The English School as a Research Program

sysop

The English School as a Research Program:an overview, and a proposal for reconvening

BISA Conference
Manchester
December 1999

I would like to thank Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen, David Jacobson, Tonny Brems Knudsen, Richard Little, Nick Rengger, Ole W鎣er, Adam Watson, Nick Wheeler, Richard Whitman, Jaap de Wilde and Yongjin Zhang for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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Contents

1. Introduction

2. A Very Brief Sketch of the English School and its Work to Date

3. The Case for Reconvening the English School

4. The English School as a Research Program - looking forward

5. How it Might Operate

6. Where to From Here?


1. Introduction

The English school (ES) as an approach to international relations is ripe for reconsideration. It has succeeded in establishing a globally recognised brand name (no mean feat for a non-American theory in the second half of the twentieth century), and is well into a substantial third generation of active scholarship. Yet it still remains outside the mainstream of American IR, had its designation as a school given to it by someone calling for its closure (Jones, 1981), and remains vulnerable to charges of being stagnant and backward looking (Waever 1992). Although impressively active in terms of people writing within or about it, it displays no discernible sense of direction, and the systematic working method that animated and inspired its first generation has atrophied even as the number of people working in the tradition has expanded.

This paper argues not only that the ES is an under-utilised research resource, but also that the time is ripe to give its historicist, constructivist, and what might be called its multi-paradigm, or methodologically pluralist, approach to IR theory more prominence in the study of IR overall. The ES definitely needs some development of its theory to sort out unresolved contradictions and underdeveloped concepts. It also needs to rediscover the working methods that served its founding generation so well, and adapt them to a bigger and more geographically spread constituency. It needs both a more self-conscious direction and division of labour. To achieve this, the totality of work that has been done needs to be gathered together so that participants can see what has been done, and make assessments about future research priorities. Decisions have to be made about how to construct a research agenda that moves the enterprise forward, and a coherent division of labour for pursuing this goal. The next section sets out a very brief sketch of how the English school has developed to date. Section 3 argues the case for reconvening the ES. Section 4 proposes (as an opening move in what needs to be a negotiation) what a more self-conscious and forward looking ES research agenda might look like. Section 5 offers some thoughts on how a reconvened ES might be organised, and section 6 proposes a next step. Appendix 1 contains some reflections from Adam Watson on how the British Committee operated during the opening phases of the ES. Appendix 2 sets out a draft of what hopes to become a standing and regularly updated bibliography of ES and ES-related works. Here its role is to make it easier to see both what the totality of the ES抯 opus looks like, and who the main contributers have been and are. Why, you may wonder have I become interested in the ES? Because for many years now my research agenda has been plotting a course somewhere between realism and liberalism, and it now seems to me that the ES is the best place to be for the further development of IR theory as I understand it.

This paper is an invitation to debate, and a possible template for how the debate might be structured. I hope it will also be taken as a call to action.

2. A Very Brief Sketch of the English School and its Work to Date

As a self-conscious intellectual movement, the English school begins with the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, which started meeting in the late 1950s. Earlier roots could be traced in Charles Manning抯 and Martin Wight抯 thinking about international society. The British Committee worked as a sustained series of meetings amongst a diverse group that contained not only people from several academic disciplines but also practitioners from the world of diplomacy. The cross-fertilisations generated by the process of debate in these meetings was a product at least as valuable as the specific publication projects on which the Committee worked. Many subsequent books took important parts of their inspiration from these discussions. Ironically, given the subsequent emergence of the 慐nglish school?label most of the meetings were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. This story has been told in various places (Butterfield and Wight,1966; Vigezzi, 1994; Dunne, 1998), and the flavour of it can be tasted in Adam Watson抯 sketch in Appendix 1 below. The initial leading figures in the British Committee were Butterfield, Wight and Bull, but the first two of these died during the 1970s and Bull died in 1985. Vincent (who died in 1990), and Watson subsequently emerged as the main carriers of the British Committee tradition.The idea of seeing this intellectual movement as a school did not emerge strongly until Roy Jones (1981) designated it as such. There is now some argument about what sort of boundaries should define the school, and who should be in or out (Dunne, 1998; Suganami, 1999a). While keeping the label 憇chool? my intention here is to treat it as a zone of intellectual activity whose frontiers are extensive and fuzzy enough to avoid most disputes about ins and outs. The ideas of Manning and Carr, for example, influenced many of the British Committee participants and their debates, though neither man was a member of the British Committee.

It is quite difficult to fix the story of the ES into neat stages and time periods, and doing so always provokes controversy. W鎣er (1998: 85-89) suggests four phases and his scheme is as good as any for setting out the main threads of the evolution.

