International society, global polity
An introduction to international political theory
Chris Brown
1. Introduction to the study of international political theory (IPT)
The normative framework of international relations (IR)
IPT focuses on the normative framework within which international relations take
place. The role of force in IR is often approached instrumentally (we ask whether
a particular tactic will bring about the result we want it to), but not only. Apart
from Hitler, Stalin, Mao, most people want to think that force is applied for a
‘good reason’ and in an ‘appropriate way’; there is a philosophical literature that
addressees such concepts. In the West, that literature revolves around the
notion of Just War. The categories of Just War thinking were established centuries
ago and have been adopted by modern international lawyers. Part of IPT is to
relate Just war notions to decisions which have been made on the conflicts of our
age.
States, communities, nations and individuals
The modern state is a territorially based political unit which claims sovereign
status, that is to say which recognizes no external superior and no internal equal.
A community is a social group bound together by a degree of mutual trust, even
affection. Communities may be based on actual interactions in which case they
are less extensive than the state or virtual interactions in which case they can be
more extensive (global Muslim ummah) or functionally based (academic
community).
A nation is a community that is linked to a territory, whose members believe that
they possess inherited qualities that distinguish them from all others. With very
few exceptions (North Korean and Iceland) all states are multinationals.
Historically, individuals have only featured as objects of international relations
rather than as actors. Diplomats as individuals have a protected status, whereas
pirates have an unprotected status, as enemies of humanity who can be
detained and punished by any country. Since 1945 this has changed. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights inaugurated the development of an
international regime for the protection of human rights.
International society and the global polity
For some scholars of IR states are the central actors in world politics, and the
way they interact is solely determined by power and interest. There is no
normative component to the international system. Agreements into which states
enter exist only for so long as they are in the interest of the involved states.
The notion of an international society is associated with the English School, but
the term has a long history. Whereas in an international system a balance of
power may emerge arbitrarily because of the distribution of forces, in an
international society the balance of power is recognized as a normatively
desirable end which states will adjust their policies to achieve. The society of
states has a long history, but the modern version was established in 1945 with
the signing of the UN Charter, which sets out the principles to govern
international society. The UN also challenged the notion of international society,
in particular with the attempts to extend the scope of international law into
international criminal law; the emergence of humanitarianism; and the extension
of the idea of human rights, increasingly defining them against the state, rather
than as something to be achieved through the state. Theories of global justice
have been developed which reject the idea of an international society composed
of states and look instead to a global society composed of individuals. These
,factors led to the notion of global polity incorporating states but with the
individual as the most important referent object and with institutions which are
creating networks of global governance, decreasing the sovereignty of states. An
international society and a global polity exist together in the modern world.
Part I – international society
2. International society and international law
The emergence of international society
When the Roman Empire collapsed, it left behind one universal institution, the
Catholic Church. With the coronation of Charlemagne as the Holy Roman
Emperor, a kind of imperial structure was reborn with the Church’s approval. This
new combination of a universal religious authority and a universal political
authority never possessed effective power, partly because the two wings rarely
operated together and were often in conflict. Some kingdoms, as territorial
political entities, managed to establish effective control, especially in Western
Europe. Local lords were independent even from the kings. The Middle Age saw
the emergence of independent cities. The Church had branches everywhere and
was the largest landowner in Europe. The result was a unique political order, with
multiple centers of power linked together in chains of obligation. In the 16th
century, gradually local and universal powers faded. Identities and power
gravitated to medium-sized territorial units – states in the modern sense of the
term. A new European order was created in which the major players came to
understand themselves as the rulers of territorially based sovereign states. They
came to believe that they should acknowledge no external superior and no
internal equal.
Sovereignty, international society and the law of nations
The modern concept of sovereignty involves also recognition by external equals.
This is what makes the society of states possible. Non-intervention involves a
sovereign recognizing the rights of other sovereigns to be sovereign in their
lands as a necessary corollary to his right to be sovereign in his lands. Non-
intervention is not the same as non-aggression. The taking of territory by
conquest was part of international society from the beginning; sovereigns could
fight wars against each other without challenging their respective legitimacy to
rule.
