offers much understanding about international relations but not without limitations.

10 36 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 When their mind is focused on stressing the limits of generalizing attempts, they become what they used to be well-known for staunch critics of North American scientific approach in IR (in what is commonly known in the IR community as the second great debate in the disciplinary history of IR) (Bull 1969). When they nevertheless pursue a generalizing path, they engage in the historical sociology of states systems of the sort Wight (1977) and Watson (1992) attempted and seek historical analogies and patterns of international thought as did Wight (1991) most famously. They attach much importance to historical understandings, but when they nevertheless draw attention to the limits of historical knowledge, they argue, as did Bull (1977: 275), that we must emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of the concepts that have shaped our world so far and warn, as did Wight (1977: ), that good historians are not necessarily good diplomats or politicians. They are also united in supposing that there are two kinds of theory in the study of international relations. One is a theory of international relations in the sense of inductive generalizations derived from historical facts. Despite some fairly fundamental criticisms (Waltz 1979; Bhaskar 1998, 2000), this does seem to be one way in which the word theory is frequently used. 5) The other is a body of general propositions about international relations which have accumulated over a long period in pronouncements by writers and practitioners on the subject of interstate relations (Wight 1991). Of these two kinds of theory, the former is based on the idea that historical knowledge provides a material for IR and IR Theory. The latter searches for examples of theory in the history of international thought and thought-in-practice. And the English School s central argument is that this historically accumulated body of general propositions, or what Martin Wight called international theory, are all of them only partially true when tested against patterns that emerge in history. That is to say, according the English School, there is no single theory, or body of generalizations, that exhaustively captures the main features of world politics which history has revealed so far. World politics, in their view, has some elements best captured by the realist tradition of thought, some which the rationalist tradition has 5) Hence the term democratic peace theory.

11 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 37 drawn special attention to, and some which fits the revolutionist representation. Hence the claim by Little (2000) and Buzan (2001) that the English School perspective is commendably pluralistic. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the founding figures of the English School were particularly sympathetic to the rationalist depiction of the world. Wight (1991) characterised this as the via media of international thought and expressed his growing sympathy towards it. For Manning (1975), Bull (1977), James (1986a) and Vincent (1974), this depiction captures what is in effect the enduring constitutional structure of world politics which has its historical origins in Europe and has now come to encompass the whole world through imperialism and de-colonization (Bull and Watson 1984). Given the background I have portrayed in this section, it is unsurprising to find that different kinds of historical work have emerged from the English School, old and new. In the next section, I want to examine three prominent examples, each reflecting one or more of School s concerns and orientations. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL S HISTORICAL STUDIES AND THEIR RELATION TO THEORY A first on my list is a comparative study of past and present international societies in search of some limited generalizations. Watson s Evolution of International Society (1992), inspired by Wight s (1977) idea of the comparative historical sociology of states-systems, represents this type. A second is a study of the expansion of international society, represented by Bull and Watson s edited volume (1984) under that very title. A third is a study of human inter-communal relationships which traces its evolution historically and explains the present as the latest phase in the process. This is exemplified by Buzan and Little s International Systems in World History (2000). However, following Watson s warning (1992:319) that knowledge derived from a limited period of history does not give a whole picture of what the world of interacting communities is really like, Buzan and Little s study covers an astounding 60,000 years of the history of human inter-communal relationships. In the following I shall outline these three works and consider what relationships they have with what we broadly call International Relations Theory.

