The Globalization of International Society re-examines the development of today's society of sovereign states, drawing on a wealth of new scholarship to challenge the landmark account presented in Bull and Watson's classic work, The Expansion of International Society (OUP, 1984). For Bull and Watson, international society originated in Europe, and expanded as successive waves of new states were integrated into a rule-governed order. International society, on their view, was thus a European cultural artefact - a claim that is at odds with recent scholarship in history, politics, and related fields of research. Bringing together leading scholars from Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States, this book provides an alternative account: it draws out the diversity of polities that existed at around c1500; it shows how interacting identities, political orders, and economic forces were intensifying within and across regions; it details the tangled dynamics that helped to globalize the European conception of a pluralist international society, through patterns of warfare and between East and West. The Globalization of International Society examines the institutional contours of contemporary international society, with its unique blend of universal sovereignty and global law, and its forms of hierarchy that coexist with commitments to international human rights. The book explores the multiple forms of contestation that challenge international society today: contests over the limits of sovereignty in relation to cosmopolitan conceptions of responsibility, disputes over global governance, concerns about persistent economic, racial, and gender-based patterns of disadvantage, and lastly the threat to the established order opened up by the disruptive power of digital communications.

Barry Buzan offers an extensive and long overdue critique and reappraisal of the English school approach to International Relations. Starting on the neglected concept of world society and bringing together the international society tradition and the Wendtian mode of constructivism, Buzan offers a new theoretical framework that can be used to address globalisation as a complex political interplay among state and non-state actors. This approach forces English school theory to confront neglected questions about both its basic concepts and assumptions, and about the constitution of society in terms of what values are shared, how and why they are shared, and by whom. Buzan highlights the idea of primary institutions as the central contribution of English school theory and shows how this both differentiates English school theory from realism and neoliberal institutionalism, and how it can be used to generate distinctive comparative and historical accounts of international society.

Now in its fifth edition, this title has been fully revised and updated in the light of recent developments in world politics, with new chapters on the changing nature of war, human security, and international ethics.

How is the world organized politically? How should it be organized? What forms of political organization are required to deal with such global challenges as climate change, terrorism, or nuclear proliferation? Drawing on work in international law, international relations, and global governance, this book provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the analysis of global political order — how patterns of governance and institutionalization in world politics have already changed; what the most important challenges are; and what the way forward might look like. The first section develops three analytical frameworks: a world of sovereign states capable of only limited cooperation; a world of ever-denser international institutions embodying the idea of an international community; and a world in which global governance moves beyond the state and into the realms of markets, civil society and networks. Part II examines five of the most important issues facing contemporary international society: nationalism and the politics of identity; human rights and democracy; war, violence and collective security; the ecological challenge; and the management of economic globalization in a highly unequal world. Part III considers the idea of an emerging multi-regional system; and the picture of global order built around US empire. The conclusion looks at the normative implications. If international society has indeed been changing in the ways discussed in this book, what ought we to do? And, still more crucially, who is the 'we' that is to be at the centre of this drive to create a morally better world? This book is concerned with the fate of international society in an era of globalization and the ability of the inherited society of sovereign states to provide a practically viable and normatively acceptable framework for global political order. It lays particular emphasis on the different forms of global inequality and the problems of legitimacy that these create and on the challenges posed by cultural diversity and value conflict.

Working from a unique non-U.S. perspective, this market-leading text provides a coherent, accessible, and engaging introduction to the globalization of world politics. Now in its sixth edition, The Globalization of World Politics has been fully revised and updated in light of recent developments in world politics. FEATURES * Presents contributions from an impressive line-up of international experts, each of whom provides accessible but stimulating insights into history, theory, structures, processes, and other key issues in the field * Offers a visually appealing full-color interior * Provides a strong pedagogical program that includes numerous boxes, figures, tables, maps, questions, lively examples, and case studies

Chronicling the emergence of an international society in the 1920s, Daniel Gorman describes how the shock of the First World War gave rise to a broad array of overlapping initiatives in international cooperation. Though national rivalries continued to plague world politics, ordinary citizens and state officials found common causes in politics, religion, culture, and sport with peers beyond their borders. The League of Nations, the turn to a less centralized British Empire, the beginning of an international ecumenical movement, international sporting events, and audacious plans for the abolition of war all signaled internationalism's growth. State actors played an important role in these developments and were aided by international voluntary organizations, church groups, and international networks of academics, athletes, women, pacifists, and humanitarian activists. These international networks became the forerunners of international NGOs and global governance.

