Module Detail

Subject Name Political Science

Paper Name International Relations Theory

Module Name/Title Constructivism and International Relations

Pre-requisites

 To explain in details the manner in which the

Objectives
ES evolved according to Ole Waever’s Four
Phase Scheme.

 Describe the English School’s three ‘S’s are

aligned with Wight’s three ‘R’s of
International Relations Theory.

 Trace the transition of the English School’s

research agenda and methodological affinities
before the end of the Cold War and in the
Post-Cold War years.

 To trace the resurgence of the English School

after the end of the Cold War.

 BCTIP – British Committee on the Theory of

Keywords
International Politics.
 ISA – International Society Approach
 ES – English School
 The three ‘R’s – Rationalism, Realism and
Revolutionism.
 The three ‘S’s – International System,
International Society and World Society.
 PIS – Pluralist International Society
 SIS – Solidary International Society

Structure of Module / Syllabus of a module (Define Topic / Sub-topic of module)

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Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator Prof. Ashutosh Professor

Kumar Department of Political
Science,
Panjab University
Chandigarh.
Prof. Shibashis
Paper Coordinator Department of International
Chatterjee
Relations, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata.

Dr. Jayati Srivastava School of International

Studiess, JNU, New Delhi

Content Writer/Author (CW) Prof. Amartya Department of Political

Mukhopadhyay Science, Calcutta
University, Kolkata.

Content Reviewer (CR) Late Prof. Sekhar Ex-Professor of the Dept.

Ghosh of Political Science,
Burdwan University,
West Bengal.

Language Editor (LE) Prof. Shibashis Department of

Chatterjee International Relations,
Jadavpur University,
Kolkata

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 The English School and IR Theory

Amartya Mukhopadhyay

 About the School and its Name

When Stanley Hoffman claimed in his historiography of International Relations up to the

1970s that outside the USA there was no systematic research in the discipline, save occasional
original contributions of Hedley Bull ‘unsupported’ by peers, he little knew that Bull was
representing a tradition of systematic research conducted inside and outside the British
Committee on the Theory of International Politics (BCTIP) in 1959, which later came to be
called the English School, or sometimes had more restrictive names, like the International
Society approach (ISA) (Jones 1981), the Grotian School (Wight 1991), Liberal Realism, or
British Institutionalists. Overlooked in the USA, the school was misunderstood even in its
homeland by many as a local version of Realism (Dunne 2007: 128).

There is some controversy about the label ‘English School’ (ES) too, because, whether in the
classical period of the evolution of the school (1950s to the 1980s) or in the post-classical
phase (1990 onwards) some of the leading contributors to the school were not English by birth,
though all of them were for some time or other based in British Universities. The examples are
— Charles Manning (South African), Hedley Bull and J.D.B. Miller (Australian), Robert
Jackson (Canadian), and Hideni Suganami (Japanese). Besides, the BCTIP, formed under
the Chairmanship of the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield, was funded by the
Rockefeller Foundation of the USA (Dunne 2010: 267-8). But as third world students we are
not concerned with the ‘Englishness’ of the approach or its major spokespersons. Our main
interest is in the distinctiveness of its research foci and its differences from the dominant
paradigms of the day, as an occupier of the middle ground.

 Development and Evolution of the School

It is inadequately recognized within the literature that the ES has two main lines of descent,
though some scholars figure in both. First, there is the set of early post-1945 ‘institutionalist’
scholars from the London School of Economics, including Manning, Martin Wight, Bull, Alan
James, and F. S. Northedge. Secondly, there is BCTIP, where Wight, Bull, Maurice Keens-

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Soper and Adam Watson assembled from other prominent universities in the UK (Qualye
2013: 4). But the essence of the ES’s inquiry, namely identification of the ‘institutional
structure of world politics organized as a society of sovereign states’ (Linklater and Suganami
2006, 260) was created in both the locales. While Manning placed international society at the
centre of his curriculum of International Relations, Wight conceptualized international society
as a middle position between realist accounts of systemic logics and revolutionist accounts
pleading for or auguring the downfall of the state system as a whole. Butterfield sought to
institutionalize the search for this new analysis under the BCTIP, chaired by key figures of the
school in the classical phase, like Butterfield (till 1968), Wight (till 1972), Watson (till 1978),
and Bull (till 1984 when he died) met regularly since 1959 (Dunne 2010: 269-70). Some
scholars like Bull, R. J. Vincent, Wheeler and Jackson also made crucial contributions in the
assessment of how well the institutions of that society are functioning in the achievement of
basic social goals and also of what values can or should be pursued in world politics organized
as a society of sovereign states. Likewise, Wight, Bull, Watson, Buzan and Little enriched
another field of inquiry of the school, namely comparative study of historical states-systems,
with or without a study of the historical evolution of the modern states-system (Linklater and
Suganami 2006, 260).