Phase 1 runs from 1959, with the founding of the British Committee, to 1966 with the publication of Butterfield and Wight抯 Diplomatic Investigations. During this period, the Committee developed the focus on international society as its preferred approach to theorising about international relations.
Phase 2 runs from 1966 to 1977, in which year two of the foundational texts of the ES appeared: Bull抯 The Anarchical Society, which focused on the nature of Western international society, and Wight抯 Systems of States, which opened up the exploration of international society in a world historical context. A younger generation also began to make its mark at this time, most notably with Vincent抯 1974 book Nonintervention and International Order.
Phase 3 runs from 1977 to 1992. It is basically about consolidating the ES, and in some respects also about passing the torch to a new generation. The British Committee抯 work continued up to the mid-1980s, but after Bull抯 death the formal structure of regular meetings broke down, and the British Committee phase of the ES came to an end. It抯 main fruits were the 1984 book edited by Bull and Watson, The Expansion of International Society; and Watson抯 1992 book The Evolution of International Society, which carried on with the comparative historical approach opened up by Wight. Vincent抯 main books -- Foreign Policy and Human Rights (1986), and Human Rights and International Relations (1986) fall within this period, as do two edited volumes -- J.D.B.Miller and R.J.Vincent eds., Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations (1990); and Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts, (eds.) Hugo Grotius and International Relations, (1990) -- which were extensions of the British Committee tradition. The British Committee inspired and stimulated other groups (Dunne,1998: 14) which adopted similar assumptions and working methods. The most productive of these follow-on groups was based at the LSE, starting in 1974, and its track can be traced through three edited volumes: Donelan (who was a member of the British Committee), The Reason of States (1978), Mayall, The Community of States (1982), and Navari, The Condition of States (1991), and which also generated two important monographs: Mayall抯 1990 Nationalism and International Society, and Donelan抯 1990 Elements of International Political Theory. After Vincent抯 death this group drifted away from the mainstream ES agenda into political theory. It was during this phase that the ES got its name from Roy Jones, which began a cycle of self-reflections on the state of the school (Grader, 1988; Wilson, 1989).
Phase 4 runs from 1992 to the present. It is about the arrival of a new generation of ES writers with few or no direct links to the British Committee, and more open to working with ES ideas and approaches in the wider context of developments in IR theory generally (e.g. neorealism, regime theory, constructivism, globalisation). It was heralded by the 1992 Special Issue of Millennium, 態eyond International Society?(and the 1996 follow-on book edited by Fawn and Larkins); and by the 1992 ECPR workshop in Limerick which eventually produced B.A. Roberson抯 1998 collection International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory. Some of this new generation were younger scholars first making their impact during the 1990s, such as Dunne, Epp, Jackson Preece, Knudsen, Rengger, W鎣er, and Wheeler. Others were longer established scholars who took up an interest in the ES at this time, such as Buzan, Hurrell?, Jackson and Linklater?. During this fourth phase the ES has successfully reproduced itself both through the force of its ideas crossing three generations of scholars, and the influence of several of its central figures and regular contributors on their graduate students. It remains vigorous, but what it has so far failed to do during the 1990s is to recreate the sustained discussion forums that played such a big role in stimulating and orientating the work of the earlier generations.
To break the ES story up in this way risks losing sight of the considerable continuities that flow across the borders between the phases. One obvious example of continuity is the still energetic secondary literature on the founding fathers of the British Committee, especially Bull, but also Wight and Watson. Another is the array of individuals whose work spans across two or more of the boundaries. Watson is the champion here, spanning all four phases. Donelan, James, Keal, Little, Mayall and Suganami are others whose work bridges across two or three phases.
What ties all this activity together? If the ES is coherent enough to deserve the label 憇chool?(or even 憐one of intellectual activity?or 慶luster of thinkers? what defines its common ground? Dunne (1998: 5-11) attempts a fairly formal answer to this by elaborating 憈hree preliminary articles?of the ES. In his view the intellectual terrain of the ES is demarcated by acceptance of: 1) a given tradition of enquiry; 2) a broadly interpretive approach to the study of international relations; and 3) an explicit concern with the normative dimension of IR theory. Dunne抯 approach may, as Suganami (1999b) suggests, be a bit too demanding, running the risk of generating scholastic debates about ins and outs. Normative theory, for example, is without doubt a very strong part of the ES tradition, but whether it has to be a necessary condition for 憁embership?or participation is more arguable. A less demanding demarcation of the ES抯 core domain might focus on just two elements: its methodological approach and its key concepts.

As Little (1994: 15-16) points out, the English school抯 methodology is based on a tripartite distinction amongst international system, international society and world society. Within the ES discourse, these are sometimes (and perhaps misleadingly) codified as Hobbes (or sometimes Machiavelli), Grotius and Kant (Cutler, 1991). They line up with Wight抯 (1991: ch. 1) 憈hree traditions?of IR theory: Realism, Rationalism and Revolutionism (though this parallel is less obvious in Wight抯 original formulation than in subsequent usage of these terms). Broadly speaking, these terms are now understood as follows:

international system (Hobbes/Machiavelli) is about power politics amongst states, and Realism puts the structure and process of international anarchy at the centre of IR theory;
international society (Grotius) is about the institutionalisation of shared interest and identity amongst states, and Rationalism puts the creation and maintenance of shared norms, rules and institutions at the centre of IR theory;
world society (Kant) takes individuals, nonstate organisations and ultimately 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. It could include communism, but as W鎣er (1992:98) notes these days it is usually taken to mean liberalism.
In the English school perspective all three of these elements are in continuous coexistence and interplay, the question being how strong they are in relation to each other. It is this explicitly pluralist (or multiple rather than competing paradigms) methodological approach that both underpins the distinctiveness of the ES as an approach to the study of IR, and generates its key concepts. By introducing a third element as a kind of via media between realism and liberalism/utopianism, the ES transcends the binary opposition between them that for long plagued debates about IR theory. By assuming that all three elements always operate simultaneously (i.e. methodological pluralism), it also transcends the assumption often made in the so-called inter-paradigm debate, that realist, liberal and marxist approaches to IR theory are incommensurable. Within this framework, there is general agreement that the main thrust of the ES has been to establish the Grotian/Rationalism element by developing the concept of international society.
Bull and Watson抯 (1984:1) classic definition of international society is: 慳 group of states (or, more generally, a group of independent political communities) which not merely form a system, in the sense that the behaviour of each is a necessary factor in the calculations of the others, but also have established by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations, and recognise their common interest in maintaining these arrangements? This definition neatly demonstrates the methodological pluralism of the ES by combining the Hobbesian/realist element of international system, with the Grotian/rationalist element of a socially constructed order. It thus interleaves the logic of more materially driven theories of the international system, driven by billiard ball metaphores, with the view that sentience makes a difference, and that social systems cannot be understood in the same way as physical ones. When units are sentient, how they perceive each other is a major determinant of how they interact. If the units share a common identity (a religion, a system of governance, a language), or even just a common set of rules or norms (about how to determine relative status, and how to conduct diplomacy), then these intersubjective understandings not only condition their behaviour, but also define the boundaries of a social system. The basic idea of international society is thus quite simple: just as human beings as individuals live in societies which they both shape and are shaped by, so also states live in an international society which they shape and are shaped by. This social element has to be put alongside realism抯 raw logic of anarchy if one is to get a meaningful picture of how systems of states operate.

