Structure Of International Society Research Articles

The Incongruous Nature Of International Law: Why Do States Adhere?

This paper provides an overview of the relationship between international law and the behavior of nations over the course of the last 400 years. The study argues that although governments generally comply with international law, it can be difficult to establish a causal relationship between behavior and legal responsibility. The primary challenge lies in the vast number of factors that can influence a State's behavior. The paper suggests that a constructivist approach, which takes into consideration not just the interests of individual nations but also the nature of the international regime, the structure of international society, and the internal frameworks of states, provides the most compelling argument for why States comply with the law and commonly understood norms. The analysis of the fundamental theories and circumstances that are likely to influence State action supports the conclusion that all States, strong and weak, behave in accordance with the law and commonly understood norms.

Afterword to: ‘Networking hegemony—alliance dynamics in East Asia’

This afterword speaks to how the arguments in these papers for networking hegemony in East Asia relate to two aspects of Buzan’s work: the English School’s use of primary institutions as a way of understanding the structure of international society at both global and regional levels, and regional security complexes.

Cities and Global Governance: State Failure or a New Global Order?

International society, so long the resolution to problems of collective political order, now appears to be failing in its capacity to deal with transnational challenges such as climate change, global security and financial instability. Indeed, the structure of international society itself has become a significant obstacle to such pressing issues of global governance. One striking response has been the reemergence of cities as important actors on the international stage. This article will show how these two issues are intrinsically linked. Cities have taken on new governance roles in the gaps left by hamstrung nation-states, and their contribution to an emerging global governance architecture will be a significant feature of the international relations of the 21st century. But do the new governance activities of cities represent a failure on the part of states, as some scholars have argued? Or are they a part of an emerging form of global order, in which the relationship between states, cities and other actors is being recalibrated? This article argues that the remarkable renaissance of cities in recent decades has been a result of a shift in the structure of international society, and assesses the causal drivers of this shift. It goes on to draw out some of the implications of the recalibration of the relationship between the city and the state for how we understand the emerging form of global order.

The Concept of <i>Erga Omnes</i> Obligations in International Law

In international law, the concept of erga omnes obligations refers to specifically determined obligations that states have towards the international community as a whole. In general legal theory the concept “erga omnes” (Latin: ‘in relation to everyone’) has origins dating as far back as Roman law and is used to describe obligations or rights towards all. In municipal law it has the effect towards all in another, general context. The concept is very important because in today’s structure of international society, composed of independent entities giving rise, as a rule, to legal relations on a consensual basis, erga omnes obligations can further enable the International Court of Justice to go beyond reciprocal relations among states based on consent in further developing international law on the basis of a natural law approach. By its very nature this affects the freedom of state consent and the sovereignty of states. This paper will try to shed some light on this concept by analysing its meaning in international law, starting from its appearance, consequent development and its position at the present time.

Westphalian Eurocentrism in International Relations Theory

In the past 10–15 years, an increasing number of revisionist scholars have rejected the most significant elements of the argument about the centrality of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the evolution and structure of international society. At the same time, the prominence of this argument has grown in the English School and constructivist international relations scholarship. I deconstruct the function of the Westphalian narrative to explain its pervasiveness and persistence. I argue that it was first developed by nineteenth century imperial international jurists and that the Westphalian narrative perpetuates a Eurocentric bias in international relations theory. This bias maintains that Westphalia created an international society, consolidating a normative divergence between European international relations and the rest of the international system. This dualism is predicated on the assumption that with Westphalia European states had solved the anarchy problem either through cultural or contractual evolution. Non-European states, lacking this European culture and social contract, remained in anarchy until the European states allowed them to join the international society—upon their achievement of the ‘‘standards of civilization.’’ This Westphalian narrative distorts the emergence of the modern international system and leads to misdiagnoses of major problems of contemporary international relations. Furthermore, their commitment to the Westphalian narrative prevents international relations scholars from adequately theorizing about international interdependencies and accommodating global pluralism.

China in International Society: Is 'Peaceful Rise' Possible?

This article reviews China’s position in international society over the past couple of centuries, and against that background assesses the prospects for China’s strategy of ‘peaceful rise’. I stick to the label ‘peaceful rise’ because it is a more accurate statement of the issues than the more anodyne and diplomatic ‘peaceful development’ which has recently replaced it in official Chinese discourse.1 I understand ‘peaceful rise’ to mean that a growing power is able to make both absolute and relative gains in both its material and its status positions, in relation to the other powers in the international system, and to do so without precipitating major hostilities between itself and either its neighbours or other major powers. Peaceful rise involves a two-way process in which the rising power accommodates itself to rules and structures of international society, while at the same time other powers accommodate some changes in those rules and structures by way of adjusting to the new disposition of power and status. I am not going to question whether China will rise or not, though this is done by some.2 Instead, I take China’s continued rise as given, and explore whether its peaceful rise is possible within contemporary international society.

Risk and hierarchy in international society

Several recent works have emphasised contemporary hierarchical trends within international society that suggest a transition away from international society's pluralist constitution. These trends have been most readily demonstrated by the willingness of dominant states, such as the United States, to conduct interventions in support of the promotion and enforcement of liberal democratic values. Yet while many scholars have identified these hierarchical trends, few have considered what such trends suggest regarding the underlying normative constitution of international society. This paper seeks to explain why such a transition within the normative constitution of international society has occurred. Utilising Ulrich Beck's notions of risk and the ‘world risk society’, this paper suggests that an increasing preoccupation with globalised security risks within international society, particularly on the part of the West, underpins this constitutional transition. The West's perceived need to manage global security risks via intervention in so-called ‘risky zones’ structures the new normative basis of international society. Risk has altered the constitutional structure of international society in a way that gives rise to various hierarchical and anti-pluralist trends.