While admitting that fixing the story of the ES into neat stages is difficult, Buzan accepts Ole
Wæver’s (1998) four-phase scheme setting out the main threads of its evolution. Phase 1
extends from 1959 (founding of BCTIP) to 1966 (featuring Butterfield and Wight’s
foundational text Diplomatic Investigations). In this phase BCTIP fixed international society as
the preferred approach to theorizing. Phase 2 encompasses the period 1966-77, witnessing the
publication of Bull’s Anarchical Society (1977) and Wight’s Systems of States (1977), two
canonical texts which facilitated the exploration of international society in a world historical
context, added to modern classics by younger scholars like Vincent’s Nonintervention and
International Order (1974). Phase 3, running from 1977 to 1992, was the era of consolidation
and passing over the baton to a new generation. The BCTIP phase came to an end, after Bull’s
death, as did its formal structure of regular meetings. Its fruits best fruits were Bull and
Watson’s edited volume The Expansion of International Society (1984) and Watson’s The
Evolution of International Society. Both took Wight’s comparative historical approach to a new
comparative, world-historical perspective on international society, helped by other books of

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Vincent (Foreign Policy and Human Rights and Human Rights and International Relations,
both in 1986), Miller and Vincent (Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International
Relations, 1990), Bull, Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts (eds.) (Hugo Grotius and
International Relations, 1990), Michael Donelan (The Reason of States, 1978), James Mayall
(The Community of States, 1982), Cornelia Navari (The Condition of States, 1991) etc. The
christening of the ES by Roy Jones during this period inaugurated a discourse of self-
reflections on the state of the school. The final, phase 4, extending from 1992 (the year of the
end of the Cold War) to the present, signaled the arrival of a new generation of ES writers,
with little or no baptismal link to BCTIP, non-sectarian, eclectic, ready to draw on or borrow
from systems, neo-realism, regime theory, constructivism and globalization. The 1992 issue of
Special Issue of Millennium and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR)
workshop at Limerick, Ireland in the same year, which culminated in B.A. Robertson’s 1998
edited volume, International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory in
1998 announced that they had arrived to exploit the insights of three generation of scholars to
batter down sectarian walls and build bridges for higher syntheses (Buzan 2001: 473-74).

 The 3 ‘R’s and ‘S’s of ES

For reasons we do not know, like ancient Romans and Indians and later day Germans, ES
theorists too love thinking in terms of 3s. Dunne (1998: 5-11) contends that intellectual
ballasts of the ES are predicated on acceptance of ‘three preliminary articles: (i) adherence to a
given tradition of inquiry; (ii) a loosely interpretive approach to the study of international
relations; and (iii) an open and manifest concern with the normative dimension of IR
theorizing. For others the foundation of the ES is a tripartite distinction between international
system, international society, and world society, aligned with Wight’s ‘three traditions’ or
rather three ‘R’s of IR theory, namely, Realism, Rationalism and Revolutionism, as
summarized below:

 International System, associated with Hobbes/ Machiavelli, runs broadly parallel to

Neoclassical Realism and Neo-realism; talks about power politics of the states in the
background of international anarchy; and accepts the ontology of states, sought to be
captured through ‘positivist epistemology, materialist and rationalist methodologies
and structural theories’.

