The Scandinavian International Society by Laust Schouenborg

Abstract

The English School approach to International Relations (IR) has long been associated with their unique blend of normative and empirical enquiry. Their ‘showcase’ concept was of course that of ‘International Society’, which (in the context of the Cold War) provided an alternative account of international politics, which was purportedly characterised by (timeless) anarchy and a struggle for survival. Since then, one of the core themes of research by English School scholars has included the analysis of the historical evolution of International Society. Key scholars such as Martin Wight and Hedley Bull engaged in the research of the origins of the Westphalian international order and its gradual expansion that resulted in the emergence of global International Society. The culmination of this endeavour was the landmark study, The Expansion of International Society (Bull and Watson, 1984). One of the key criticisms to emerge from these works was the now familiar charge of Eurocentricity, which pointed out to the English School’s complacency with regard to the role that imperialism played in the expansion of International Society (Keene, 2002; Suzuki, 2009). One could also add to this the criticism of ‘tempocentrism’, which reconstructs ‘all historical systems so as to conform to a reified and naturalised present’ (Hobson, 2002, p.9). It could be argued that this has resulted in European International