Chapter 4

The English School

ANDREW LINKLATER

‘The English School’ is a term coined in the 1970s to describe a group of

predominantly British or British-inspired writers for whom international
society is the primary object of analysis (Jones 1981; Linklater and
Suganami 2006). Its most influential members include Hedley Bull,
Martin Wight, John Vincent and Adam Watson whose main publica-
tions appeared in the period between the mid-1960s and late 1980s
(see Bull 1977; Bull and Watson 1984; Wight 1977, 1991; Vincent 1986;
Watson 1982). Robert Jackson, Tim Dunne and Nicholas Wheeler
have been among the most influential members of the English School in
more recent years (Jackson 2000; Dunne 1998; Wheeler 2000). Since the
late 1990s, the English School has enjoyed a renaissance in large part
because of the efforts of Barry Buzan, Richard Little and a number of
other scholars (Buzan 2001, 2003; Little 2000). The English School
remains one of the most important approaches to international politics
although its influence is probably greater in Britain than in most other
societies where International Relations is taught.
The foundational claim of the English School is that sovereign states
form a society, albeit an anarchic one in that they do not have to submit
to the will of a higher power. The fact that states have succeeded in
creating a society of sovereign equals is for the English School one of the
most fascinating dimensions of international relations. There is, they
argue, a surprisingly high level of order and a surprisingly low level of
violence between states given that their condition is one of anarchy (in
the sense of the absence of a higher political authority). They invite their
readers to reflect on the probable level of violence, fear, insecurity and
distrust in even the most stable of domestic societies if sovereign authority
collapsed. A condition of chaos would be the most likely result, and yet
this is not the central characteristic of world politics.
This is not to suggest that the English School ignores the phenomenon
of violence in relations between states. Its members regard violence as
an endemic feature of the ‘anarchical society’ (the title of Hedley Bull’s
most famous work, 1977) but they also stress that it is controlled to an
important extent by international law and morality. Even so, confusion

84
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about the central purpose of the School can result from the fact that its
members seem distinctively realist at times. This is most obvious in
Wight’s influential essay, ‘Why is there no International Theory?’
(1966), where he maintained that domestic politics is the sphere of the
good life whereas international politics is the realm of security and survival
(Wight 1966a: 33). Realism is also evident in his argument that interna-
tional relations is ‘incompatible with progressivist theory’. In a statement
that seems to place him squarely in the realist camp, Wight (1996: 26)
maintained that Sir Thomas More would recognize the basic features of
international politics in the 1960s since nothing fundamental had
changed during the last few centuries. Some have argued that the English
School is essentially a British variant on realism which exaggerates the
importance of the veneer of society and pays too little attention to its
role in safeguarding the privileges of the leading powers and other dom-
inant interests (for a critique of this interpretation, see Wheeler and
Dunne 1996).
Members of the English School are attracted by elements of realism
and idealism, yet gravitate towards the middle ground, never wholly
reconciling themselves to either point of view. This is precisely how
Wight (1991) described ‘rationalism’ or the ‘Grotian tradition’, from
which the English School is descended, in a famous series of lectures
delivered at the London School of Economics in the 1950s. He argued in
those lectures that ‘rationalism’ was the ‘via media’ between realism and
what he called revolutionism – a group of perspectives which believed in
the possibility of replacing international order with peace and justice
(see also Wight 1966: 91). In this context, he refers to Grotius’ comment
in his great work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis which was published in 1625,
that those who believe that anything goes in war are as wrong as those
who believe the use of force can never be justified. Grotius envisaged an
international society in which violence between Catholic and Protestant
states would be replaced by a condition of relative peaceful coexistence.
In his lectures, Wight lamented the fact that the debates between realism
and utopionism in the inter-war years had led to the neglect of the
via media with its concentration on international society.
In short, members of the English School maintain that the international
political system is more civil and orderly than realists and neo-realists
suggest. However, the fact that violence is ineradicable in their view
puts them at odds with utopians who believe in the possibility of per-
petual peace. There is no expectation among its members that the inter-
national political system will come to enjoy levels of close cooperation
and the relatively high level of security found in the world’s more stable
national societies. There is, they argue, more to international politics than
realists suggest but there will always be much less than the cosmopolitan
86 The English School