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 International Society, main focus of the ES and linked with Grotius and Rationalism, is
concerned with the institutionalization of shared interest and identity amongst states,
and treats the creation and maintenance of shared norms, rules and institutions as
central to IR theory. Though it has some similarities with regime theory, its thrust is
deeper, having constitutive overtones that go far beyond surface instrumentalist
implications. Though it also accepts the ontology of states, it is sought to be captured
though constructivist epistemology and historical methods.
 World Society, associated with Kant and Revolutionism, thinks of individuals, non-
state organizations, and ultimately the global population as a whole as the sources of
global societal identities and arrangements, and places transcendence of the states-
system at the centre of IR theory. Its forms of universalist cosmopolitanism are equally
comfortable with liberalism and communism. Notwithstanding some parallels with
transnationalism it has deeper roots in normative political theory. While disowning the
ontology of states, this conceptualization cannot, because of its transnational element,
privilege individuals as the only focus of inquiry. Critical theory does not define or
exhaust all the approaches to it, ‘and in Wightian mode it is more about historically
operating alternative images of the international system than it is about capturing non-
state aspects of the system’ (Buzan 2001: 474-75; 2004: 6-8).
The core conceptual bases of the three ‘R’s would be as follows:

Realism Rationalism Revolutionism

Anarchy Society Humanity
Power Politics Evolutionary change Revolutionary change
Conflict and warfare Peaceful coexistence Anti-state utopianism
Hopes without illusions
Source: Jackson and Sǿrensen 1999: 146

Wight, however, warns that no one of the above conceptualizations alone would be
adequate for a full understanding of IR. What is required is employment of all of them
together, and exploration of the dialogue between them. For him international politics ‘is a
realm of human experience’ with its distinctive repertoire of problems and language. To
study it one has to enter this tradition and join ‘in the conversation’ for the sake of

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understanding it (Wight 1991: 1). As per Jackson (1992: 271) the conversation is
constituted by:

a variety of theoretical inquiries which conceive of international relations as a world not

merely of power and prudence or wealth or capability or domination but also one of
recognition, association, membership, equality, equity, legitimate interests, rights,
reciprocity, customs and conventions, agreements and disagreements, disputes, offenses,
injuries, damages, reparations and the rest: the normative vocabulary of human conduct.

Understanding the society of states goes beyond mechanical application of social science
models, to know how the people involved in international relations, mainly statespeople,
have historically perceived international relations. Scholars are asked to explore why
these statespeople are prone to behave in the way they do by developing insights into the
ideas and thoughts behind their foreign policies (Jackson and Sǿrensen 1999: 140). This
is different from the obtrusive looking over ‘the shoulder’ or anticipating ‘the steps a
statesman — past, present or future — has taken or will take’ (Morgenthau 1948:5-6).
This is because in place of the intellectual eavesdropping of Realism the ES advises, as it
were, a kind of participant observation.

But what is the relationship between the three ‘S’s of ES? Jackson and Sǿrensen very
helpfully point out that:

The ‘system of states’ is a realist concept; the ‘society of states’ is a liberal concept.
The more international relations constitute a society and the less international relations
merely compose a system is an indication of the extent to which world politics forms a
distinctive human civilization with its own norms and values.

These words indicate that the movement from the systemic to the societal is ingrained in
the epistemology of ES. But the nature of progression even within the societal framework
cannot be adequately understood unless we understand what international society means.
Bull found it emerging when ‘a group of states, conscious of certain common interests
and common values, forms a society in the sense that they conceive of themselves to be
found by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, ad share in the

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 working of common institutions’ (1977: 13). Bull and Watson later defined international
society as:

a 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 for the conduct of their relations, and recognize their common
interest in maintaining these arrangements ((1984: 1)).

But the ES does not regard international society as unchanging or state sovereignty as a
fixed datum of theory, as would be evident from the distinction within the literature
between a pluralist international society (PIS) and a solidary international society (SIS).
In PIS the institutional structure is oriented towards preservation of liberty of states and
maintenance of order among them through instrumentally understood pluralist and norms.
These ‘provide a structure of coexistence’ based on the ‘mutual recognition of states as
independent and legally equal members of society …’ (Alderson and Hurrell 2000: 7).
The meaning of the pluralist order would be clear if we remember that ES regards great
powers, limited wars and balance of powers as ‘institutions’, as practices that had evolved
over many centuries to maintain order. For Bull SIS would involve collective
enforcement of international rules and the guardianship of human rights, and modification
of sovereignty in a way that a duty is created for members of international society to
intervene forcibly to protect these rights. But while differentiating this solidarism from
cosmopolitanism for the latter’s fuzziness about the institutional arrangement for
delivering these values, Bull remains wary about ‘premature global solidarism’ and its
deleterious consequences (Dunne 2007: 136-8).