The main thrust of the English school抯 work has been to uncover the nature and function of international societies, and to trace their history and development. Its foundation has been the synthesis of realism and rationalism just outlined. But pursuit of this goal has obliged the ES to engage with the element of liberal revolutionism. Once the idea of society was conceded, one had to think not just of international society (amongst states), but also 憌orld society?(the idea of shared norms and values at the individual level, but transcending the state). It is clear that the relationship between international society and world society is fundamental to ES theory. It is also clear that its ability to focus enquiry along these lines is one of the attractions of ES theory. Yet despite some advances, this key relationship remains an area of confusion and contestation within the ES, and is a key priority for further work.

The more historical side of the school represented by Butterfield (1965), Wight (1977) and Watson (1987), think of world society (in the form of shared culture) as a prerequisite for international society. As Wight (1977, 33) puts it: 慦e must assume that a states-system [i.e. an international society] will not come into being without a degree of cultural unity among its members? Much of the historical record from classical Greece to early modern Europe supports this view, suggesting that a common culture is a necessary condition for an international society. As in the expansion of European international society, states from other cultures may then join this core (Butterfield, 1965; Bull and Watson, 1984), raising questions about how the norms, rules and institutions of international society interact with the domestic life of polities rooted in different civilisations, and whether international norms are sustainable under these circumstances. But a case can also be made that a preceding world society is neither historically nor functionally a necessary condition for the formation of an international society (Buzan, 1993).

Those more concerned with the maintenance and development of international societies, rather than their origins, come from a different angle (though the two concerns meet on the ground where established international societies expand into areas with a different world society, as has happened in modern times). This question is too complicated to explore fully here, and I am not yet sure that I understand it myself. One key issue is the possibility of an ontological tension between the development of world society (particularly human rights) and the maintenance of international society. The argument is that the development of individual rights in international law will undermine state sovereignty. The expansion of individual rights threatens external, or juridical, sovereignty by facilitating grounds for outside intervention in the domestic life of the state. It threatens internal, or empirical, sovereignty by restricting the rights of the state against its citizens. In other words, regardless of whether a measure of common culture is required as a foundation for international society, any serious attempt to develop a world society (by advancing a universalist human rights law for example), will tend to undermine the states that are the foundation of international society. Some writers celebrate the potential of this assault on the Westphalian order (Linklater, 1981: 23-37, 34-5). Others (Bull, 1977: 151-3; 1984: 11-18) are fearful of destructive dynamics between the two levels of society. One line of concern is the mirror image of Linklater抯, namely that if the individual ontology becomes powerful in relation to the state one, weakening sovereignty, then it is not clear on what basis international political order can be maintained. Another is that the rise of sharp differences at the world society level (such as during the Cold War, or as currently over disagreements about 憉niversal?human rights) will corrode the stability of international society.

The international/world society question remains one of the most interesting unresolved issues in ES theory. The principal frame for discussing it is the distinction between pluralist and solidarist conceptions of international society. Pluralist conceptions lean towards the realist side of rationalism. They presuppose that sovereignty is about the cultivation of political difference and distinctness. If that is the case, then the scope for international society is fairly minimal, centred on shared concerns about international order under anarchy, and thus largely confined to agreement about sovereignty, diplomacy and nonintervention. Solidarist conceptions lean towards the revolutionist side of rationalism. They presuppose that the potential scope for international society is somewhat wider, possibly embracing shared norms about such things as limitations on the use of force, and acceptable 憇tandards of civilisation?with regard to the relationship between states and citizens (i.e. human rights). In this view, sovereignty can also embrace many degrees of political convergence (as in the EU). Pluralism stresses the instrumental side of international society as a functional counterweight to the threat of excessive disorder in an international anarchy. Solidarism focuses on the possiblity of shared moral norms underpinning a more expansive, and almost inevitably more interventionist, understanding of international order. A solidarist international society is not the same as a world society. But while it might be argued that a pluralist international society does not, in principle, require much by way of world society, a case can be made that solidarism cannot develop far without being accompanied by matching transnational developments in world society (Buzan, 1993).

To complete this brief sketch of the ES it is useful to sum up the main strands of work that comprise the school抯 opus. A quick survey of the bibliography attached to this paper reveals the following as the main areas of interest (with a sample of the main writers):

