Natural Law and the Theory of International Society: Otto von Gierke and the Three Traditions of International Theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 48-73
Author(s):  
Ben Holland
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Theory

Ciceronian international society

2019 ◽  
pp. 175508821989578
Author(s):  
Stephen Patrick Sims
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Society ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Political Thinker

This article explores what Cicero as a political thinker can offer to the study of international relations. Although previous readings of Cicero have emphasized his Stoic influences and his natural law teaching as the basis of a cosmopolitan world society, I emphasize the way in which Cicero can deepen the concept of international society. International society relies on certain norms and institutions to function properly, such as international law, sovereignty, and the use of war to restrain violence and redress injustice. We find all these concepts articulated clearly in Cicero’s moral and political thought. Cicero also shows the limits of these institutions and norms, explaining why none of them is absolute. Finally, Cicero adds to our theorizing about international society by drawing attention to the role of honor, ruling, and inequality in international society. As such, classical political thought, and Cicero’s in particular, provide a valuable resource for future thinking about international theory.

International theory and international society: the viability of the middle way?

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Hedley Bull

From the perspective of a particular kind of international theorizing, foundational questions about the nature of international society are a central concern. ‘Does the collectivity of sovereign states constitute a political society or system, or does it not? ’ is, according to Hedley Bull, the first of a series of questions that, taken together, constitute ‘Classical’ international relations theory and distinguish it from the ‘Scientific’ approach to the subject. Similar sentiments could be drawn readily from the work of the other authors whose writings collectively make up the International Theory, or International Society, or ‘English School’ approach to international relations theory. I have argued elsewhere that there are reasons why this emphasis on international society is mistaken. To cut a long story short, the burden of the argument is that an approach that places primary emphasis on the nature of international society is likely to isolate itself from the wider discourses of political and social philosophy in ways that cannot be defended in terms of any alleged sui generis features of international relations. Rather, international relations theory is best understood as an aspect of political theory and not as a discourse with its own rules and subject matter. However, this argument has been cast in ‘meta-theoretical’ terms and does not directly address the actual issue of the nature of international society; critics are entitled to point to the absence here of a clearly articulated, positive point of view. The purpose of this article is to begin to remedy this omission, by sketching the outlines of an examination of international society that would be less tied to traditional categories and in closer contact with broader movements in social thought.

Pluralism in international political theory

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
International Society ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
International Theory ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Basic Distinction ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Better Than

Martin Wight once claimed there was no international political theory worthy of the name. In this I believe he was mistaken. But he also maintained, as Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts put it, that ‘the most fundamental question you can ask in international theory is, What is international society? Hedley Bull likewise drew a basic distinction, as several contributors to the volume edited by J. D. B. Miller and the late R. J. Vincent remind us, between the system of states and the society of states. Each of these volumes takes up Wight's question and explores Bull's distinction in various ways, most of them engaging and enlightening. For an overview of the main approaches and controversies in the study of normative international relations today one could scarcely do better than consult them.

Ethics of coexistence: the international theory of Terry Nardin

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The South ◽  
International Theory ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Normative international theory addresses the moral dimension of international society and the logic of ‘ought’ statements in international relations. The traditional content of normative international theory has been dominated by such issues as: the nature of international law and the moral basis of the rights and duties it imposes on states and individuals; the ethics of pacifism and the theory of the 6just war’ the morality of intervention; and, most fundamentally, the nature of the ethical requirements that need to be met if a system of inter-state relations can justly be characterized as an ‘international society’. While such issues have never disappeared from academic study, the dominant modes of international relations theorizing in the 1960s and 1970s—whether realist, neo-realist, pluralist or structuralist—were at one, if for different reasons? in keeping them at the bottom of the agenda paper. And yet, the 1980s has seen a revival of normative international theory. The reasons for this renewal of interest are two-fold. On the one hand, the traditional agenda of normative theory, as outlined above, has never lost its salience in the real world even if unfashionable in academia; since it is in the nature of fashions to change some sort of revival of interest in the old questions was to be expected. But of rather more importance has been the emergence of a new range of normative issues: demands from the ‘south’ for a New International Economic Order have placed the politics of redistribution on the international agenda for the first time—revisionist states in the 1980s no longer make territorial demands but appeal to status quo oriented states to make concessions on the basis of economic justice. In today's world normative statements are as likely to be about the debt crisis as they are to be about the conduct of the Gulf War or the US intervention in Grenada. Mainstream international relations theory has generally refused to ask or answer moral questions, but this strategy of avoidance has not succeeded. Questions such as ‘what ought to be our attitude to poverty in the South?’ or ‘how ought the world' financial system respond to the debt problems of Brazil or Zambia?’ cannot be wished away—as anyone who has taught international political economy will be well aware. Normative theory cannot answer questions like this but it can help each individual to provide his or her own response—and no more important task exists for the discipline of international relations.

15. Traditional Theories in Global Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
English School ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Post War

This chapter examines traditional theories in global politics. It begins with a discussion of early liberal approaches, with particular emphasis on liberal international theory whose proponents include U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Norman Angell. Liberal international theory is characterised by an optimism concerning the prospects of a peaceful international order established through strong international institutions underpinned by international law. The chapter proceeds by considering the emergence of ‘realism’ as a general approach to the study of politics, along with the different approaches to the study of international politics following World War II, including positivism. It also explores the rise of the English School and the concept of international society before concluding with an analysis of neo-liberalism and neorealism that resulted from revisions of both liberalism and realism in the post-war period.