 ES Research Agenda Then and Now

Before we go into the research agenda of ES we should spell out the basics of this
approach before its post-Cold War reincarnation. A tabular presentation would most benefit
our readers.

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 Basic International Society Approach
Methodology Humanism
Interpretive mode of inquiry
Historical, jurisprudential, philosophical
Core Concepts Human Relations
States
Anarchical Society
State System
Society of States ---> World Society
Basic Values Order
Justice
State sovereignty
Statecraft and responsibility
[Adapted from Jackson and Sǿrensen 1999: 144]

Before the end of the Cold War the ES talked about the meaning of anarchy and order,
about order and justice, and about statecraft and responsibility in all the senses of
national, international and human responsibility. Since the end of the Cold War the
research agenda of the ES has not obviously changed. But there has been a shift in
priorities in some cases, and additions and alterations in others. For example, the
movement away from order to justice has initiated a movement in the meaning of justice
away from international justice to human justice, making what Vincent calls ‘boundaries’
between domestic societies and international society ‘fuzzier’, and putting the concept of
state sovereignty under tension. Besides, ‘international legitimacy’ is an emerging area
since the legal and social discourses on human rights have placed the state under scrutiny
from both insiders and outsiders. As a result non-intervention is no longer an
unchallenged ‘institution’. Besides, ‘the greening’ of ISA theory is a distinct cry (Jackson
and Sǿrensen 1999: 152-65, 170-72).

In the second edition of Anarchical Society, on the basis of ‘five features of

contemporary world politics’, namely the (i) regional integration (such as in EU), (ii)
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 disintegration (such as in the USSR and former Yugoslavia), (iii) expansion of private
international violence (including intentional terrorism), (iv) the growth of transnational
organizations (including MNCs), and (v) communications based unification of the world,
Bull put a question before us. It was whether the classical society of states based on state
sovereignty may be yielding place ‘to a secular reincarnation of the system of overlapping
or segmented authority that characterized medieval Christendom’ (Ibid: 172). Is such a
question on the research agenda? An answer to it may be found in the list of themes in the
business sessions of an international conference on the ES in 2009 (english-program-
ny.pdf, 2009). There resource persons spoke about norms and practices including
diplomatic apologies, transnational governance of minority rights in Europe, post-
Revolution Russian diplomats socializing in European international society, apology and
forgiveness in international society, and history of humanitarian intervention. They also
talked about civic virtue and international society, redefinition of national interest as the
legal defense of international rights and obligations, non-republican foreign policy and the
clash of national interests, recent muscular Christianity and the role of diplomacy in the
clash of civilizations etc. Some contested international community as a concept or focused
on the ‘established’ and ‘outsiders in the international system’, extra- European origins of
the modern international system, and Westphalian Eurocentrism in the invention of
international society. New directions in system and structural theory involving ordering
principles, ranked orders, hierarchy as international structure, and sovereign equality in
international politics explored a path beyond anarchy. Some went back to 18th century for
historical perspectives on international ethics. Stirring cauldrons, it would seem. But these
were reflecting the reincarnation or metempsychosis of the ES, to which I now turn.

 Post-Cold War Transformation of the English School

 Regeneration

Georg Sǿrensen rightly thinks that amidst the ‘soul searching’ in IR theories after the end of
the Cold War the ES is receiving fresh attention (1998: 30). Dunne shows that while a whole
range of recent books and edited volumes in IR echo the concerns of many of the classic ES
writers such as Wight, Bull, Vincent and Watson, the new writers also are at the same time
more receptive than the founders to influences from philosophy, social theory, and world

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history, and are also less claustrophobic (Dunne 2001: 223). In my view they also mirror
many of the contentious issues highlighted in the cosmopolitan/communitarian debate about
the normative presuppositions that should inform the new global order around the triangular
relationship between individuals, states and the global order (Cochran 1995: 46-7).