North German Protestant princes fought the Catholic Emperor in a series of bitter
religious wars. When a temporary truce was established by the Peace of
Augsburg in 1555, the principle was established that the religion of the king
would be the religion of the people. The general idea that the only way to end
the conflicts of the 16th century was to strengthen the authority of secular rulers
took hold. Sovereignty is the solution to the problem of maintaining order in a
world where religion is no longer a unifying but a dividing force. However, the
principle for which the population follows the religion of the king does not survive
in the modern world. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the religious
wars of the 17th century, redefined the principle. It provides extensive protection
for minorities, authorizing intervention on their behalf by external powers if
necessary for their protection. Westphalia formulated a more sophisticated
notion of sovereignty, which allowed exception to the norm of non-intervention.
The principle of sovereignty underwent an important shift due to the
Renaissance and the revival of interest in the classical world, especially of Rome.
A key element is a change in the meaning of property. In the medieval world,
land ownership was held conditional on service to a landlord who in turn owed
,obligations to a bigger lord, and so on upwards. The revival of the Roman law of
property changed all this. Roman property owners were not caught up in such a
chain of obligation – they owned property outright and could do whatever they
wanted with it, answering to no one for their behavior. In this logic, sovereignty
is understood as meaning that the state is the property of the ruler who can do
whatever he wants with it; outsiders have no right to intervene. This implies the
idea that sovereigns should accept each other as equals. Property owners can do
as they wish with their property, as long as their behavior doesn’t harm the
property rights of other property owners. Consequently, if a property owner
behaves in a way that affects the property rights of other property owners, the
latter has the right to prevent him from so doing. The UN Charter allows action to
be taken in the case of threats to international peace and security. It establishes
the principle of non-intervention in the jurisdiction of states, but when what is
happening within that jurisdiction constitutes a threat to international peace and
security the norm may be breached.
The society of states: Europe and the world
The society of states is a fully operating mode of interaction between states in
the 18th century. An interesting shift in the society of states in the 19th century
concerns the relations between Europe and the rest of the world. One of the
features that held the society of states together was a shared past, European
and Christian. Unlike the kings of the West, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
was not prepared to accept the status of an equal. In the 18th century, when the
Ottoman power was on a sharp decline, the Sultan made advances towards the
club of European sovereigns, but he was rejected by the Christian powers. The
18th century was the age of European expansion into the rest of the non-
European world. In the case of the Americas, Europeans dominated the locals
easily from the beginning. On the other side of the world, powerful rulers on the
Indian sub-continent, China and Southeast Asia were more than able to hold their
own against the incomers until the end of the 18th century. Europeans treated
their relations with non-Europeans differently compared to the relations they had
with each other. The notion of sovereign equality was never applied outside of
Europe.
In the 19th century, a number of changes took place in the relationship between
Europe and the rest of the world. European technological superiority allowed
European outsiders to lay down the terms of any interactions with the locals.
Formal imperialism took place and foreign rule supplanted local control.
Meanwhile, the terms of membership of the international society were being
rethought. Gradually the key qualification was no longer being European and
Christian, and it became being ‘civilized’. When Europeans encountered non-
European states which they had no wish to conquer, they would impose the
‘standards of civilization’. These states would not be treated as equals until they
fulfilled the requirements of instituting the rule of law and providing protection
for individuals and property (the needs of European traders). For the time of non-
compliance, these states were subjected to restrictions, such as external control
of customs offices and extraterritorial jurisdiction over locally based Europeans.
Although the idea of Europeans telling countries such as China that they were
not civilized is absurd and offensive, the requirements of the standards of
civilization are not so obnoxious. The process by which the conditions for
membership of international society move from being European to being civilized
paved the way for the expansion of the society of states in the 20th century,
especially after the establishment of the UN.
The English School and the society of states
, In the 1950s, the Rockefeller Foundation financed Committees of International
Relations on both sides of the Atlantic. The key text produced by the British
Committee was a collection of essays, Diplomatic Investigations, which defended
traditional modes of scholarship in IR. This approach became controversial in the
face of the rise of the behavioral sciences in the US. The British Committee
writers became bearers of the classical approach; their core idea is that
international anarchy does not need to be completely without social rules. Those
who criticized this thinking named the scholars who followed this tradition the
English School (ES). Although the ES was based in England, its adherents came
from all over the world.
