International Society

The years since 1989 have seen an escalation of the role of sub-international politics in

the international system. Nationalist and ethnic politics in the parts of the former Soviet

Union and Eastern Europe have led to an instability of the state-system in Europe not

seen since the 1940s, with wars in ex-Yugoslavia (threatening a general Balkan war),

and between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in Moldova and Georgia (all of which

threaten to involve Russia and a range of other states, both ex-Soviet republics and

others). The dialectic of political movements and international relations, so apparently

virtuous in 1989, has become much more vicious in its aftermath. The revival of

nationalism may be seen, following Mayall's discussion, as a normal part of the renewal

of international society - even Bosnian Serbs seek a place in the community of states

for their ethnic mini-state, suitably 'cleansed' of their former neighbours - but it also

raises issues of the extent to which sub-national developments dictate the international

agenda.

In this situation, international society seems both more surely founded and more

problematic. The proponents of the concept can take heart from the removal of the Cold

War ideological fracture which centrally threatened the cultural coherence of a 'society'.

It is now manifest that the major players are the Western powers among whom the rules

and underlying assumptions are widely shared; Russia and other ex-Communist states

are eager to avow their allegiance and vow allegiance to the same norms and

institutions.
At the very moment, however, when such developments seem to strengthen what is

referred to as international society, other changes bring it into question. Increasingly it is

the interactions between the international system and wider social and political changes

which command our attention. International relations between states are

increasingly about issues within societies, as the crises of 1991-92 have shown. The

Anglo-French-American intervention in northern Iraq was a direct response to media-

political pressure in Western societies resulting from the plight of the Kurdish people,

even if this was an indirect consequence of the war in Iraq. The Western powers'

intervention, increasingly under UN auspices, in Bosnia has increasingly been under the

impetus of humanitarian concerns resulting from similarly mediated pressure, even if

there are more traditional international issues at stake.

These changes are increasingly modifying what have been seen as the assumptions

and institutions of international society. The principles of sovereignty and non-

intervention are increasingly problematic. The assumption that international policing is a

matter for the great powers, while still holding a good deal of force, is nevertheless

qualified by the enlarged role of the UN in coordinating as well as legitimating

intervention. No doubt it will be argued that in none of these respects has anything

fundamental changed, but this is to ignore the corrosive effects of the ad

hoc modifications to international practice, now occurring at a rapid rate. All these

changes raise the question of the adequacy of the theoretical perspective of

international society.

The international system of states may appear to be one of the most important, or at

least the most developed, systems which order global society; but it is not the only set
of institutions to be increasingly organised on a global scale, for economic and cultural

institutional networks also have global reach, and we can also talk about these as

powerful systems within global society. It may even be the case that we can begin to

talk about global society in terms of the development of common values and beliefs,

and a common political culture, in which ideas of democracy and national status, for

example, are widely diffused.