desires. This is why it makes sense to argue that members of the English
School belief there has been a limited degree of progress in international
politics.
The nature of the ‘via media’ can be explored further by noting the
contrasts with realism and ‘revolutionism’ (as noted, a term Wight used
to describe various perspectives including cosmopolitanism which aim
to replace international order with a universal community of
humankind) and by further clarifying the claim that members of the
English School offer a limited progressivist account of world politics. As
discussed in Chapter 3, realism emphasizes the unending competition
for power and security in the world of states. Sovereignty, anarchy and
the security dilemma are crucial terms in its lexicon; in the main, the idea
of global progress is absent from its vocabulary. Moral principles and
social progress are seen as relevant to domestic politics where trust pre-
vails because security is provided by the state, but cosmopolitan projects
are said to have little importance for international relations where states
must provide for their own security and trust few of their neighbours.
In the latter domain, moral principles serve to legitimate national inter-
ests and to stigmatize principal competitors: they are not the basis for a
new form of world political organization which will supersede the
nation-state.
The existence of a more or less unbridgeable gulf between domestic
and international politics is a central theme in realist and especially
in neo-realist thought. By contrast, cosmopolitan thinkers envisage a
world order – but not necessarily a world government – in which
universal moral principles are taken seriously and the gulf between
domestic and international politics is reduced or eliminated. Global
political reform is not only possible but of vital importance to end
the struggle for power and security. The tension between these two
approaches has been crucial to the history of international thought and
was clearly evident in the early twentieth-century debate between realists
and idealists.
The characteristics of that debate need not detain us. Suffice it to note
that it was largely about whether the development of a strong sense of
moral obligation to human beings everywhere was the key to building
peaceful International Relations. Liberal internationalists believed that
realism was unjustifiably pessimistic about the feasibility of radical
change and revealed a lack of political imagination. Realists thought
that liberal internationalists were naively optimistic about the prospects
for a new world order based on the rule of law, open diplomacy and
collective security, and they thought their ideas were dangerous because
they distracted attention from the main task of foreign policy which is to
ensure the security and survival of the state. The violence of ‘the inter-war
 Andrew Linklater 87

years’ and the tensions peculiar to the bipolar era secured the victory of
realism.
Bull argued that realists focus on the struggle for power and security
in an international system while their liberal or utopian opponents focus
on the possibility of a world community. The English School recognizes
that each approach contains insights about the condition of international
politics. The realist’s claim that states, unlike individuals in civil society,
are forced to provide for their own security in the condition of anarchy
is valuable, as is its emphasis on how adversaries seek to outmanoeuvre,
control and overpower one another. However, this perspective captures
only part of the substance of world politics. The international system is
not a state of war despite the fact that each state has a monopoly of
control of the instruments of violence within its territory. Because of a
common interest in placing restraints on the use of force, states have
developed the art of accommodation and compromise which makes an
international society possible.
Watson (1987) later argued that a ‘strong case can be made out, on the
evidence of past systems as well as the present one, that the regulatory
rules and institutions of a system usually, and perhaps inexorably,
develop to the point where the members become conscious of common
values and the system becomes an international society’. This might
seem to give the utopian thinker hope that further progress is achievable,
but this is not a position that the English School generally endorses.
They argue that the utopian vision of a universal human community
draws on the fact that concerns about human rights, peace and justice
have long influenced the development of world politics. Like realists,
members of the English School begin with the condition of anarchy but
they are more inclined to take arguments for global reform seriously
rather than to regard them as either peripheral issues in world politics or
as simply one of the ways in which states compete for influence and
power. But they stress that the visionaries are wrong in thinking that the
current international order is merely a stepping stone to a universal
community. The crucial point is not that states are obsessed simply with
the struggle for power but that many have different conceptions of
human rights and global justice and conflicting views about how such
ideals can be implemented. The contemporary debate about whether the
time has come to introduce a principle of humanitarian intervention
where a state is guilty of the gross violation of human rights is a classic
example of the kind of moral disagreement which the English School
regards as typical of the society of states (Jackson 2000; Wheeler 2000).
Indeed, members of the English School stress that efforts to improve
international politics can produce major moral disagreements which
sour relations between states and damage international order. Most have
88 The English School