12 38 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 THE DYNAMICS OF STATES-SYSTEMS INDUCTIVELY ARRIVED AT One of the questions Wight wanted to investigate under the rubric of the historical sociology of states systems was this: is there a case for saying that a states-system can only maintain its existence on the principle of the balance of power, that the balance of power is inherently unstable, and that sooner or later the system will end in a monopoly of power by an empire (Wight 1977:34)? To investigate this question, Watson compared a large number of states-systems in his book. He discarded Wight s distinction between systems of independent states, suzerain systems and empires, and included in the category of states-systems any system comprising a number of diverse communities of people or political entities (Watson 1992:13). He subdivided his examples into (1) ancient states-systems, of which ten cases were investigated from Sumer to the Islamic system, (2) the European international society, starting from Medieval Europe and ending in the nineteenth century Concert of Europe, and (3) the global international society of the twentieth century. Watson (1990:105) noted that in any given states-system there are tendencies to move away from multiple independences in the direction of hegemony, dominion and empire. This was the tendency that Wight (1977:43-4) saw in his limited examples. However, Watson also noticed that there are counter-pressures towards greater autonomy that make empires and dominions loosen and break up. According to Watson, in the practical operation of the states systems... the midpoint [where the two pressures balance each other] tends to be a varying degree of autonomy or domestic independence, ordered by a degree of external hegemony or authority, individual or joint (1990:106; see also Watson 1992: ch. 12). With this understanding, Watson speculated on the future of the international system in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union. What he considered likely was the development of joint hegemony, or concert, with the United States as the leader. Such an arrangement might be resented by some states, but, Watson argued, it may strengthen international order especially if the major powers conduct an active diplomatic dialogue with other states and respond to their needs (1992:323). This story is somewhat reminiscent of, but subtly and in fact quite significantly different from, what Kenneth Waltz (1993) said about the same topic. Here

13 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 39 I wish to enter a few observations on Watson s line. First, the inductive generalization Watson arrived at historically to the effect that the states-systems tend to witness the emergence of a degree of external hegemony, individual or joint, is too vague to enable us to predict the shape of the future. Second, if and when joint hegemony or concert of great powers led by the United States does materialize, we can have an understanding of that development to the extent that we can explain what brought it about in the particular historical circumstances, but not on the basis of a vague generalization that Watson had formulated. To understand a particular case in history, we need to seek historical knowledge regarding that case. To say that the case fits a general pattern is only to point out that the case we are looking at is not unfamiliar; but to say that something is familiar is not the same as explaining it (Suganami 2008a). Third, Watson s view that, if and when the concert of great powers emerges, weaker powers may resent it and that therefore, in order to contribute to international order, great powers must respond to their demands is intelligible as good practical advice to the extent that we share his rationalist sense of what tends to work in human social relationships. Let me try to integrate these three observations. If formulating inductive generalizations based on what history teaches us is one form of activity that goes by the name of theory in the study of international relations, Watson has made a modest contribution towards it. His generalization points to the likelihood that the states system will continue to be reproduced, with one or more members dominating the scene. But this generalization is too vague to offer us a more precise prediction and, in any case, historically specific explanation will be called for to make sense of what actually happens. What is interesting about Watson s argument, however, is his rationalist leaning in his prescription concerning the conditions of international order. Watson s prescription embodies an international theory of the rationalist variety, but, it may be noted, the relevance of his prescription to the future world is supported, though implicitly, by his inductively arrived at historical generalization, or a theory of international politics, according to which we will continue to live in a world of states dominated by one or more of them. In short, his prescriptive stance (or theory ) is underpinned by his inductive generalization (or theory ) which, in turn, needs to be sup-

14 40 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 plemented by history to produce an understanding of particular cases. THE EXPANSION OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY I referred earlier to a question Wight had raised regarding the apparent tendency of states-systems to end in an empire. Another important question that Wight (1977: 33-4) drew attention to in his historical-sociology project was this: all past states-systems arose against the background of cultural homogeneity; how far is this a necessary condition for the effective functioning of a states-system; and, by implication, what are the prospects for the institutions of current international society, which have their origins in the European civilization, now that they have come to encompass the whole world, comprising a variety of cultures? This was the central theme of Bull and Watson s book, The Expansion of International Society (1984). They acknowledged that, compared with the European international society of the nineteenth century, the global international society of the latter part of the twentieth century lacked solidarity because of a number of factors, cultural heterogeneity amongst them. The primary conclusions of this collaborative volume, however, were (1) that, although new entrants to international society have sought to reshape existing rules to reduce discriminations against them, they have accepted the society s institutional framework; (2) that they have had to do so because they could not do without it even in their mutual relations; and (3) that the leading elements of all contemporary societies have accepted a cosmopolitan culture of modernity upon which rests international legal, diplomatic and administrative institutions (Bull and Watson 1984:430-35). I wish to explore two questions in relation to these conclusions. First, is it the English School s contention that the institutions of international society, in broad terms, are a rational, functional, and pragmatically necessary means required for the coexistence and co-operation of independent political communities? Bull and Watson s answer seems to be in the affirmative. This is implicit in their view that the states of Asia and Africa perceived strong interests in accepting the rules and institutions of international society because they could not do without them even in their relations with one another (1984:433-34). That states need to accept positive international law, originating in the West, in order for them to coexist and co-operate at

