Beyond Bull: The Social Myth of International Society

Abstract

Abstract The concept of a society of states has been at the core of a cold war, the late Hedley Bull argued that the organisation of international society constituted a middle way between the extremes of anarchy and global governance and was to be valued as such. A decade after his death and five years after the cold war, the contemporary resurgence of interest in the concept and its invocation amongst scholars concerned with novel problems of world order is taking place against the backround of dramatic processes of globalisation and fragmentation in world politics. This article argues that such processes raise grave doubts as to the analytic utility of the domestic/interstate distinction, and that Bull's approach to the problem of international order is hampered by his failure to transcend the false dichotomy between political theory and International Relations. The function of social myth has always been to restrict the area in which practical reasoning can operate for human improvement, by representing the particular social arrangements of particular societies as part of the natural order of things. Practical reason becomes innovative in human affairs when it demands reasons for practices so represented (Stuart Hampshire 1990, 57)