IR462      Half Unit
Theory of International Society

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

A good knowledge of international history since 1870. Familiarity with the main theories of international relations.

The English School (ES) is an approach to International Relations (IR) that posits that the relationships between states and other significant actors take place in a social setting. This social setting consists of a complex web of rules, principles, practices, and institutions, the identification and analysis of which is a necessary first step to the understanding of ‘how things work’ internationally. As an approach to IR the ES has been influenced by classical Realism and shares common ground with Constructivism and liberal approaches such as Regime Theory. But it continues to set out a distinctive position, both methodologically and substantively, defining itself against these and other approaches. It has its roots in the teaching of C. A. W. Manning at LSE in the 1930s and 1940s and his explorations of the concept of international society. Later scholars traced its roots further back in time in the classical political thought of Grotius, Suarez, Gentili, Vattel and other notable jurists and politico-legal theorists of early-modern Europe. It began to take shape through the work of the British Committee on International Theory in the 1950s and 1960s and acquired international standing in the decades that followed through the widely cited and influential writings of Martin Wight and Hedley Bull. Today it is a body of theory with a growing number of adherents across the world, a strong presence at international conferences, and a steady output of scholarly publications.

Course content includes: the nature of international society; the bases of international order; the institutional structure of international society; the expansion of international society; the eurocentrism of international society; pluralism vs. solidarism; inequality, legitimacy and justice; the diplomatic and political challenges of human rights, and environmental degradation. 

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The first seminar will consist of a lecture by the course convenor followed by Q&A. 

Students will be expected to produce a 1500-word formative essay in the WT.

• Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (Macmillan, 1977)
• Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations (Polity, 2014)
• Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (OUP, 2006)
• Ian Clark, Hegemony in International Society (OUP, 2011)
• Robert Falkner, Environmentalism and Global International Society (CUP, 2021)
• Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society (OUP, 2007)
• Tonny Brems Knudsen and Cornelia Navari (eds.), International Organization in the Anarchical Society (Palgrave, 2019)
• Richard Little and John Williams, The Anarchical Society in a Globalized World (Palgrave, 2006)
• Cornelia Navari (ed.), Theorising International Society (Palgrave, 2009)
• Cornelia Navari (ed.), International Society: The English School (Palgrave, 2021)
• R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (CUP, 1986)
• Adam Watson, Hegemony and History (Routledge, 2007)

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period

The exam will take place in the form of an e-Exam.