Dunne’s pointer to an increasing elective affinity to the research agenda of the ES, within
much of recent writings in IR, without formally aligning with school (2001: 224), may baffle
one who remembers that just two decades back a leading IR scholar was constructing ‘a case
for closure’ against the ES, though it was then ‘still at its prime’, with its bonds still
sufficiently strong and new recruits joining. Even so the ES had appeared to him as a ‘spent
force’ and a ‘sterile regime’ that lacked intellectual coherence, rigour and passion on top of
being non-conversant with the increasing sophistication of international economics (Jones
1981:1-13).

But since contrary to Jones’ prognosis ES has not closed shop, but has rather spread its
influence over, cross-fertilized, and impregnated other schools, one may wonder how it has
managed it. That Bull’s classic Anarchical Society (1977) wields greater influence today than
at birth is substantiated by many diverse indicators. First, certain terms, concepts and
metaphors employed by Bull, like ‘neo-medievalism’, the ‘pluralist-solidarist’ distinction etc.,
have been taken up by Integration theorists and other normative theorists to highlight the
differences between different types of communities. Likewise the concept of world society is
being refurbished by a group of scholars at the universities of Darmstadt and Frankfurt.
Besides, realists and constructivists alike have accepted Bull’s insight that statecraft must be
understood in historical and sociological context. This merely means that theorizing about
international society has spilled over the brim of international society approach to soak and wet
other theoretical domains. The second, though crude and numerical, indicator of ES’s diasporic
spread is its dominant presence in edited texts of IR. Apart from containing five essays of Bull
Linklater’s massive five-volume collection of theoretical essays (2000) includes at least one ES
essay in each of the volumes. Dunne deduces from it that this approach has greater
acceptability and clout than when Wight wrote his classic De Systematibus Civitatum in 1967.

Catalytic of the regeneration of the ES and its quiet spread into the guarded precincts of
other schools and approaches has been the effort of other secular scholars. While Bull’s ideas

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of and insights into international society that had changed a lot from his classic book
Anarchical Society (1977) in his later and lesser works have been collected by Alderson and
Hurrell in an anthology (2000), for the sake of a more holistic reading of Bull, Buzan and Little
(2000) have taken up the questions posed by Wight and later by Watson in his seminal book
The Evolution of International Society (1992), to rework them into a truly systematic and
comparative study of international systems. Though Bull’s less reputed essays add to our
understanding of the breadth and depth of international society because of its substantial
amount of material on the normative content of the rules and institutions of international
society and its exploration of the relationship between European international society and the
non- European world, Bull’s idea of an international society is not entirely unproblematic. The
problems are an overstatement of the difference between a system and a society, and
exaggeration of the importance of Westphalia for the arrival of the international society and its
inextricable linking with the birth of nation-states, making Bull a victim to what Saurin so
aptly describes as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (1995: 244-45). Of course Wight did
not fall victim to his disciple’s mistake, and aware that patterns of order existed in many pre-
modern states-systems, Wight had preferred comparing successive historical states systems to
stressing on the unique characteristics of modern international society. Further, he listed
‘permanent communication’, and a ‘degree of cultural unity’ among fellow-members, apart
from their sovereignty, as defining characteristics of these states-systems. Besides, Wight gave
more attention to the status and obligations of the ‘barbarian outside pre-or-post-Westphalian
international society’ (Dunne 2001 224-28).

Buzan and Little did their repair job here to bring the ES theorizing in step with post-Cold
War theoretical frontiers. They used their international systems framework based on the
perspective of world history to identify ‘three significant turning points in the world history of
international systems.’ The first happened more than 40,000 years back when hunter-gatherer
bands first embarked on a form of exchange that ‘resulted in long distance movement of goods
and ideas … from one group to another over hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles.’
The second occurred 5,500 years back, the period marked by the emergence and interaction of
‘state like units’, where the mutual interactions between sets of these units provided the
backbone of the ‘first fully fledged international systems’, the major units of which became
increasingly diversified to embrace agrarian empires, nomadic empires, chiefdoms, city states

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and city leagues. At the onset of the third turning point that started only 500 years ago, a new
kind of political actor, the modern sovereign state emerged and after leading to the elimination
of units in ‘pre-international systems’ and of diversity of actors in both eras, covered the entire
globe by the end of the twentieth century . The international systems that had emerged and
developed in the five millennia after the second turning point, now ‘coalesced remarkably
swiftly’ to engender a single international system dominating all the lands and seas of the
Earth. While this process was completed more than 150 years ago, culminating in ‘the fully
global international system, which in turn gave birth to the self conscious study of international
relations’, the world historical transformation is far from complete. For, amidst debates about
whether the Westphalian state was yielding place to a post-modern state, and about whether
military-political relations are ceding primacy to military-political ones, the ‘historic tradition’
of International Relations remains open (2000: 1-7).

