Richard Little

The English School's Contribution to the Study of International Relations

This article attempts to sketch the broad parameters of the English schools approach to International Relations. Rather than linking the English school to a via media and, in particular, to the idea of international society, it is argued that the school, from an early stage, has been committed to developing a pluralistic approach to the subject, expressed in both ontological and methodological terms. As a consequence, members of the English school not only distinguished ontologically between international systems, international societies and world societies, but they have also tacitly acknowledged that different methodologies are required to grasp the distinctive features of each of these ontological units. International systems are associated with recurrent patterns of behaviour that can be identified most effectively using positivist tools of analysis. By contrast, international societies need to be explored using interpretivist or hermeneutic methods that focus on the language that lies behind the rules, institutions, interests and values that constitute any society. Finally, world society can only meaningfully be discussed by drawing on critical theory that identifies the direction that the society needs to take in order for human values to be realized. Whereas monists wish to privilege a particular method and ontology, the English school can be seen to favour a pluralist approach that aims to expose the various cross-currents that prevent International Relations from moving in any one direction.

Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History

The balance of power is one of the most influential theoretical ideas in international relations, but it has not yet been tested systematically in international systems other than modern Europe and its global successor. This article is the product of a collective and multidisciplinary research effort to redress this deficiency. We report findings from eight new case studies on balancing and balancing failure in different international systems that comprise over 2000 years of international politics. Our findings are inconsistent with any theory that predicts a tendency of international systems toward balance. The factors that best account for variation between balance and hegemony within and across international systems lie outside all recent renditions of balance-of-power theory and indeed, international relations scholarship more generally. Our findings suggest a potentially productive way to reframe research on both the European and contemporary international systems.

Beyond Westphalia? Capitalism after the ‘Fall’

When the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989 and the Cold War ended, specialists in the field of international relations (IR) readily acknowledged that it was necessary to take stock and assess the historical significance of these events. Unsurprisingly, no agreement has been reached. For most realists, the events reflect no more than an important shift in the power structure of the international system. But for liberals, the forty years of Cold War are now depicted not as a struggle for power, but as an ideological battle between capitalism and communism from which capitalism has emerged triumphant. The significance of this development for the future of international relations is difficult to gauge. As a key concept, ‘capitalism’ has largely been the preserve of the Marxian fringe in IR. It did not resonate amongst most mainstream theorists in the field, whether realist or liberal. The concept was most familiar as a term of communist propaganda. It was avoided by many specialists during the Cold War era who failed to see how capitalism could promote an understanding of superpower relations. But with the end of the Cold War now linked to the triumph of capitalism, it is impossible for liberals, in particular, to discuss the future of the international system without some evaluation of the unfolding international role being played by capitalism.

Neorealism and the English School: A Methodological, Ontological and Theoretical Reassessment

The aim of this article is to reassess the contribution made by members of the English School to the analysis of international relations in the light of Buzans attempt to harness their analysis to neorealism. It is argued that while Buzan displays a subtle appreciation of the strengths of both these schools, he fails to acknowledge fully the logic underpinning the position adopted by the English School. When this logic has been exposed, it becomes apparent that it can be grafted onto the framework developed by Buzan and used to capture additional complexities associated with the historical evolution of international relations. In the process of exposing the logic, however, it also becomes apparent that there are further complexities linked to the evolution of international relations which neither the neorealists nor the English School can accommodate.

The Idea of "International System": Theory Meets History:

This article uses a long view of history to examine structural realist ideas about international system. It has three themes: (1) that insufficient thought has been given to defining the necessary and suffi cient conditions for saying that an international system exists; (2) that such conceptions of international system as we do have are overwhelm ingly biased by the structural characteristics of the European experience; and (3) that international relations theory and history need each other. History provides a wealth of significant challenges to prevailing ortho doxies in international relations theory, and structural realist theory can be used as an interesting approach to formulating grand history.

The English School vs. American Realism: a meeting of minds or divided by a common language?

This Forum has two main aims. First and foremost, it is designed to assess the relevance of American realism in the wake of developments that are considered to have transformed international relations over the past decade. A second aim, but one that is central to my contribution, is to assess whether or not the resurgent English School provides the foundations for an approach that can account more effectively for developments in the post-Cold War world than American realism.

Historiography and International Relations

Stafano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold , London and New York, Routledge, 1998 Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations , Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998 The philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, cautioned many years ago that ‘A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost’. If this injunction is true, then there would appear to be very little hope for the study of international relations. Although there is considerable debate about who constitute the founding fathers – names as different as Thucydides, Grotius and Kant come to mind – without doubt, interest in the seminal thoughts about international relations of such figures has never been higher.

What Is the Polity

The sovereign state became the dominant political form in a relatively brief period that began in Westphalian Europe and continued with European colonization. Contemporary states face increased challenges from inside and outside, and a global crisis of authority looms. Although the state as a form is highly variable and not about to disappear, a growing number and variety of other polities are moving toward center stage. The initiators of this roundtable asked several distinguished social scientists interested in historical perspective how they might redraw the map of global political space to reflect better current polities, boundaries, and identities and what future changes in that map they might foresee. Each contributor approached the questions in distinctive ways. Robert A. Denemark argues for more attention to world system history. Hendrik Spruyt looks for historical sociological insights into international systems change. Barry Buzan and Richard Little predict a rapidly shifting world of postmodern states and a different zone of conflict. Janice Gross Stein focuses on the privatization of security. Michael Mann finds that states as ‘polymorphous’ entities still have a future. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach close with a discussion of their “polities” model.

Intervention and non-intervention in international society: Britain's responses to the American and Spanish Civil Wars

This article aims to show that from the end of the eighteenth century, international order began to be defined in terms of ground rules relating to non-intervention and intervention, with the former being prioritised over the latter. After the Napoleonic wars, within continental Europe there was an attempt to consolidate an intervention ground rule in favour of dynastic legitimacy over the right of self-determination. By contrast, the British and Americans sought to ensure that this ground rule was not extended to the Americas where the ground rule of non-intervention was prioritised. During the nineteenth century, it was the Anglo-American position which came to prevail. Over the same period international order was increasingly bifurcated with the non-intervention ground rule prevailing in the metropolitan core and with the intervention ground rules prevailing in the periphery. This article, however, only focuses on the metropolitan core and draws on two case studies to examine the non-intervention ground rule in very different circumstances. The first examines the British response to the American Civil War in the 1860s during an era of stability in the international order. The second explores the British Response to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s when the international order was very unstable and giving way to a very different international order.

Waltz and World History: The Paradox of Parsimony

This article provides a critique of Waltz’s work from the perspective of world history. It shows how Waltz’s commitment to a highly parsimonious theoretical approach paradoxically both sets up the possibility of his theory being universally applicable, and undermines its prospects as a viable approach to understanding world history. Using the key concepts from Waltz’s work — units, systems, structure, process — we show the detailed grounds on which his theory fails to apply to such large swathes of time and place, so that its claims to universality fall, even though it can usefully be applied to some times and places. We also show its shortcomings in relation to the essential historical task of periodization. We argue that international relations needs to engage more with world history, and that the task of doing so will fall to approaches other than Waltz’s.