The ES reflects the European tradition of thinking about international order,
focusing the need to respond to the 20th century shift from a European to a
global international order.
The nature of international society: solidarism and pluralism
ES writers agree that there is an international society but disagree on the
normative basis of this international order. Due to the expansion of the
international society, it is no longer adequate to describe its practices as simply
based on the ways in which European political life evolved in the early modern
period. If the institutions that Europeans created are to remain relevant, they
need to be justified in terms that resonate with a non-European world. Two
attempts have been made by ES writers, the solidarists and pluralists.
The idea of the solidarist position is that the government is a necessity for
human flourishing, but problems of scale rule out the possibility of a single,
universal government; therefore, local governments are legitimate, and a society
of sovereign governments constitutes a rational political order for humanity. The
ultimate aim of the international society is the flourishment of human beings,
pushing aside states. This means that the rights of sovereigns cannot be
employed to justify large-scale human rights violations. The international society
establishes a universal notion of the good.
Pluralists claim that the international society allows different conceptions of the
good to flourish, meaning that it allows states to live together under conditions
of peace and justice while following their own conception of the good. Non-
intervention, the legal principle that treaties must be considered binding and
diplomatic immunity must be acknowledged by any state that wants to be
recognized as such.
Solidarism valorizes the existence of universal values and a common notion of
the good, pluralism valorizes the existence of different conceptions of the good.
Both theories disregard the fact that many states are not dedicated to any
conception of the good, whether local or universal.
3. War as an institution of international society
The central premise of the society of states is that relations between states are
norm-governed, not simply the product of power politics. At the same time,
relations between states often involve violence. Interstate war has been a
consistent feature of European IR since the origins of IS. One of the defining
features of IS is the absence of an authoritative mechanism for conflict
resolution. War has been used as the last argument of kings, the final method of
pursuing the equivalent of a civil suit in domestic society. For this reason, until
recently, war was recognized in international law as a legitimate act of state.
Things changed after 1945. The very high cost of wars led to a number of
international measures which were designed to undermine the legality of war.
The Covenant of the League of Nations restricted severely the circumstances
An introduction to international political theory
Chris Brown
1. Introduction to the study of international political theory (IPT)
The normative framework of international relations (IR)
IPT focuses on the normative framework within which international relations take
place. The role of force in IR is often approached instrumentally (we ask whether
a particular tactic will bring about the result we want it to), but not only. Apart
from Hitler, Stalin, Mao, most people want to think that force is applied for a
‘good reason’ and in an ‘appropriate way’; there is a philosophical literature that
addressees such concepts. In the West, that literature revolves around the
notion of Just War. The categories of Just War thinking were established centuries
ago and have been adopted by modern international lawyers. Part of IPT is to
relate Just war notions to decisions which have been made on the conflicts of our
age.
States, communities, nations and individuals
The modern state is a territorially based political unit which claims sovereign
status, that is to say which recognizes no external superior and no internal equal.
A community is a social group bound together by a degree of mutual trust, even
affection. Communities may be based on actual interactions in which case they
are less extensive than the state or virtual interactions in which case they can be
more extensive (global Muslim ummah) or functionally based (academic
community).
A nation is a community that is linked to a territory, whose members believe that
they possess inherited qualities that distinguish them from all others. With very
few exceptions (North Korean and Iceland) all states are multinationals.
Historically, individuals have only featured as objects of international relations
rather than as actors. Diplomats as individuals have a protected status, whereas
pirates have an unprotected status, as enemies of humanity who can be
detained and punished by any country. Since 1945 this has changed. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights inaugurated the development of an
international regime for the protection of human rights.
International society and the global polity
For some scholars of IR states are the central actors in world politics, and the
way they interact is solely determined by power and interest. There is no
normative component to the international system. Agreements into which states
enter exist only for so long as they are in the interest of the involved states.