The extent which Buzan and Little have veered away from the methodological parochialisms
of IR to batter down the wall of Westphalia is remarkable. In another article Buzan (1993: 327-
52) tries to ‘relate the concept of “international society” to structural realism and regime theory
… to show how they complement and strength each other’, by first drawing a ‘a clear
boundary’ between ‘international system’ and ‘international society’ to ‘enable a clear
boundary to be drawn between them’, and then resolving ‘the nebulous position’ in the existing
literature on the complementarities of the two terms. Very significantly, he uses ‘the logic of
structural realism to show international society can emerge as a natural product of the logic of
anarchy’. He does not go the whole way with either ES or structural realism, or even with
Kenneth Waltz, because ‘the consequences of anarchy vary according to the level and type of
interaction in the system’. This secular perspective teases out the theoretically rich finding that
present day international society — hybrid, global and postcolonial — in part ‘stems from the
gemeinschaft international society that developed in modern Europe and imposed itself on
most of the planet during its imperial heyday, and in part it reflects a gesselschaft process by
which different cultures embedded in a system with high levels of interaction have learned to
come to terms which each other’.

 The Middle Way under Pressure

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 Those who cast their lot with the ES in both the classical and post-classical phases saw/see it
as occupying, alongside constructivism, the middle ground in IR avoiding in the classical phase
the binary of Idealism/Liberalism and Realism, and in the postclassical phase searching for a
niche between assertive mainstream theories of Neorealism and Neoliberalism and the radical
and resistant alternatives to them, like Critical Theory, Postmodernism or Poststructuralism.
Its attraction lies in offering ever broader syntheses of theories and concepts that evaded the
‘either/or framing’ between realism/idealism during the first great debate or between
explanatory/interpretive dichotomy that caused the ‘fourth debate’ during the 1990s. In their
place ES foregrounds a broad platform which ‘combines theory and history, morality and
power, agency and structure’ (Dunne 2007: 128, 2010: 268).

But this middle position is under pressure from all sides. In Kenneth Waltz’s book, which is
the canonical text for neo-realists and positivists in IR, Bull finds no mention at all, while
Wight only gets a passing reference in the discussion on alternative definitions of balance of
power. The words ‘English School’ or ‘international society’ are absent even in the index and
ES does not even qualify as a ‘reductionist theory’, the worst reproach word in the book (Waltz
1979: 117 and passim).

Among the postmodernists, Walker not only objects to Wight’s or Bull’s search for a Grotian
or Humian middle road, but also controverts Wight’s contention in an essay that theories of IR
are marginal to political theory, and critiques Wight’s historical method because of locating
‘spatial differentiation’, or the ahistorical contrast between political community within and
anarchy without, in ‘the transformations of the late medieval era’ (1993: 32-34). He treats the
second great debate between traditionalism and behaviouralism as nothing but a ‘more or less
decrepit [British] empiricism … primarily inductive and idiosyncratic in orientation’ locking
horns with ‘a predominantly American version of the same empirical tradition … which
favoured a more deductive approach and which drew upon pragmatism and (Walker 1980:
29).

Gim George, another postmodernist, regards ES as an exemplar of an unselfconscious body

of scholarship, wedded to the empiricist belief that the task of the historian is to tell the story of
what really happened without in any way imposing any part himself on the narrative, and then
passing judgement like Wight on the intractability of IR to theorizing in any political theoretic

14
sense. He also regarded the famous Wightian typology of Realists-Rationalists-Revolutionists
as a mere replication of the ‘simplistic Realist/Idealist dichotomy by locating ‘another
universalistic category in the centre’. The Grotian category may have mitigated the
aggressiveness of power-politics realism, but never overcame its positivist bias, based on ‘the
distinction between the scholar (subject) and an anarchical world of recurrence and repetition
existing “objectively out there”’ (George 1994: 81-82).