Self-referential reflections - Analyses and assessements of the work of the central figures, and of the school as a whole (Alderson and Hurrell, de Almeida, Bull, Coll, Cutler, Der Derian, Dunne, Dunne and Wheeler, Epp, Evans, Fox, George, Grader, Griffiths, Harris, Hurrell, Jackson, James, Johnson, Jones C.A., Jones R., Linklater, Lynch, Lyons, Midgley, Neumann, Nicholson, Porter, Suganami, Thompson, Vigezzi, W鎣er, Watson, Wheeler, Wilson).
The relationship of the English school to IR theory - quite a few writers have focused on trying to relate ES concepts and thinking to the wider array of IR theory (Bartelson, Brown, Bull, Buzan, Buzan and Little, Cutler, Smith, Dunne, Jackson, Linklater, W鎣er, Wight). There has been some interest in linking the ES to political theory, most obviously in the work of Brown, Charvet, Donelan, Halliday, Larkins, Rengger, Suganami, Vincent and Yost; and more recently, in drawing attention to the parallels between ES theory and constructivism (Alderson and Hurrell, Dunne, Buzan and Little, Rengger, W鎣er).
War and balance of power in international society - War has been taken up by Best, Bull, Butterfield, Holsti, Howard, Korman, Roberts, Wight and Windsor. Balance of power most obviously by Bull, Butterfield, Hudson and Wight.
The history of international society - This line of work has two tracks. One is about the history of international societies generally, starting from Wight, then to Watson, Berridge, Cohen, Gong, Kagan, Keal, and Buzan and Little. This track can be divided into those concerned to explore modern, global international society, and those interested in premodern, subglobal international societies. The other track is studies of the way in which particular countries have encountered modern international society, particularly the way in which non-European states reacted to expanding European international society. The core works here are in Bull and Watson (eds.) (1984) and Gong (1984), and other writers with this interest include Bell, Donelan, Roberson, Stivachtis, Suganami, Yurdusev and Zhang.
Ethics, International law, intervention and international society - A concern with ethics and morality in IR was a feature of the British Committee debates, and writers include Brown, Bull, Nardin, Rengger, Vincent, Wheeler and Wight. Writers with a particular interest in the linkage between international law and international society include Brewin, Brownlie, Bull, Butler, Butterfield, Byers, Draper, Hsiung, James, Lynch, Mackinnon, Makinda, Roberts, Suganami and Wight. There is a strong subset concerned with human rights and minorities (Best, Donnelly, Dunne and Wheeler, Hurrell, Jackson Preece, Knudsen, Mullerson, Risse, Roberts, Vincent), and another interested in international regimes (Evans, Hurrell, Jervis, Miller, Vincent). Intervention has been a theme of Bull, Knudsen, Linklater, Little, Mayall, Ramsbotham, Roberts, Vincent and Wheeler.
The state - The nature of the state was a particular concern of the LSE-based English school group (Donelan, 1978; Mayall, 1982; Navari, 1991) and also of Jackson. There has been some interest in sovereignty (Brewin, Inyatullah, James, Makinda, 謘terud), and rather more in diplomacy (Bell, Bull, Butterfield, Cohen, Der Derian, Hill, James, Palliser, Watson, Wight) and in ideology and revolution (Armstrong, Brown, Halliday, Wight).
3. The Case for Reconvening the English School
If the English school is in vigourous condition, and has solved the problem of reproducing itself across the generations, why worry about it? Will not a laissez-faire attitude suffice? I think the answer to that is no. The problem is not to rescue an enfeebled body of thought that is in danger of going extinct, but to take a robust body of thought and increase its impact and reach by giving it more social cohesion and a sharper intellectual focus. The British Committee flourished not just because it had good ideas and good people, but also because it had a good working method. The meetings of the British Committee blended together a mix of academics from several disciplines and practitioners from the Civil Service. They created both a sense of intellectual community and a set of research priorities. As things now stand, the ES no longer has any identifiable leading figure or core forum. The lack of a leading figure may not matter too much. Indeed, it may even be a welcome development. The ES is substantially bigger than it was, and there are plenty of strong performers in its ranks. But the lack of a core forum is more serious, especially given the larger size and global spread of the current ES research community. Because of this lack, there is a danger that fragmentation will dissipate energies, and lead to the cumulative opus of the English school becoming less than the sum of its parts. Too many individuals are now working in isolation, and although there is a quite strong sense of tradition, there is not much sense of division of labour or overall direction. One measure of this is the surprise that most readers of this paper will get when they look at the bibliography and realise how unaware they were of the full extent of the ES. This danger is amplifed by the criticisms that ES theory, despite its potential, remains underdeveloped and in some ways stagnant (on which more in the next section).

In thinking about both why and how to reconvene the ES one needs to take into account six substantial differences in circumstance between now and forty years ago when the British Committee first formed.

1. The community of IR scholars is now much bigger, more diverse, better organised, and more conscious of itself as a field, if not as a discipline, than was the case during the 1950s and 60s. One implication of this is that it is no longer necessary, as it was in the early days, to make up numbers by drawing in people from other disciplines. That certainly does not mean that it is not desirable to include both non-IR and non-academic people, but it probably does mean than any reconvened ES will be more weighted towards the academic IR community than was the case before.

2. The intellectual environment of IR is much more pluralist (or in a negative light, fragmented) than that which faced the members of the British Committee. There are now many competing paradigms and approaches, reflecting a whole series of 慻reat debates? and a much higher degreee of methodological and epistemological awareness. If it wishes to expand its influence, the ES has not only to locate itself in this intellectual landscape, but also connect to it. Its comparative advantage in doing so is the integrative power of its methodologically pluralist approach.

3. The international environment is much less Hobbesian than during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, when the Cold War dominated world politics, and decolonisation was in full swing. Many of the key figures in the British Committee saw both of these developments as threatening to the Westphalian model of international society. Pluralists worried about the impact of post-colonial weak states on international society, and solidarists worried that both the ideological antagonisms of the Cold War, and the cultural diversification of decolonisation, would undermine international society. We are now in both the post-Cold War and post-decolonisation eras. International and world society are much stronger empirical realities than they were during the Cold War, and although debates about Western imperialism and clash of civilisations are far from over, the potential for further development of shared norms, rules and institutions is much greater than it was during the founding decades of the ES. The Grotian/rationalist middle way thus has substantially more immediate empirical relevance than it did during the more Hobbesian/realist decades of the Cold War.

4. There has been a substantial backlash against neorealism in recent years by younger scholars who have focused on the societal dimension of international relations. This is most apparent in the work of the constructivists, initiated in mainstream IR by Ruggie and Wendt. There has been an enormous groundswell of interest in the idea that norms, regimes and institutions are structural rather than contingent features of contemporary international society. This school of thought is very compatible with the framework developed by the ES.

5. Perhaps related to the backlash against neorealism, is the rise of a greater openness to world history as an essential component in the understanding of international relations. Much credit for this goes to the band of historical sociologists from Anderson and Hall to Mann and Wallerstein, whose work over the last decades has put the development of the state into a world historical perspective that was both accessible and congenial to an IR audience. Also significant has been the ending of the Cold War, and its accompanying sense both of the limitations of neorealism, and the re-opening of historical movement.

6. Finally, there has been an upsurge of interest in the post Cold War era in the normative issues associated with the debate been pluralist and solidarist approaches to international relations identified by Bull. Intervention, which was viewed in a negative light in the Cold War/Vietnam era has been reassessed. There is now a huge amount of discussion about when and whether the norm of nonintervention should take priority over a norm of humanitarian intervention. Many of these issues were first explored in depth by the LSE group during phase 3, but they have now become of central concern to the discipline - particularly in the US.