been sceptical of proposals for large-scale global reform and most have
doubted that any of them will ever appeal to the majority of nation-states
or to their most powerful members.
The crucial point is that neither realism nor revolutionism recognizes the
extent to which states have succeeded in creating an international society.
The English School insists, however, that the survival of international
order can never be taken for granted because it can be undermined by
revolutionary or aggressive powers. There is no guarantee that any inter-
national society will survive indefinitely or succeed in keeping crude self-
interest at bay, but for as long as international society exists it is
important to ask whether it can be improved. Noting that demands for
morality and justice have always formed an important part of the
history of international relations, Wight (1977: 192) argued that ‘the
fundamental political task at all times [is] to provide order, or security,
from which law, justice and prosperity may afterwards develop’.
Members of the English School were understandably inclined to stress
the importance of order rather than justice or prosperity during the Cold
War years, but since the mid-1980s many have taken a more explicitly
normative stance on questions of poverty and human rights. In the more
optimistic world of the 1990s, members of the ‘critical international
society’ approach became particularly interested in the possibility that
states could be ‘good international citizens’ promoting a more cosmopoli-
tan world order (Dunne 1998; Wheeler and Dunne 1998).
Members of the English School have long argued that the great powers
can be ‘great responsibles’ which do not place their own interests before
the task of strengthening international order. However, it is usually the
great powers that pose the greatest threat to the survival of international
society (Wight 1991: 130). In the age of American hegemony, members
of the English School have returned to one of its central concerns – whether
international society can survive in the absence of a balance of power.
Dunne (2003) highlights this question in his account of the contempo-
rary phase of US hegemony with the stress on preventive war to deal
with regimes which are believed to be prepared to share weapons of
mass destruction with terrorist organizations. The threat to interna-
tional society is stressed in this account. Other members of the English
School continue to examine the ways in which international society can
be improved. This is especially evident in Wheeler’s writings on the need
to introduce a limited principle of humanitarian intervention and in
Keal’s argument for changes which will improve the position of indige-
nous peoples (Wheeler 2000; Keal 2003). Indeed, one would expect
proponents of a perspective which is located between the poles of real-
ism and utopianism to explore the prospects for improving international
society and the constraints that stand in the way. No member of the
 Andrew Linklater 89

English School is naïve about the possibilities for radical change; but
increasing divisions between more ‘radical’ and more ‘conservative’
proponents have appeared in recent years, not least over the question of
whether the society of states should introduce a principle of humanitarian
intervention.
We will return to these themes later in this chapter which is organized
under four main headings. The first focuses on the idea of order and
society in core English School texts. The second considers the English
School’s analysis of the relative importance of order and justice in the
traditional European society of states. This is followed by an assessment
of the ‘revolt against the West’ and the emergence of the universal society
of states in which various demands for justice are frequently heard. The
fourth section returns to the question of whether the English School
remains committed to the notion that only limited progress is possible in
international relations and whether its claim to be the via media between
realism and revolutionism is convincing in the light of current debates
and developments in the field.

From power to order: international society

We have seen that the English School is principally concerned with

explaining the surprisingly high level of order which exists between
independent political communities in the condition of anarchy. Some
such as Wight (1977: 43) were fascinated by the small number of inter-
national societies which have existed in human history and by their rel-
atively short life-spans, all previous examples having been destroyed by
empire after a few centuries. Wight (1977: 35–9) also noted the propensity
for internal schism in the form of international revolutions which bring
transnational political forces and ideologies rather than separate states
into conflict. He posed the interesting question of whether commerce
first brought different societies into contact and provided the context
within which a society of states would later develop (1977: 33). In his
remarks about the three international societies about which a great deal
is known (the Ancient Chinese, the Graeco-Roman and the modern society
of states) Wight (1977: 33–5) maintained each had emerged in a region
with a high level of linguistic and cultural unity. Crucially, independent
political communities felt they belonged to the civilized world and
were superior to their neighbours. Their sense of their ‘cultural
differentiation’ from allegedly semi-civilized and barbaric peoples facili-
tated communication between them and made it easier to agree on the
rights and duties which bound them together as members of an exclusive
society of states.