6 - The sociology of states-systems

Summary

In the 1960s Martin Wight and his colleagues in the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics wrote several papers on the ‘historic states-systems’ of Ancient Greece, China in the Spring and Autumn, and Warring States period, and the modern world. A volume on the sociology of states-systems was planned – a successor to Butterfield and Wight's Diplomatic Investigations – but the project did not come to fruition (Dunne, 1998: 124ff). Wight's papers on the sociology of states-systems were published posthumously in 1977. Fifteen years later Watson (1992) produced a world-historical analysis of different types of international system which remains the most comprehensive overarching sociological statement by a member of the British Committee. Recent publications indicate that interest in this realm of its intellectual endeavour is much greater than at any other time in the recent past; they also reveal that the influence of Watson and Wight's publications is evident in works by writers who have not usually been associated with the English School (Buzan and Little, 2000; Linklater, 2002b). Of the many reasons for current efforts to resume the work of the British Committee one of the most important is the desire to build on the ‘sociology of states-systems’ which some of its members initiated nearly four decades ago.

The revival of interest in this area is part of a larger intellectual movement in which many students of international relations have become interested in developing large-scale historical-sociological accounts of world politics (Little, 1994).