The notion of an international society is associated with the English School, but
the term has a long history. Whereas in an international system a balance of
power may emerge arbitrarily because of the distribution of forces, in an
international society the balance of power is recognized as a normatively
desirable end which states will adjust their policies to achieve. The society of
states has a long history, but the modern version was established in 1945 with
the signing of the UN Charter, which sets out the principles to govern
international society. The UN also challenged the notion of international society,
in particular with the attempts to extend the scope of international law into
international criminal law; the emergence of humanitarianism; and the extension
of the idea of human rights, increasingly defining them against the state, rather
than as something to be achieved through the state. Theories of global justice
have been developed which reject the idea of an international society composed
of states and look instead to a global society composed of individuals. These
,factors led to the notion of global polity incorporating states but with the
individual as the most important referent object and with institutions which are
creating networks of global governance, decreasing the sovereignty of states. An
international society and a global polity exist together in the modern world.
Part I – international society
2. International society and international law
The emergence of international society
When the Roman Empire collapsed, it left behind one universal institution, the
Catholic Church. With the coronation of Charlemagne as the Holy Roman
Emperor, a kind of imperial structure was reborn with the Church’s approval. This
new combination of a universal religious authority and a universal political
authority never possessed effective power, partly because the two wings rarely
operated together and were often in conflict. Some kingdoms, as territorial
political entities, managed to establish effective control, especially in Western
Europe. Local lords were independent even from the kings. The Middle Age saw
the emergence of independent cities. The Church had branches everywhere and
was the largest landowner in Europe. The result was a unique political order, with
multiple centers of power linked together in chains of obligation. In the 16th
century, gradually local and universal powers faded. Identities and power
gravitated to medium-sized territorial units – states in the modern sense of the
term. A new European order was created in which the major players came to
understand themselves as the rulers of territorially based sovereign states. They
came to believe that they should acknowledge no external superior and no
internal equal.
Sovereignty, international society and the law of nations
The modern concept of sovereignty involves also recognition by external equals.
This is what makes the society of states possible. Non-intervention involves a
sovereign recognizing the rights of other sovereigns to be sovereign in their
lands as a necessary corollary to his right to be sovereign in his lands. Non-
intervention is not the same as non-aggression. The taking of territory by
conquest was part of international society from the beginning; sovereigns could
fight wars against each other without challenging their respective legitimacy to
rule.
North German Protestant princes fought the Catholic Emperor in a series of bitter
religious wars. When a temporary truce was established by the Peace of
Augsburg in 1555, the principle was established that the religion of the king
would be the religion of the people. The general idea that the only way to end
the conflicts of the 16th century was to strengthen the authority of secular rulers
took hold. Sovereignty is the solution to the problem of maintaining order in a
world where religion is no longer a unifying but a dividing force. However, the
principle for which the population follows the religion of the king does not survive
in the modern world. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the religious
wars of the 17th century, redefined the principle. It provides extensive protection
for minorities, authorizing intervention on their behalf by external powers if
necessary for their protection. Westphalia formulated a more sophisticated
notion of sovereignty, which allowed exception to the norm of non-intervention.
The principle of sovereignty underwent an important shift due to the
Renaissance and the revival of interest in the classical world, especially of Rome.
A key element is a change in the meaning of property. In the medieval world,
land ownership was held conditional on service to a landlord who in turn owed
,obligations to a bigger lord, and so on upwards. The revival of the Roman law of
property changed all this. Roman property owners were not caught up in such a
chain of obligation – they owned property outright and could do whatever they
wanted with it, answering to no one for their behavior. In this logic, sovereignty
is understood as meaning that the state is the property of the ruler who can do
whatever he wants with it; outsiders have no right to intervene. This implies the
idea that sovereigns should accept each other as equals. Property owners can do
as they wish with their property, as long as their behavior doesn’t harm the
property rights of other property owners. Consequently, if a property owner
behaves in a way that affects the property rights of other property owners, the
latter has the right to prevent him from so doing. The UN Charter allows action to
be taken in the case of threats to international peace and security. It establishes
the principle of non-intervention in the jurisdiction of states, but when what is
happening within that jurisdiction constitutes a threat to international peace and
security the norm may be breached.