These points suggest two obvious answers to the question of why to reconvene the ES as this time. First is that the ES represents a strong, vital and distinctive approach to the study of IR that could benefit greatly from an improved sense of self-awareness and coordination. The ES has outgrown the institutions that served its first generations, and outlived most of its founding fathers. The ES of the 1990s is bigger and more scattered than its predecessors, and has not yet found a way of organising and directing its energies. The second reason for reconvening now is that the Zeitgeist of both academic and real word IR seem singularly favourable to an effort to raise the profile of the ES抯 way of thinking, while at the same time pushing forward the development of its core theoretical conceptions. The constructivist, historical and normative turns in IR all fit nicely into the ES approach. In turn the ES offers not only a coherent framework within which many of the fragmentations and diversities of IR can be synthesised, but also an ideal platform from which to build bridges to related discourses in History, Sociology and Law. It has the potential to short-circuit much of the rather fruitless dispute of the inter-paradigm debate by showing how the realist, rationalist and revolutionist/liberal strands can (and must) be integrated.

At its most ambitious, what I have in mind is that a 慻reat conversation?should be created around the ES, rather as Wallerstein has done around 憌orld-systems? This would encourage a wide circle of participants both from outside academia, and from within several academic disciplines, and try to create some sense of a linked research agenda, both theoretical and applied. The ES is an excellent and appropriate vehicle for this. Like Wallerstein抯 thinking, it easily combines IPE and world history perspectives, thereby avoiding the mistake make by much traditional mainstream IR of splitting into contending realist and liberal (and radical) streams. This mistake perhaps goes a long way towards explaining why IR theory has made so little impact outside its own circle: neither liberalism nor realism is plausible by itself, and much energy is dissipated by the opposition between them. The ES is also well placed to pick up on the constructivist wave, and slot it into an existing set of concepts. Its links to regime theory are already established, and it could be linked quite powerfully to the whole debate about the EU in particular and regionalism in general. Its relevance to debates about intervention is obvious. Overall the ES framework offers the best available basis on which to synthesise quite a few of the main lines of IR theory, and thus to revive a 慻rand theory?project.

On the question of how to reconvene the ES, and despite the difference in circumstance between the 1950s and 60s and now, there are clear reasons for taking the working method of the British Committee as a model for what might be done. The British Committee invented a successful working method that can and should be revived and upgraded to fit changed circumstances. Probably without intending to do so, and no doubt with considerable trial and error, and no small amount of luck, it constructed a sense of direction and coordination, defined a division of labour, and made sure that developments cross-fertilised throughout the ES community. It is much clearer in hindsight to see how this worked and how it could be made to work again, and we need all of those benefits now. If the ES is to successfully promote its claim to be one of the major approaches to the study of IR, and especially if it is to do so in a world still heavily dominated by US-based theories and debates, then the school must both give people a sense of the part their research plays in the overall scheme of things, and increase awareness of the research opportunities existing in the project as a whole. It does not require a chauvinist attitude to understand that its contribution to international intellectual diversity makes it a valuable resource. Nor does it require much imagination to see that if the ES is to have any hope of delivering on its methodologically pluralist promises, it needs a degree of formal organisation to ensure that links to other disciplines and fields, as well as to other strands of work in IR, are both established and maintained. The ES research agenda ties together political theory and IR theory, and has strong links to historical sociology, world history, international law, philosophy/ethics, international political economy (and possibly macro-sociology more generally, and business studies). IR抯 pretensions to multi-disciplinarity have often been more rhetorical than real, and the ES is a good vehicle for addressing this both in its pluralist intellectual content and in its self-consciously multi-perspective membership and working method.

4. The English School as a Research Program - looking forward

These six main areas of ES work sketched in section 2 provide a useful template for starting to think about what potentialities in ES theory have been underexploited, and what new areas and applications might be opened up. They also suggest lines along which a new division of labour might be constructed, for the ES is now easily big enough to sustain, and indeed to require, some specialisation. In the space available here it is not possible to do more than suggest a number of lines of enquiry and attempt a first suggestion about a new set of priorities. The purpose of the remarks that follow is to start a conversation rather than to set out any definitive position. If the ES is to be reconvened, then one of its founding moves will be to work out its priorities for a detailed research program.

Self-referential reflections -

This already constitutes probably the largest section of the ES literature. Raking over the works of old masters in order to find reassessments and reinterpretations reflects similar approaches in political theory, and is thus not an unusual method of work. But it could also be seen as a bit obsessive and backward looking, and perhaps one of the causes of W鎣er抯 (1992: 121) criticism that the English school has largely stagnated, despite its 慹xtremely interesting locale in the IR landscape? Only one of the central figures is still alive, and while all of them merit visiting and revisiting, there should surely now be more space for developing the ES agenda away from the works of its founding fathers. Given the array of new talent that is interested and available, there should also be sufficient confidence to do so.

Of course, contemplating the classic works is one way of thinking about ES theory. But there is a case for making the theoretical problems clearer, more explicit and more generally accessible by delinking them from the masters, and formulating them as an agenda in their own right. There needs to be core theoretical and definitional debates about the nature of international and world society, how they relate to each other, and how they are constructed and deconstructed. Several questions strike me as being particularly important in this context, but I am sure there are others:

a) The relationship between international and world society.

As sketched in section 2, there is an unresolved tension in ES thinking about the relationship between international and world society. Does international society require world society as a precondition, as Wight seemed to think, or can one take a more functional view of how international societies develop? Can developments in world society threaten international society, either by undermining the state or by blocking the development of solidarism? In the existing literature, this tension is complicated by being embedded in empirical realities and might benefit from being considered in more abstract terms.

b) The tension between conservative/pluralist, and progressive/solidarist views of international society.

Is international society a system for preserving the distinctiveness and independence of states within a limited framework of shared rules, or does it develop, as the practice of regimes and regional cooperations seem to suggest, into increasing degrees of harmonisation and integration (thus the necessary link to world society), not to mention intervention? At what point does solidarism become so progressive that it calls into question the existence of a state system (viz., the EU)? There is room for a lot of empirical work here looking at contemporary international and world society in ES theoretical perspective. There is also room for some normative work, for example posing a strong international society as the only solution to the problem of weak states. Unless there is to be sustained chaos, international society has to provide the layers of governance that weak states cannot yet provide for themselves. In a sense, it has to take over from imperialism as the next phase of the transition to modernism (and its derivatives and successors) that all parts of the world except the West still have to go through - not necessarily in the same stages, but somehow having to get to a similar end result, compatible with their cultures.

c) The tension between global and subglobal, particularly regional, levels of international society.