Chris Brown (1995: 184, 195) critiques the concept of international society ‘identified as
occupying the middle position of a triptych’, the other two being system and community, as
problematic, whether seen ‘as a “happy medium” to be defended in its own terms, or as a
“second best”, defensible only because no better international order is on offer’. This is
because ‘whichever fork of the road is taken, the route to an international society is less
straightforward than the international theory tradition suggests: the viability of the middle way
is open to serious question, and it may be that “international society” is a conception of
international order that is available only under very limited circumstances’, to only a handful of
advanced, industrial, liberal-democratic states, not to all.

If these critiques denied to ES any worth or separate status, then that by Rengger also asked
ES to close shop. Starting from the problem of order, Rengger adjudged that ES has failed in
‘resolving the problem of how to adjudicate between international and world order’, because it
is basically a middle- of-the-roader. If it chooses ‘to plump for the traditional international
society model … international order would always have priority’, but if it chooses ‘to shift to a
much more strongly cosmopolitan view … they would no longer be dealing in any meaningful
sense with “international society” at all’ and would rather reach a point at which ‘the
distinctive contribution of the English School simply evaporates’. Rengger saw the same
problem of intellectual tradeoff faced by another ‘half way house’, namely Constructivist
Theory. His advice to it, and also to ES, was that ‘as always, the middle of the road is just too
dangerous place to be. Sooner or later you have to move to one side or the other’ (Rengger
2000: 92-94).

 Es Builds Bridges

It is in the backdrop of such free-flowing criticisms from all sides that ES that the
methodological and substantive innovations should be evaluated. If ‘unselfconsciousness’ was

15
the keyword of George’s criticisms of Wight and Bull, and for Dunne ‘one aspect of the Buzan
and Little work that rests uneasily with the earlier English School research is that they are self-
conscious about the way in which they are building on the research agenda for historic systems
identified by Wight (1977) and Watson (1992)’ we can realize the full weight of the
methodological eclecticism of Buzan and Little and other new recruits. While Buzan and Little
have drawn on neo-realist and systems based spices to stir their history, Reus-Smit (1999), has
taken the tradition to the opposite direction of constructivism. Shifting his attention away from
international systems appearing in the hoary past of 5,500 years ago, Reus-Smit focuses on
comparison across history of different kinds of international systems that appeared around the
times of ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, absolutist Europe and the modern era, in the light
of the constitutive role that institutions play in determining prevailing patterns of interaction in
international society. His constructivism eschews the penchant of the earlier cruder version for
grand theory, to allow room for historical change; criticizes its inordinate emphasis on
sovereignty to the neglect of ‘deep constitutive values that define the social identity of the
state’; and refuses to trace the beginnings of modern industrial society back from Westphalia,
since the ‘metavalues’ of its underlying constitutional structure flowed from a rigidly
hierarchical social structure. A very good example of the new syncretism of the ES is
Wheeler’s (2000) efforts to mix the injunctions of critical theory regarding the ideal dialogue
with metaphors from constructivists and insights from Wittgenstein through his study of three
Cold War and four post-Cold War studies of humanitarian intervention, to build up a solidarist
theory of international society (Dunne 2001: 230-39) beyond Bull’s warning against
‘premature global solidarism’

 Conclusion

I wish to conclude this essay with a long quote from Buzan (2001: 472) which expresses
my sentiments and hopes about the approach perfectly:

[T]he English School is an underutilized research resource. The time is ripe to develop and
apply its historicist, constructivist, and methodologically pluralist approach to IR. … The
English School is not just another paradigm to throw into tedious game of competing IR
theories. It is instead an opportunity to step outside that game, and cultivate a more
holistic, integrated approach to the study of international relations. By this I do not mean

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 the narrow ‘neo-neo’ synthesis that has settled around rational choice methodology and
questions of absolute versus relative gains as a way of understanding international
cooperation … the English School offers a basis of synthesizing that is both wide and deep
enough to set up the foundations for a return to grand theory.

It is good that 20 years after Jones pleaded for a ‘closure’ of the school its most versatile
pedagogue asked for a ‘reconvening’ and creation of a great conversation around it on the lines
of what ‘Wallerstein has done around “world systems” (Ibid: 481)

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