In recent years, the English School or international society approach to International Relations has risen to prominence because its theories and concepts seem able to help us explain some of the most complex and seemingly paradoxical features of contemporary world politics. In doing so, the approach has attracted a variety of criticisms from both ends of the political spectrum. Some argue that the claim that states form an international society is premature in an era of terrorwhere power politics and the use of force have returned to the fore. Others insist that international society's state-centrism make it an inherently conservative approach unable to address many of the world's most pressing problems.International Society and its Critics provides the first in-depth study of the English School approach to International Relations from a variety of different theoretical and practical perspectives. Sixteen leading scholars from three continents critically evaluate the School's contribution to the study of international theory and history; consider its relationship with a variety of alternative perspectives including international political economy, feminism, environmentalism, andcritical security studies; and assess how the approach can help us to make sense of the big issues of the day such as terrorism, the management of cultural difference, global governance, the ethics of coercion, and the role of international law. They find that whilst the concept of international society helps toshed light on many of the important tensions in world politics, much work still needs to be done. In particular, the approach needs to broaden its empirical scope to incorporate more of the issues and actors that shape global politics; draw upon other theoretical traditions to improve its explanations of change in world politics; and recognize the complex and multi-layered nature of the contemporary world.

In this uniquely comprehensive historical study, Adam Watson draws on a lifetime of research and diplomatic experience to explain how international societies function. He examines the systems of ancient states, from Sumer through India, China, Greece, Rome, and Islam, and conducts an in-depth analysis of the worldwide contemporary society which developed from them. The Evolution of International Society describes and compares the changing rules and practices of ancient systems, showing their development within a spectrum ranging from loose international societies of many independent states ordered by some degree of hegemony, to tighter imperial systems tempered by some measure of autonomy. The book demonstrates in convincing detail that political entities have usually co-existed, not in an anarchic state of nature, but organized by agreed rules and practices that derive substantially from past experience. The author also shows that our present international society, although distinct, is only the latest in a series. Lucidly and straightforwardly written, with a strong emphasis on practice, the book makes a major contribution to international theory and to our understanding of international relations.

This volume reconsiders the process of globalization, drawing on a wealth of new perspectives to understand better this momentous historical development.

The word 'legitimacy' is seldom far from the lips of practitioners of international affairs. The legitimacy of recent events - such as the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the post-September 11 war on terror, and instances of humanitarian intervention - have been endlessly debated by publics around the globe. And yet the academic discipline of IR has largely neglected this concept. This book encourages us to take legitimacy seriously, both as a facet of international behaviour withpractical consequences, and as a theoretical concept necessary for understanding that behaviour. It offers a comprehensive historical and theoretical account of international legitimacy. It argues that the development of principles of legitimacy lie at the heart of what is meant by an international society,and in so doing fills a notable void in English school accounts of the subject.Part I provides a historical survey of the evolution of the practice of legitimacy from the 'age of discovery' at the end of the 15th century. It explores how issues of legitimacy were interwoven with the great peace settlements of modern history - in 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919, and 1945. It offers a revisionist reading of the significance of Westphalia - not as the origin of a modern doctrine of sovereignty - but as a seminal stage in the development of an international society based on sharedprinciples of legitimacy. All of the historical chapters demonstrate how the twin dimensions of legitimacy - principles of rightful membership and of rightful conduct - have been thought about and developed in differing contexts.Part II then provides a trenchant analysis of legitimacy in contemporary international society. Deploying a number of short case studies, drawn mainly from the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the Kosovo war of 1999, it sets out a theoretical account of the relationship between legitimacy, on the one hand, and consensus, norms, and equilibrium, on the other.This is the most sustained attempt to make sense of legitimacy in an IR context. Its conclusion, in the end, is that legitimacy matters, but in a complex way. Legitimacy is not to be discovered simply by straightforward application of other norms, such as legality and morality. Instead, legitimacy is an inherently political condition. What determines its attainability or not is as much the general political condition of international society at any one moment, as the conformity of its specificactions to set normative principles.