The Justiciability of International Disputes

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-79
Author(s):  
Jesse S. Reeves
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Society ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Ideal

The appalling record of the past year and a half ought to make us, interested in international law, extremely modest. Professing that we expound international law as it is, we have been deluding ourselves and really setting forth international law as we believed that it ought to be. The universal bankruptcy of normal international relationships has shown to us how great a gap there is between that which we had conceived to be and that which really exists. Many of the foundations of international law we now see to have rested upon a conception of international society which did not really obtain. Perhaps, too, although professing contact with the actual, we have been living in an unreal world, a world wherein the ideal was given a much wider range and play than we were justified in believing. Any attempt to reconstruct the formal bases of international law—and such reconstruction must be made—must take account not only of the experiences of the present war, but of the long series of half-submerged elements which led to the present disaster almost with the inexorability of the forces of natural law. Shocked and benumbed as we are by the constant revelations of horror in these past months, there is also the awful realization that, after all, what has taken place has been largely the result of factors seemingly without immediate human direction.

Order and international society: the real realism?

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Real ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Over Time

The school of thought known as Realism (with a large R) has been a central focus of debate in international theory. Nevertheless, its content and epistemological status (and therefore the criteria for its evaluation) remain elusive. In part this is due to the variety of contexts and debates within which Realism has been discussed in the field. In the 1930s and 1940s the debate was framed around a Realist-Idealist axis. In the 1970s Realism was contested by liberal analyses of the causes and consequences of an allegedly growing global interdependence. In the 1980s there emerged a three-cornered debate between competing Kuhnian ‘paradigms’, among which Realism dominated. Given that the meaning of Realism has been partly constructed by historically variable theoretical and political issues, its identity has also varied over time. If, however, one chooses to think about Realism outside of these various contexts within which it has been both defined and evaluated, it remains unclear how such diverse thinkers as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Carr, Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz can coherently be considered as part of a single tradition of thought. Sensitivity to their differences may be a virtue for the historian of ideas, but it runs the risk of undermining the point of the exercise! Despite these problems, which are only partially corrected by distinguishing between types of Realism (notably classical and ‘neo’ or ‘structural’ varieties), most scholars would agree with Alan James that Realism is a school whose members harbour shared assumptions about the primacy of states as international actors, the separation of domestic and international politics, and who describe the latter in terms of anarchy and a concomitant ubiquitous struggle for power and security.

Hugo Grotius and the God of International Society

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-128
Author(s):  
William Bain
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Rational Plan

This chapter presents Hugo Grotius as a theorist of immanent order. Uncovering the theological presuppositions of Grotius’s thought suggests that the claims of the ‘Grotian tradition’ of international society are substantially incorrect. Grotius is neither the far-sighted jurist nor the pioneer of modernity that he is typically made out to be. Investigating his conception of God as both rational and free informs a hierarchical and interconnected pattern of order that is luminous to reason, consistent with the theory of immanent order. The chapter argues that, despite being credited with secularizing natural law, Grotius’s thinking about law and rights is accommodated within God’s rational plan of the universe. This leads to two further claims. First, Grotius’s thought is less modern and less secular than it is typically portrayed by theorists of international order. Second, his thought exemplifies one of two poles (the other is represented by Hobbes) between which modern theories of international order oscillate. However, the theory of immanent of order survives mainly as a rhetoric that is set against what is done in the name of will and artifice.

17. Traditional Theories in Global Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 386-407
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
English School ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Post War

This chapter examines traditional theories in global politics. It begins with a discussion of early liberal approaches, with particular emphasis on liberal international theory whose proponents include U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Norman Angell. Liberal international theory is characterised by an optimism concerning the prospects of a peaceful international order established through strong international institutions underpinned by international law. The chapter proceeds by considering the emergence of ‘realism’ as a general approach to the study of politics, along with the different approaches to the study of international politics following World War II, including positivism. It also explores the rise of the English School and the concept of international society before concluding with an analysis of neo-liberalism and neorealism that resulted from revisions of both liberalism and realism in the post-war period.

Three Traditions of International Theory

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Keene
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Cultures

The English School conceived “international theory” as a way to approach the political philosophy and political speculation by examining historical traditions of international relations. The starting point for this line of inquiry was to organize the wide range of material contained in the history of ideas about international politics into a much simpler, and thus more intelligible, scheme, in the event comprising three traditions. Martin Wight called them realism, rationalism, and revolutionism, but they are also known as Hobbesianism (or Machiavellianism), Grotianism, and Kantianism. The fundamental difference between the three traditions is that each represents an idea of what international society is, from which they derive various propositions about more specific topics such as how to deal with peoples from different cultures, how to conduct diplomacy and wage war, or what obligations under international law are. For realists, international society is the state of nature, and since they see the state of nature as a state of war, the answer to the question “What is international society?” is “nothing.” Rationalists agree that international society is the state of nature, but for them it is a state of “goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation,” and so “international society is a true society, but institutionally deficient; lacking a common superior or judiciary.” Revolutionists, by contrast, reject the analogy with the state of nature. Instead, they have an immanent conception of international society, in the sense that they look beyond the apparent or present reality of a society of sovereign states and see behind it a true international society in the form of a community of mankind. Ultimately, these three traditions has exercised a profound influence on the ways in which international relations scholars think about the history of ideas.

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