15 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 41 all is also a strongly held belief on the part of Manning. For him, the acceptance of the binding nature of positive international law is a situationally generated pragmatic inevitability (1972:328). James was even more outspoken on this point. He wrote: To me it seems that when independent political units come into regular contact with each other certain requirements present themselves almost as a matter of logical necessity: some rules are necessary for the regulation of their intercourse, and also, therefore, some agreement on how these rules are to be established or identified; there must be some means of official communication, and with it an understanding that official agents must be personally respected and privileged; and if the collectivity of units is deemed to form a society this carries with it the concept of membership, and hence the necessity for some criterion whereby this political unit is identified as a member and that not. These requirements would seem to be valid whatever the cultural complexion or geographical location of the political entities who establish or later join an international society (1986b:466). This line of thinking is in effect an application to the international sphere of H. L. A. Hart s (1961:189-95) well-known argument about what he called the minimum content of natural law. The same source also inspired Bull s The Anarchical Society (1977). Hart s argument is basically that, given the characteristics of human beings, their wish to survive and prosper, and the nature of the environment in which they conduct their social relations, it is rational, or pragmatically necessary, that social norms governing all societies are found to have a few basic principles in common; and that these are the sorts which used to be called natural law principles, such as you must not kill, you must not steal, and you must keep your promise. In short, basic human needs are the rationale behind the emergence of societies regulated by similar basic principles. However, as is often noted in relation to functionalism in social science, what is rational, functional and pragmatically necessary does not always happen and so, when it does happen, we need to show how the outcome was brought about. That was the rationale behind the project which ended in the production of The Expansion of International Society. This leads me to my second question. Is the English School s charac-

16 42 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 terization of the historical process of the expansion of European international society a success story of what they believe in any case to be a rational way of conducting international relations? The answer has to be yes. And some writers have reacted to this aspect of the English School with considerable disdain. I am here thinking of Professor Onuma (2000:5-6) who is well-known for his advocacy of what he calls an inter-civilizational approach to international law and also a younger scholar, Dr Shogo Suzuki of Manchester University. I am much impressed by these scholars works. Suzuki s book, Civilization and Empire (2009) gives a much more detailed account than either Gerrit Gong or I have done in our respective chapters (Gong 1984; Suganami 1984) included in The Expansion of International Society. Moreover, in an article I wrote for a Festschrift for Onuma, I express my appreciation of his work as a jurist as showing one way in which to transcend the limitations of the English School work (Suganami 2008b). In my assessment, however, there is much that is common between the English School s position and the lines taken by Onuma and Suzuki. For one thing, neither of these two scholars denies that the West succeeded in spreading the institutions of international society, such as, in particular, international law and diplomacy (or a system of resident embassies). Nor, in my view, would they characterise a society of states governed by international law and diplomacy as an irrational way of organizing mankind. However, what Onuma (1993) stresses is the undeniable historical role that international law played in justifying Western powers colonial conquests. He (2000) wants those who write a history of international society and its law to take note of this in their narratives. Suzuki s (2009) reaction to what he sees in the English School history is similar. His basic argument is that a story of the expansion of international society is inadequate if it neglects its coercive aspects and portrays the spread of the institutions of European international society as having been inevitable because of their rationality and necessity for the coexistence and co-operation between states. He stresses that the society of supposedly civilized Western nations acted in an uncivilized manner towards those outside of their society and that, in the special case of Japan, it quickly learnt to behave in an uncivilized way towards its neighbouring countries less civilized than Japan according to the Western standard. Clearly, international society must be judged not only by the advantages