Legitimacy and World Society

International Legitimacy and World Society. By Ian Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 280 pp., $65.00 hard (ISBN-13: 978-0199297009). Ian Clark has been one of the most important and incisive contributors to the recent upsurge of work on the question of legitimacy in international relations. In his previous book (Clark 2005), he focused on the historical evolution of practices of legitimacy within the normative and institutional structures of international society. In this book, he is concerned with the sources of normative change and with the process by which international society comes to accept certain principles and practices of legitimacy rather than others. The book seeks to expand our understanding of international legitimacy by studying the search for its normative sources. Its empirical focus (mirroring again his earlier work) is on normative change in and around major international peace settlements. Hence the core chapters cover: Vienna and the Slave Trade, 1815; The Hague and the Public Conscience, 1899–1907; Versailles and Racial Equality, 1919; Versailles and Social Justice, 1919; San Francisco and Human Rights, 1945; and Paris and Democracy, 1990. In the language of the English School, the book is concerned with the interaction between international and world society. Indeed he states that “…it is a key argument of the book that it is through the attempt to influence and re-shape the principles of legitimacy held within international society that world society comes closest to revealing some empirical reality, and a traceable history” (p. 7). These debates within the English School are well analyzed in Chapter One. As Clark recognizes, there has already been a great deal of important work …

The structure of international society

The structure of international society

The structure of international society: an introduction to the study of international relations

This second edition of this textbook places in context key world events since 1945. While not neglecting the significant developments of the last 50 years, this book has a broad historical and conceptual range. It provides students with a historical analysis of the origins, development and early networks of IR, and an exposition of the diverse ways in which modern international society has been defined and interpreted. Tackling a range on international concerns, Geoffrey Stern explores and clarifies such concepts as sovereignty, the balance of power, national interest and interdependence, illustrating his text with reference to both historical and contemporary world events.

Arms Trade with the Third World as an Aspect of Imperialism

The article analyses the growing peripheral mili tarization as it develops through transfers of major weapons. Trends are examined from 1950 to 1973. The first phase of the empirical analysis outlines the pattern of AT. It shows how the four main suppliers, the US, the USSR, France and the UK feed a very large number of periph eral countries and how such trade relations have changed over time. The pattern is characterized as feudal, the supplier power is highly centralized, it furthers dependence and shows sign of stability, i.e. through central powers holding arms supply monopolies in the periphery during all 23 years. The second phase is a structural analysis of how this AT pattern is related to the overall domi nance structure. i.e. what role AT plays in inter national society. Here AT is related to other as pects of the international structure, namely inter national trade, foreign investment and the ex traction of raw materials and energy. In all cases it is illustrated that rather close relationships exist between AT and such dominance aspects. The overall conclusion is that AT grows out of the global dominance structure; it is not only re lated to political or purely military matters but also to economic structures. In the future AT will expand through military-industrial subimperia lists, i.e. a number of peripheral countries will import the sophisticated materials together with resources for their own production of more con ventional equipment which they will export part of to their peripheries. In other words, a quite new division of labour in terms of world military production is emerging, and surely it will serve central as well as subimperialist interests but not true socioeconomic development for the periph ery of the periphery. The problems of control, thus, are far more complicated than anticipated in previous studies. Isolated proposals like 'talks', agreements, UN control, etc. will not be efficient unless the fundamental structure of international society undergoes changes towards greater justice and equality.

The United States as a Global Power

Today business of America is everybody's business. If the United States proves ungovernable in the face of new pressures, then there is no hope for a world order. If the problems of racial integration prove intractable in the United States, then the prospects for their solution elsewhere are in doubt. If the problems of developing an effective and orderly system of higher education have been misjudged in the United States, then they have been misjudged elsewhere. No one who cares for the values of a liberal society can wish to see American society degenerate, however critical his reaction may be to various acts of American external policy. There is a confused feeling in the world today that the United States has ceased to be last best hope of man and has become the cockpit of violence, adolescent malaise, and racial tension, a network of decaying cities in which the virtues of the American past have been obliterated, the home of all that is meretricious and corrupt, a selfish imperial power with an unfounded sense of mission civilatrice. Our task is to sort out sober truth from distorted fantasy. Whatever one's view of American society, and no one can know the whole of so vast a country, few people who are concerned about the structure of international society can seriously envisage a later twentieth century in which the United States is not the acknowledged, and indeed respected, leader of a wide group of powers. It is one of the two pillars of the central strategic balance that gives our current international system such stability as it possesses; the nations on whom the United States could devolve a certain measure of regional responsibility, a

Beyond National Interest: A Critical Evaluation of Reinhold Niebuhr's Theory of International Polities

Until more or less recently, few students of international affairs have been preoccupied with the theoretical aspects of their field. To the extent that theory is distinguished from history, law and science, this is especially true. Historians have sought to uncover the facts and recite them with the most fastidious regard for the circumstances of time and place. Lawyers have tried to detect in the case law of international agreements and treaties the normative structure of international society. Political scientists have increasingly turned to new scientific methods and statistical techniques designed to measure public opinion and its influence on foreign policy. Few scholars have concerned themselves with the fundamental characteristics of international society or of good or bad foreign policy. In this intellectual environment any explicit, systematic theory of international relations has had to await a threefold development. It has required a broader conception of the proper methods for studying international affairs, a clearer identification of basic concepts and “laws,” and a more serious discussion of fundamental theoretical problems like the relation of theory to concrete problems.