Much of the 慶lassical?ES literature seems to be based on the assumption that the baseline story is the emergence of a distinctive European international society, its transformation into a global international society, and the ups and downs of that global international society since then. While this formulation certainly represents a substantial part of the truth, it is both too globalist and too Eurocentric in its assumptions. The lines of argument suggested in (a) and (b) immediately above suggest that there is a lot of room for differentiating between global international society on the one hand, and subglobal, and particularly regional, international/world societies on the other. Neither 慽nternational?nor 憌orld?in this usage necessarily imply global. The empirical record suggests that different regional international societies can build on common global international society foundations, as they have done in Europe, the Islamic world, and Southeast Asia (and earlier amongst the communist states). The scope for subglobal developments, and their implications for global ones, urgently needs to be investigated, as does the possibility for non-Western forms of international society, or fusions between Western and non-Western forms.

d) The classification of types of international society.

Wight (1977) made an early start on this, but there is clearly much more room for development. A robust taxonomy is a necessary condition for being able to monitor structural change. One might, for example, differentiate international societies according to their organising principle. Three obvious candidates are

(i) those structured on the principle of political inequality (Imperial)

(ii) those structured on the principle of political equality (Westphalian)

(iii) those structured on the principle of functional differentiation (Mediaeval or Neomediaeval)

Or one might prefer to try to identify some other aspect of norms (religious, economic) as a basis for differentiation. We also need to be able to differentiate between weak and strong international societies, particularly if solidarist/progressive views of international society are to be given scope.

The relationship of the English school to IR theory -

If the ES is to develop as a major approach to IR, then work on how it relates to the IR project as a whole will continue to be necessary. Two lines stand out as particularly important for the future. The first is the linkage and interplay between constructivism on the one hand, and the ES concepts of international and world society on the other. As the constructivist wave gathers strength in IR, it will be important to establish that international and world society should be priority subjects on the constructivist agenda.

Second is the methodological pluralism that underlies the whole ES approach and the contrast of this with the more methodoligically monist approaches (neorealism, neoliberalism, world systems) that underlie much other IR theory. Part of the attraction of the ES is, as W鎣er (1992: 121) notes, its ability to 慶ombine traditions and theories normally not able to relate to each other? This position will have to be both defended and promoted if the ES is to be able to make more substantial inroads into the US IR community than has been the case thus far. One way of facilitating this would be to bridge-build between the ES community and those engaged in IPE, regime theory and globalisation, all three of which have weaker theoretical foundations than the ES. Some linkage between the ES and regime theory has already been made (Evans and Wilson, 1992; Buzan, 1993; Hurrell, 1993). The linkage to IPE and globalisation is obvious in terms of the centrality of norms, rules and institutions to both approaches, and as with constructivism there is an available bargain in offering IPE and globalisation a ready-made legitimising link to 慶lassical?IR theory.

War and balance of power in international society -

If we are to take seriously the stories about democratic peace and globalisation that we are telling ourselves these days, then war and balance of power are going to be less central to international society than in the past. These topics will remain of interest to those pursuing the history of international society, and perhaps also to some contemporary regional international societies, but they no longer seem anything like so important to the story of the West as previously. This change is itself worthy of close attention. If war and the balance of power were core institutions of classical European international society, what has replaced them (markets? great power security communities?), and how does such a shift affect the nature and operation of international society?

The history of international society -

A willingness to embrace history has been one of the distinctive features of the ES compared to most other mainstream IR theories. Much good work has been done in sketching out the story of international society over the last five millennia, and on tracing in more detail the particular emergence, and subsequent globalisation, of the distinctive European international society. But this is a vast subject area in which huge and underexploited reserves of comparative material remain to be exploited. We still need to know about earlier international societies in more detail, and to feed this understanding into the taxonomic exercise of classifying international societies suggested above. We need to know more about the history of international systems and societies in order to place our own experience into context, and the ES has a substantial comparative advantage in being the vehicle for this development.

There is also much room left for more country studies, looking at how particular states and peoples encounter and adapt to international society. This literature should find strong connections to the agent-structure debate.

And while there remains a strong need to look back, there is an almost equally strong need to apply the ES lens to contemporary and future studies. The methodological pluralism of the ES should, in principle, give it a comparative advantage both in trying to capture the nature of the present world order, and in contemplating how it might evolve in the future. IR theory in general has proved disappointing both in creating overviews of the present and in anticipating the future. Yet in principle, the approach of looking simultaneously at international system, international society and world society, should open up a powerful approach to considering these questions. Some moves in this direction have already been made (Fawn and Mayall, 1996; Lipschutz, 1992, 1996), but much more could, and should, be done.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity available here is to link the ES to debates about the EU. It is frequently observed that the study of the EU is almost entirely empirical, and that this theory-free quality is not desirable. On the face of it ES theory is admirably suited to this task, for what is the EU if not the most highly developed, thickest, most solidarist/progressive international society ever seen? Where better to explore the difficult relationship between international and world society than in the context of the debates about EU widening and deepening? Where better to contemplate the outer limits of international society, the frontier zone across which a very thick international society acquires so much collective 慳ctor quality?in the wider international system that it can no longer really be thought of as an anarchic substructure? Where better, indeed, to contemplate the future by anticipating the costs and benefits of more advanced types of international society? If it remains generally true of international systems that the economic sector is always more globalised than the political sector, which in turn is always more globalised than the societal (identity) sector, then the EU is the perfect place to observe the problems and opportunities created by the disjunctures across these three bands of human activity. A marriage between ES theory and EU studies could be fruitful in many different directions.