17 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 43 it has brought to its members but also by what it has done towards its outsiders and denied to its non-members. It does not follow from this, however, that the English School s narrative should be countered by Sino-centric or Japan-o-centric ones, for example. If the historical account of the expansion of international society given by the English School is closely intertwined with their rationalist international theory, then counter-narratives to the English School history should be explored in the traditions outside rationalism, that is, in the realist and revolutionist traditions, as well as any other traditions of political thought found outside the West. How does a Marxist explanation of world history (and the globalization of capitalism in particular) relate to the English School s narrative of the expansion of international society led by its great powers? How does Foucaultinspired history of liberal violence challenge the English School narrative? How do various strands of Islam explain where we were at centuries ago and how we have come to where we have come to wherever that may be? Is there a narrative of world history, beginning at some earlier point and ending in the present, which reflects, say, a Confucian view of the world? A comparative study of world historical narratives or what, after Hayden White (1973), I might call Meta-World-History will be an interesting project to pursue. Such a study will reflect the English School s view of history and its relation to theory namely that historical interpretations and international theory, or theories, are closely intertwined (Linklater and Suganami 2006:95). If, as Paul Veyne (1984: ) suggests, theory for a historian is a summary of the plot that shapes his or her narrative, then, clearly, world history and international theory are inseparable. THE UNFOLDING OF WORLD HISTORY This brings me to my final section, in which I wish to add a few words about Buzan and Little s book, International Systems in World History (2000). Of the diverse views expressed by English School authors on the relationship between historical knowledge and the study and practice of international relations, it is primarily the warning not to generalize from a small number of cases, and the idea that historical knowledge may help us understand the present and the future, that formed the central rationale behind Buzan and Little s study. They are critical of the existing IR dis-

18 44 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 course, based almost exclusively on observations about the Westphalian states-system, and, more specifically, of Kenneth Waltz s (1979) neo-realism. Their determination to break from imprisonment in our own time led them to write a book even larger in scale than Watson s. One key move they make, in their attempt to transcend the limitations of the Westphalia-based IR, is to define international systems very broadly. Thus, empires are included under the rubric as a hierarchical international system. What they call pre-international systems consist of bands, tribes, clans, and perhaps chiefdoms. Economic international systems typically involve tribes, empires, city-states, clans, and early forms of firms. And full international systems, encompassing military-political, economic and socio-cultural exchange, may consist of like units, such as city-states or national states, or unlike units, such as empires, city-states and barbarian tribes (Buzan and Little 2000:6, 95, 101, 102). The narrative that they construct is about how the geographical size of socio-cultural, economic and military-political systems gradually expanded, causing the progressive merging of what had been distinct regional systems, and resulting in the formation of the contemporary global system (2000:109-11). Buzan and Little (2000: ) point out, however, that economic systems have tended to cover wider geographical regions than military-political systems as trading could take place between distant partners too far away from each other to engage in war, given the interaction capacities available to them especially in earlier periods. This, they say, points to the relative autonomy of the economic from the military-political, indicating the need to understand the interplay between them to make sense of international relations. As to the present, the various components of Buzan and Little s narrative are all quite familiar: (1) the sharp disparity between the zone of peace, comprising powerful industrialized democracies, and the zone of war, containing much weaker modern and premodern states, and the domination of the latter zone by the former; (2) the obsolescence of great power war and a shift from military-political to economic processes as the dominant form of interaction in the international system; (3) a possible environmental catastrophe; (4) the emergence of post-sovereign states most clearly in the EU; (5) the rise of a variety of non-state, non-territorial, actors against the background of the increased stability in states territorial boundaries; (6) the lack of clarity in the number of the existing poles of

19 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 45 power; (7) the survival of the capitalist system through a series of crises; (8) thickening of the international rules, norms and institutions especially in the economic sphere; and (9) possible qualitative change in the economic, societal and political features of the international system brought about by the ever expanding use of the Internet (2000: ch.16). Buzan and Little treat these components judiciously and construct a tentative picture which works well as a synoptic account of the postmodern international system. This is perhaps the first systematic attempt by those associated with the English School movement to analyse the shape of what Bull (1977:20-2, ) had called a global political system which he earlier saw emerging in addition to the traditional framework of the society of sovereign states. The book s main contribution, however, is its narrative of human inter-communal relationships from as far back as we can go, through the middle, to the end where we are at now. The present is to be understood as the latest instalment of what world history has revealed so far and the knowledge of the past is presented as a guide to making sense of the present and considering the future. It is partly for these reasons that, for the English School more widely, historical studies of international, or inter-communal, relations are an important means by which to understand contemporary international relations. The content of the English School historical narrative, as I argued in relation to Bull and Watson s volume, reflects their rationalist leaning. Watson s suggestion for international order in the post-cold War era which he offers at the end of his own panoramic view of states systems also reflects his rationalism. Buzan and Little s book, however, does not exhibit the same tendency. This has partly to do with the fact that Buzan and Little follow a pluralistic stance which they consider the English School to be advocating. This, they say (2000: 43-7), encourages the analyst to see the world as exhibiting multiple characteristics, captured by the realist image of the system of states, the rationalist model of the society of states, and the revolutionist idea of a world society. Moreover, it is not Buzan and Little s purpose to offer a prescription regarding the conditions that need to be met for the constitutional framework of the society of states to contribute to order and justice in the contemporary world. These, in my view, are the main reasons why I do not have a clear

