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The political theory and institutional history of states systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Geoffrey Berridge
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Extract

The books which are the subject of this article1 lie squarely (if a little uneasily on the part of Northedge) in the so-called ‘classical‘ tradition of scholarship in International Relations. This tradition eschews both the attempt to explain international politics by aping the methodology of the natural sciences and any interest in saying something of general import about the process of foreign policy formulation. Rather, it finds its “less ephemeral centre” in the rules and institutions which are shared by states and approaches the study of these rules and institutions in a manner at once philosophical and historical. Furthermore, against the cardboard lances of the ‘transnationalists’ it clutches a sturdy shield to the state, insisting that the state has been in the recent past and will remain for the foreseeable future, the principal “centre of initiative” in world politics. In short, this tradition consists in an overriding concern with the political theory and institutional history of the ‘states-system’.

Type
Review Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , April 1980 , pp. 82 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1980

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References

page 82 note 1 Bull, H., The Anarchical Society (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Northedge, F. S., The International Political System (London, 1976Google Scholar) and M. Wight, edited with an introduction by Bull, Hedley, Systems of States (Leicester, 1977)Google Scholar.

page 82 note 2 Keens-Soper, M., ‘The Practice of a States-System’, in Donelan, M. (ed.), The Reason of States: A Study in International Political Theory (London, 1978), p. 40Google Scholar.

page 82 note 3 This is Northedge's phrase ,op. cit. p. 138 (for example).

page 82 note 4 See especially his Theory and Explanation In International Politics (London, 1973Google Scholar),

page 82 note 5 David Horowitz is still worth reading on the influence of government and foundation finance and personnel on the development of academic ‘International Relations’, especially in the USA. See, for example, his ‘sinews of Empire’ in Editors of Ramparts, Divided We Stand (San Francisco, 1970Google Scholar), and also Chomsky's, NoamAmerican Power and the New Mandarins (Harmondsworth, 1969)Google Scholar, Chap. 1.

page 83 note 1 These points have been dwelt on at some length in another recent review article. See Forsyth, M., ‘The Classical Theory of International Relations’ Political Studies, xxvi (1978), pp. 411–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to Wight's Systems of States, Forsyth also covers Bull's The Society in this article.

page 83 note 2 Op. cit. p. 107.

page 84 note 1 Ibid. p. 175.

page 84 note 2 Northedge is conscious of this but justifies the separate treatment of this consequence of the common features of the world's states on the grounds that it “has played such a dominant role in the history of international relations”, Ibid. p. 202. If Northedge's theory of imperialism is correct then it should surely have been used to bolster his chapter on the state.

page 85 note 1 Op. cit. p. 412.

page 85 note 2 A particularly good example of this sort ofpolitical theorising by a contemporary scholar of International Relations is Claude's, InisPower and International Relations (New York, 1962)Google Scholar Incidentally, Forsyth points out in his review article (op. cit., p. 413) that Wight did begin to approach this sort of theorising in his article ‘Western Values in International Relations’ in Butterfield, H and Wight, M. (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations (London, 1966)Google Scholar but criticizes his “via media” between the ‘realists’ and the ‘universalists’ for being both ambiguous and negative. Wight certainly is ambiguous but Forsyth seems to hold that Wight's negativeness follows from this and from the circumstance that his own position was worked out in the course of argument with the two extremes. The first point is illogical since something can be ambiguous and yet remain positive; for example, the Callaghan government's pay policy. And the second seems to me to be contingent rather than damning. I hold, therefore, that Wight's own position certainly is ambiguous but remains positive; in short, he does have a position.

page 85 note 3 Systems of States, op. cit. p. 105.

page 86 note 1 Bull, of course, is not the only one to have taken over where Wight left off: see, for example, M. Keens-Soper,op. cit.

page 86 note 2 Albeit “the loosest of all political organizations known to us”, M. Wight,Systems of States, op. cit. p, 149.