Using the same logic, an almost equally compelling case can be made for integrating ES theory and IPE. Theory in IPE is not strong, and yet much of its concern with regimes and international economic orders fits neatly into the ES framework of international and world society. Bringing ES theory into contact with EU studies and IPE promises rich rewards in both directions. ES theory can fill a void in these still excessively empirical areas, and the development of ES theory would almost certainly gain from the stimulus of being engaged with what are arguably the two most important lines of development in the contemporary international system. As contemporary developments in the West generally and Europe in particular show with great clarity, the development of an increasingly dense network of shared norms, rules and institutions amongst states cannot continue without a parallel development of shared norms and identities among the peoples, particulary when the states are liberal democracies. More advanced forms of international society require matching developments of 憌orld?culture amongst the masses. Conversely, a world society cannot emerge unless it is supported by a stable political framework, and a state-based international society remains the only plausible candidate for this. Thinking along these lines exposes fault lines within the ES between conservative/pluralist positions, which see international society as mainly about the preservation of cultural difference and political independence (Bull抯 label 慳narchical society?, and liberal ones, which take the definition at face value, and therefore open up to the possibility of international society as solidarist/progressive, leading towards more cultural homogeneity and a degree of political integration (as best illustrated by the EU).

Ethics, international law, intervention and international society -

The strong strand of normative and ethical enquiry in the ES remains robust. Its most natural link, as Rengger (1999) argues, is with the parallel tradition in political theory.

If international society is about shared norms, rules and institutions, then it must be closely related to international law. If one takes a narrow view of what constitutes international law (focusing mainly on the 憄ositive?law made by agreements amongst states), then international society is a much wider concept that international law. But some of the more expansive understandings of law would narrow the gap between them (customary law standing as a near synonym for norms). As shown above, there was some interest in this linkage in earlier ES works, but no systematic inter-disciplinary link with International Law ever developed. I lack the expertise to suggest exactly how the discourses of ES thinking and international law should be brought together. But there seems a strong case for mounting some sort of formal bridge-building dialogue amongst like-minded persons from both camps to explore the question. If complementarities or synergies are found, they should be developed and fed into the two communities of scholars.

The question of intervention blends elements of normative and legal debate. Is intervention a right or a duty, and for what ends and with what effects? The subject is as important, possibly more important, now than in the past, and should remain a key focus of the ES agenda. One key to it lies in the distinction between global international society and subglobal/regional international societies made above. If it is possible to build distinctive subglobal/regional international societies on the common foundations provided by global international society, then this arrangement frames the issue of intervention in the form of three questions.

(i) How legitimate is intervention within the rules and norms of the global lowest common denominator?

(ii) How legitimate is intervention within the rules and norms of a given subglobal/regional international society?

(iii) How legitimate is intervention across the boundary between distinctive subglobal/regional international societies?

Questions about the legitimacy of intervention relate so intimately to the issue of sovereignty that it is impossible to separate them. At the pluralist end of the spectrum, in a pure Westphalian international society, virtually all intervention is illegitimate (except against forces aiming to overthrow the international order). At the solidarist/progressive end is a thick international society such as that represented by the EU, where the agreed unpacking of sovereignty, and the establishment of agreements about elements of justice, makes many more kinds of intervention legitimate.

The state -

The state has been central to ES theory. Unlike neorealism, which makes system structure dominant over the units, ES theory is much more inside-out, than outside-in. International society is constructed by the units, and particularly by the dominant units, in the system, and consequently reflects their domestic character. In this sense, ES thinking is close to Wendt抯 view that 慳narchy is what states make of it? It also accepts as true for international, and perhaps world, society the neorealist injunction that international systems are largely defined by the dominant units within them. This being so, the ES should be particularly interested in the evolution of the leading modern states from absolutist to nationalist to democratic to postmodern, charting the impact on international society of these domestic transformations. It should also be interested in the question of sovereignty, not only because of links to intervention suggested above, but even moreso because any solidarist/progressive view of international (let alone world) society requires sharp moves away from rigid Westphalian conceptions of what sovereignty is and how it works. As the case of the EU illustrates, thick international societies have to unpack and redistribute elements of sovereignty. ES theory needs to understand all of this better than it now does. It needs to think about sovereignty and the postmodern state. And it needs to go on from there to contemplate functionally differentiated international societies, in which states are not the only actors generating, and being generated by, international society, though in some sectors they may still remain the dominant actors. This agenda finds its roots in Bull抯 憂eomediaeval?idea, which has had some resonance in ES thinking. But whereas Bull saw such development as problematic because of its incompatibility with the Westphalian state, a new approach might instead see it as part and parcel of how the postmodern state is itself evolving.

This focus should not obscure the continuing need to deal with questions of ideology and revolutionary states. If Fukuyama is right that the struggle between ideologies has broadly collapsed into debates within liberalism then it becomes important to understand liberal ideology as a sources of norms, rules and institutions. Revolution seem more likely to be located at the periphery than at the core, and therefore more likely to affect regional international societies than the global one - though a fusion of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction could quickly change this picture.

Taking all this into account, I suggest that the following topics deserve consideration not only as priority areas for research, but also as the basis for a division of labour and organisation into working groups. It is probably impossible to divide the ES agenda into mutually exclusive categories, but the inevitable overlaps can be used as an excuse to institutionalise a degreee of cross linkage that is anyway desirable. Some individuals may well wish to engage in more than one of these areas, and they should be encouraged to do so.1. ES theory - there are at least three main strands under this topic: developing international society and world society as the core concepts of ES theory; pursuing the normative enquiries about the ethics and morality of international society; and building bridges towards the theoretical debates about regimes, constructivism, IPE and integration/EU.

2. sovereignty and intervention - this topic includes: enquiring into the changing norms, rules, institutions and diplomatic practices that define international and world society (and thus contains a strong element of IPE); examining the ongoing co-evolution of the state and sovereignty; .and taking up the debates about the many practical cases of intervention (or not) that now crowd the international political agenda.

[topics 1 and 2 have many obvious connections. I have distinguished them here on the basis that topic 1 bundles together the more abstract, and 憄ure theory?issues, and topic 2 has a more empirical and 慳pplied?thrust. If people think this does not work, then we will need alternative suggestions.]
3. the history of international society - this topic contains two already well-developed areas of the ES agenda: comparative historical international society, and studies of how individual states and societies have both generated and/or adapted to international society.
4. the EU as an international/world society - given the existence of a strong and distinctive community of EU studies, and the almost complete absence of connection between it and ES thinking, this probably requires a lot of pump-priming and bridge-building to get it off the ground. A small group comprised of people from both sides, would need to dedicate itself to this task, perhaps initially by writing papers demonstrating to each camp the benefits of engagement with the other.