The society of states: Europe and the world
The society of states is a fully operating mode of interaction between states in
the 18th century. An interesting shift in the society of states in the 19th century
concerns the relations between Europe and the rest of the world. One of the
features that held the society of states together was a shared past, European
and Christian. Unlike the kings of the West, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
was not prepared to accept the status of an equal. In the 18th century, when the
Ottoman power was on a sharp decline, the Sultan made advances towards the
club of European sovereigns, but he was rejected by the Christian powers. The
18th century was the age of European expansion into the rest of the non-
European world. In the case of the Americas, Europeans dominated the locals
easily from the beginning. On the other side of the world, powerful rulers on the
Indian sub-continent, China and Southeast Asia were more than able to hold their
own against the incomers until the end of the 18th century. Europeans treated
their relations with non-Europeans differently compared to the relations they had
with each other. The notion of sovereign equality was never applied outside of
Europe.
In the 19th century, a number of changes took place in the relationship between
Europe and the rest of the world. European technological superiority allowed
European outsiders to lay down the terms of any interactions with the locals.
Formal imperialism took place and foreign rule supplanted local control.
Meanwhile, the terms of membership of the international society were being
rethought. Gradually the key qualification was no longer being European and
Christian, and it became being ‘civilized’. When Europeans encountered non-
European states which they had no wish to conquer, they would impose the
‘standards of civilization’. These states would not be treated as equals until they
fulfilled the requirements of instituting the rule of law and providing protection
for individuals and property (the needs of European traders). For the time of non-
compliance, these states were subjected to restrictions, such as external control
of customs offices and extraterritorial jurisdiction over locally based Europeans.
Although the idea of Europeans telling countries such as China that they were
not civilized is absurd and offensive, the requirements of the standards of
civilization are not so obnoxious. The process by which the conditions for
membership of international society move from being European to being civilized
paved the way for the expansion of the society of states in the 20th century,
especially after the establishment of the UN.
The English School and the society of states
, In the 1950s, the Rockefeller Foundation financed Committees of International
Relations on both sides of the Atlantic. The key text produced by the British
Committee was a collection of essays, Diplomatic Investigations, which defended
traditional modes of scholarship in IR. This approach became controversial in the
face of the rise of the behavioral sciences in the US. The British Committee
writers became bearers of the classical approach; their core idea is that
international anarchy does not need to be completely without social rules. Those
who criticized this thinking named the scholars who followed this tradition the
English School (ES). Although the ES was based in England, its adherents came
from all over the world.
The ES reflects the European tradition of thinking about international order,
focusing the need to respond to the 20th century shift from a European to a
global international order.
The nature of international society: solidarism and pluralism
ES writers agree that there is an international society but disagree on the
normative basis of this international order. Due to the expansion of the
international society, it is no longer adequate to describe its practices as simply
based on the ways in which European political life evolved in the early modern
period. If the institutions that Europeans created are to remain relevant, they
need to be justified in terms that resonate with a non-European world. Two
attempts have been made by ES writers, the solidarists and pluralists.
The idea of the solidarist position is that the government is a necessity for
human flourishing, but problems of scale rule out the possibility of a single,
universal government; therefore, local governments are legitimate, and a society
of sovereign governments constitutes a rational political order for humanity. The
ultimate aim of the international society is the flourishment of human beings,
pushing aside states. This means that the rights of sovereigns cannot be
employed to justify large-scale human rights violations. The international society
establishes a universal notion of the good.
Pluralists claim that the international society allows different conceptions of the
good to flourish, meaning that it allows states to live together under conditions
of peace and justice while following their own conception of the good. Non-
intervention, the legal principle that treaties must be considered binding and
diplomatic immunity must be acknowledged by any state that wants to be
recognized as such.
Solidarism valorizes the existence of universal values and a common notion of
the good, pluralism valorizes the existence of different conceptions of the good.
Both theories disregard the fact that many states are not dedicated to any
conception of the good, whether local or universal.
3. War as an institution of international society
The central premise of the society of states is that relations between states are
norm-governed, not simply the product of power politics. At the same time,
relations between states often involve violence. Interstate war has been a
consistent feature of European IR since the origins of IS. One of the defining
features of IS is the absence of an authoritative mechanism for conflict
resolution. War has been used as the last argument of kings, the final method of
pursuing the equivalent of a civil suit in domestic society. For this reason, until
recently, war was recognized in international law as a legitimate act of state.
Things changed after 1945. The very high cost of wars led to a number of
international measures which were designed to undermine the legality of war.
The Covenant of the League of Nations restricted severely the circumstances