page 86 note 3 Op. cit. pp. 12–13. In fairness, it should be recorded that Bull is not the only scholar of recent years to have preferred the term “society of states”. This, of course, was C. A. W. Manning's usage and is the title of Purnell's, R. textbook, The Society of States, (London, 1973)Google Scholar

page 87 note 1 Op. cit. pp. 24–27.

page 87 note 2 It is perhaps apposite to recall at this point that it was Wight's view that “the spy” seems to have constituted an “institution” of most historic states-systems(his definition),Systems States, op. cit. pp. 30–31.

page 87 note 3 Op. cit. p. 412.

page 87 note 4 Op. cit. p. 17.

page 88 note 1 The Anarchical Society, op. cit. pp. 3–6.

page 88 note 2 Henceforward, in order to avoid confusion, I shall use the term ‘states system’ in Wight's sense even when I am summarizing Bull's argument where he uses the term “international society”.

page 88 note 3 The Anarchical Society, op. cit pp. 18–19.

page 88 note 4 Ibid. p . 16.

page 89 note 1 Ibid.

page 89 note 2 Ibid. p. 17.

page 89 note 3 Ibid

page 89 note 4 This point has a bearing on the charge which Forsyth (op. cit. pp. 415—416) brings against Bull of confusing “society” with “order”. The charge of vagueness stands but Bull does in fact have a distinction in mind. For “society” in the early chapters of The Anarchical read ‘dominant group’ and, obviously, in the international context, ‘Great Powers’.

page 89 note 5 It was made manifestly obvious during the debates at San Francisco in 1945 over the prerogatives of the Great Powers in the new UN structure that by no means all of the states outside the charmed circle were overjoyed by the position which in this respect the Great Powers had secured for themselves; see, for instance, Nicholas, H. G., The United Nations a Political Institution (London, 1976)Google Scholar, Chap. 1.

page 89 note 6 The Anarchical Society, op. cit. pp . 18–19.

page 89 note 7 Ibid. p. 19.

page 90 note 1 Ibid.

page 90 note 2 This is the title of Chp.2, Ibid.p. 23,

page 90 note 3 Ibid. p. 24.

page 90 note 4 Ibid.

page 90 note 5 Ibid.

page 90 note 6 Ibid. p. 42.

page 90 note 7 Ibid. pp. 42–43.

page 90 note 8 Ibid. p. 43.

page 90 note 9 Ibid. pp. 46–51.

page 91 note 1 In fairness, it should be noted that Bull does have other observations to make on this theme, though they are scattered around in his text. Thus, when he is ostensibly dealing with the degree to which lip-service has been paid to “elementary” goals, rather than with the “reality”, in Chap. 2, he asserts that “if contemporary international society does have any cultural basis, this is not any genuinely global culture, but is rather the culture of so-called ‘modernity’…(i.e.)…the culture of the dominant Western powers”, Ibid. p. 39. And he very briefly elaborates on this in his penultimate chapter when he is principally criticizing prescriptions for the reform of the states-system. But ambiguity remains. Thus what is now called a “cosmopolitan culture” at once “underlies” the “working” of the present global states-system (Ibid. p. 316) and then is merely “nascent” (Ibid. p. 317).

page 91 note 2 Op. cit. Chap. 4.

page 91 note 3 For example, on the balance of power, Bull fails to distinguish between the ‘absence of preponderance’ and ‘equilibrium’ meanings. Insisting on the former usage, he proceeds to argue that the balance of power (absence of preponderance) “has served to prevent the system from being transformed by conquest into a universal empire”,Ibid. p. 106. This is obviously tautological. And in his discussion of the “balance of terror” or “mutual deterrence”, he makes the same mistake as Waltz, for example, in holding that any military/ political disposition which is directed at maintaining a balance of power (equilibrium or simply absence of preponderance) constitutes a ‘balance of power system of diplomacy’. See K. Waltz ‘International Structure, National Force, and the Balance of World Power’, Farrell, J. C. and Smith, A. P. (eds.), Theory and Reality in International Relations, (N.Y. and London, 1965)Google Scholar. This is clearly wrong since, as Claude(op. cit. Chap. 3) points out, such a condition can be achieved by collective security arrangements or, indeed, simply by fellow feeling between states.