5. ES theory and international law - this is a similar case to that of EU studies, though perhaps the tradition of interest in international law in stronger within the ES tradition. In practice, however, institutional links and cross-fertilisation of literatures has been scant. The same kind of bridge building approach as for the EU might also be appropriate here.
That there is inevitably some overlap amongst these topics strengthens the case for having both a division of labour to maximise the benefits of specialisation, and some sort of standing plenary to maintain the cohesion of an overview, and to ensure that cross-fertilisation takes place.

As well as making academic linkages, the ES needs also to revive the British Committee抯 practice of mixing academics and practitioners. This could in principle be done in all five areas, but topics 2, 4 and 5 seem particularly ripe for the involvement of practitioners.

5. How it Might Operate

If we free ourselves from the constraints of funding for a moment, it becomes possible to imagine what the 慴est of all possible worlds?reconvening of the ES might look like. If one accepts the basic logic of the research program outlined above (or, more likely, some variation on it), then a reconvened ES would need to have about five permanent working groups (that would meet at least twice a year) plus a regular (probably annual) plenary, plus some sort of steering committee composed of an executive group and representatives of all of the working groups. The working groups would be semi-autonomous, in charge of their own organisation, scheduling and agenda. They might be convened by one individual, but for the sake of burden sharing, continuity and balance it would probably be better if a small group of two to four people shared the management task in some way. This would be especially true of groups tasked with building bridges to other research communities. The conveners would be responsible for establishing the membership and research agenda of each working group, and where appropriate, for making links to other communities, both academic and non-academic. There might also be a case for convening regional groups where there is a local cluster of people engaged with the ES, for example in Australia and Canada. Given its international geographical dispersal, a more organised ES would also need a regularly updated website on which contact and meeting information could be posted, views exchanged, and various resources (such as the bibliography attached to this paper, and perhaps some of the more hard-to-get 慶lassical?ES texts) made available. Taken together, this should be the minimum package we might aim for.

Thinking more ambitiously, it might also be desirable to start an electronic journal, with the possibility of turning this into a more conventional printed journal at some point. It would also be extremely valuable to have a number of ES-dedicated studentships located at particular centres of strength (most obviously Oxford and Aberystwyth, perhaps also Cambridge, Bristol, Keele, LSE, Westminster). One possible project for the plenary would be to commission a teaching textbook, or a reader, say: An Introduction to the English School Theory of International Relations.

Turning to more practical considerations, the basic things needing financial support would be:

1. travel and meeting expenses support for several working groups;

2. support for an annual plenary (which might be attached to one of the main ISA抯 Conferences: BISA, ISA, SGIR-ECPR). This would require some ability to subsidise travel and invite overseas representatives;

3. support for the steering committee and some sort of secretariat, including a person skilled in website creation and managment.

Additionally, one might seek funding for ES studentships.

There is a basic strategic question about whether funding should be sought centrally, for the whole project, or by the various subsections of the project individually. Overall, my feeling is that this project could best be got off the ground by obtaining a major long term grant that would fund both its core and its working groups for a number of years. The most obvious source would be the ESRC, though a package like this does not quite fit any of their headings. In order to apply for such a comprehensive grant, we would need to have a plausible structure of working group conveners in place, and possibly a network amongst the main centres of ES strength (Aberystwyth, Cambridge, Bristol, Keele, LSE, Oxford, Westminster, maybe others). The British Academy does not now look to be a possible source. I still need to investigate other possible foundation sources. It might be possible to get some support for individual working groups by establishing them as part of the BISA system. In the past, I believe also that Peterhouse at Cambridge (where Herbert Butterfield was Master) provided regular support for British Committee meetings, Balliol and All Soul抯 at Oxford, and the IR department at the LSE gave occasional support. Whether this could be revived would depend on the willingness of appropriately located individuals to get their colleges/departments engaged. If we take the linkage to practitioners seriously, then the FCO might be approached for odd bits of funding. And if the link to EU studies could be established, then EU funding for that part of the agenda might well be a possibility.

6. Where to From Here?

If there is sufficient support for reconvening the English School (and the preliminary responses to this initiative suggest strongly that there is), then the next step would be to hold a two-night, three-day conference, probably on some date between June and September 2000, and probably at Bristol University, to consider how best to proceed. This conference would need to include as many as possible of the most active contributors to the school and therefore the likely conveners for the working groups. Since there is no designatable constituency for the ES, this conference will inevitably have a self-appointing quality to it. Financial and logistical considerations suggest that participation should fall between a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 30 people. The most obvious candidates are the 26 people on the list of 憆egular contributors?in Appendix 2 (David Armstrong, Coral Bell, Christopher Brewin, Chris Brown, Barry Buzan, James Der Derian, Michael Donelan, Tim Dunne, Roger Epp, Andrew Hurrell, Robert Jackson, Jennifer Jackson Preece, Alan James, Paul Keal, Tonny Brems Knudsen, Andrew Linklater, Richard Little, James Mayall, Cornelia Navari, Brian Porter, Nicholas Rengger, Adam Roberts, Hidemi Suganami, Ole W鎣er, Nicholas Wheeler, and Moorhead Wright), plus Adam Watson. Some of these are retired, some are distant from the UK, and some may have other priorities, so there will room for others who want to play an active role. I hope that those who want to get involved (as well as those who do not), will make their interest known to me or Richard Little or Ole W鎣er before or during the BISA conference, or at latest shortly after. We will need to get moving quickly in order to try to raise funding for it, so we will need to know roughly who the participants will be. The main business of this conference would be to talk through the questions about agenda and organisation opened up above, and to come to some conclusions as a basis for action. Those conclusions would be the basis both for starting to set up an organisational structure, and for a major funding bid to be made as soon as possible thereafter.

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