20 46 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 sense that I am reading a typically English School book when I read Buzan and Little s contributions. Their book s overriding aim is to offer a set of correctives to the neo-realist theory of international relations. They do so by covering a period far more extensive than neo-realism has done and pointing, among other things, to a strikingly wide range of possibilities in the organization of inter-communal relationships. But it is the awareness of the need to avoid generalizing from a small number of cases, or just one period of history, that Buzan and Little mainly took from the English School. The substantive content of Buzan and Little s story is quite different from the English School s archetypal rationalist narratives and normative suggestions, or what might broadly be termed the English School theory. CONCLUDING REMARKS Rationalism in the sense in which I have been using the term, which originates in Wight s study, suggests that the sovereign political communities, into which the human race is subdivided, can coexist and co-operate, without radical structural alterations at the international level. However, for these goals to be achieved under the circumstances that prevail in the contemporary world, certain conditions will have to be met, according to the diagnoses presented by the English School s leading figures, such as Bull and Watson in particular. I have noted Watson s suggestion that in the post-cold War world, the concert of great powers, led by the United States, must engage in diplomatic dialogue with lesser powers to take their demands into account. Bull s formulation in The Anarchical Society is similar. He argued that if the sovereign states system is to contribute to the goals of economic and social justice and of the efficient environmental control, in addition to the more basic goals of peace and security, the element of international society must be preserved and strengthened. For this purpose, he maintained (1977: 315), a sense of common interests among the great powers, sufficient to enable them to collaborate in relation to goals of minimum world order would be essential. He was of course writing at the time of the Cold War. But, significantly, he added: a consensus, founded upon the great powers alone, that does not take into account the demands of those Asian, Af-

21 2011 The English School, History and Theory SUGANAMI 47 rican and Latin American countries cannot be expected to endure (1977: 315). It is striking that he did not include countries of the Middle East in this list. But he went on to add that the future of international society is likely to depend on the preservation and extension of a cosmopolitan culture, embracing both common ideas and common values, and rooted in societies in general as well as in their elites (1977: 317). He explained: We have... to recognize that the nascent cosmopolitan culture of today, like international society which it helps to sustain, is weighted in favour of the dominant cultures of the West. Like the world international society, the cosmopolitan culture on which it depends may need to absorb non-western elements to a much greater degree if it is to be genuinely universal and provide a foundation for a universal international society (1977:317). In short, Bull was suggesting that, for its effective functioning into the future, the institutional framework of international society needs to be underpinned by ideas and values shared by peoples across the world. Whether this is a valid and significant suggestion in the first place and how, secondly, such a change may come about, or be brought about, are interesting questions that the students of world history and international relations may wish to investigate, whether they are from the English School Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft, or somewhere else. In my view, however, those of us who are inspired by Martin Wight s pioneering work on international theory are likely to be interested in asking certain meta-historical questions: what world historical narratives are there?; how do they relate to traditions of international thought?; and what world political realities do these historical narratives help constitute and reproduce? These, too, should in my view be on the research agenda of the English School. REFERENCES Bhaskar, R. (1998) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, third edition. London: Routledge. Bhaskar, R. (2008) A Realist Theory of Science. London: Verso.

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24 50 RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol. 9 White, H. (1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wight, M. (1966) Why is there no International Theory? In H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.) Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics. London: Allen and Unwin, pp Wight, M. (1977) The Systems of States, ed. H. Bull. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wight, M. (1978) Power Politics. ed. H. Bull and C. Holbraad. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wight, M (1991) International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. G. Wight and B. Porter. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wilson, P. C. (1989) The English School of International Relations: A Reply to Sheila Grader, Review of International Studies 15(1),