Chapter 2. The Evolution of International Society

Robert H. Jackson

• Origins and Definitions

• Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy

• European International Society

• The Globalization of International Society

• Problems of Global International Society

Reader's guide

This chapter discusses the idea of international society and some of its historical mani­festations. The starting point is human beings organized into geographically separate political communities and the horizontal relations of conflict and co-operation that ensue from their joint political existences. International society should be understood as a distinctive institutional response to accommodate that reality of political coexistence. It has assumed different forms from ancient times to the present era but it also discloses common features the most important being a relationship of independence between political communities, usually conceived as states.

I would like to acknowledge Kal Holsti and Ron Deibert for their helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.

Origins and Definitions

In order to understand the contemporary world and the significance of globalization we need to consider the evolution of international society. The historical origin of international relations can only be a matter of speculation. But, speaking conceptu­ally, it was a time when people began to settle down on the land and form themselves into separate ter­ritory-based political communities. Each group faced the inescapable problem of co-existing with neighbouring groups whom they could not ignore or avoid because they were right there next door. Each group also had to deal with groups that were farther away but still capable of affecting them. Their geographical contiguity must have come to be regarded as a zone of political proximity if not a frontier or border of some kind. (The institution of formally demarcated international boundaries is of course a much later invention of the modern European society of states.) Where contact occurred it must have involved activities such as competi­tion, disputes, threats, intimidation, intervention, invasion, conquest and other belligerent inter­actions. But it also must have involved dialogue, collaboration, exchange, communication, recogni­tion, and similar non-belligerent relations.

That social reality of group relations on a hori­zontal plane could be considered, figuratively speaking, as the core problem of international rela­tions, which is built on a fundamental distinction between our collective selves and other collective selves in a territorial world of many such collective selves in contact with each other. If there were no horizontal lines of territorial division between 'we' and 'they' there could still be human societies: per­haps isolated political communities, perhaps roam­ing or marauding groups, perhaps a vertical society such as an empire, possibly even a cosmopolitan world society of all humankind devoid of funda­mental group differentiation, or some other social formation or arrangement. But there could not be international relations in the usual meaning of the term. In short, international relations as histori­cally and conventionally understood are relations of territorially based and delimited political groups.

We now begin to arrive at a definition of 'inter­national society'. As already indicated, it stands for relations between politically organized human groupings which occupy distinctive territories and enjoy and exercise a measure of independence from each other. International society can thus be conceived as a society of political communities which are not under any higher political authority. In the language of international relations such detached communities are referred to as states which are usu­ally conceptualized as consisting of (1) a permanent population (2) occupying a defined territory (3) under a central government (4) which is independ­ent of all other governments of a similar kind (Brownlie 1979). That condition of constitutional or political independence is ordinarily spoken of as state sovereignty (James 1986: 25). Hedley Bull (1977: 8) sums up the foundation of the subject: The starting point of international relations is the existence of states, or independent political com­munities, each of which possesses a government and asserts sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth's surface and a particular seg­ment of the human population.'

Hedley Bull (1977: 13) offers the following defin­ition of international society: 'A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and com­mon values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.' International society is basically a pluralistic or 'liberal' political arrangement. The core value is the political opportunity of people to enjoy a geo­graphically separate group existence free from unsolicited interference from neighbouring groups and other outsiders. Independence is the core value in a cluster of important international values, including self-determination, non-intervention, right of self-defence, and the like. The basic institu­tional arrangement which embodies and expresses those values is state sovereignty.

Box 2.1. Key Concepts

coexistence: the doctrine of live and let live between political communities, or states. territory: a portion of the earth's surface appropriated by a political community, or state. state sovereignty: a state's characteristic being politic­ally independent of all other states. suzerain state: a state which dominates and subordi­nates neighbouring states, without taking them over. empire: a state which possesses both a home territory and foreign territories: an imperial state. theocracy: a state based on religion. hegemony: power and control exercised by a leading state over other states. reason of state: the practical application of the doctrine of realism and virtually synonymous with it. balance of power: a doctrine and an arrangement whereby the power of one state (or group of states) is checked by the countervailing power of other states. national security: a fundamental value in the foreign policy of states. society of states: an association of sovereign states based on their common interests, values, and norms. international law: the formal rules of conduct that states acknowledge or contract between themselves. international order: a shared value and condition of sta­bility and predictability in the relations of states. non-discrimination: a doctrine of equal treatment between states. self-determination: the right of a political community or state to become a sovereign state. right of self-defence: a state's right to wage war in its own defence. world society: the society produced by globalization. global covenant: the rules, values, and norms which govern the global society of states.

One of the most noteworthy and characteristic arrangements between sovereign states is diplo­macy which obviously is intended primarily to facilitate and smooth their relations. Of course diplomatic arrangements have been expressed dif­ferently from one time or place to the next: diplo­macy in ancient Greece was not the same as diplo­macy in Renaissance Italy which was different again from the classical diplomacy of the eighteenth century or the global diplomacy of the twentieth century (Nicolson 1954). Another arrangement is international law, which is a more recent innovation dating back only as far as the six­teenth and seventeenth centuries when the first recognizable international legal texts were written that sought to document the rather novel legal practices of what at that time were recently dis­cerned entities known as sovereign states. Other such arrangements include recognition, reciproc­ity, the laws of war, international conferences, and much else. In the past century an increasingly important arrangement is the large and extensive complex of international organizations—univer­sal, regional and functional—by means of which much of the business of international relations is nowadays conducted.

Box 2.2. The Earliest Records of International Society'

There are recorded formal agreements among ancient city-states which date as far back as 2400 BC, alliances dating to 1390 BC, and envoys as early as 653 BC (Barber 1979: 8-9).

One point deserves particular emphasis so that the idea and expression of international society is understood in its proper historical context. Vertical or hierarchical relations between political groups are a historical commonplace throughout most of the world as far back as recorded history can take us. Political empire is the prevalent form of group rela­tions. Horizontal relations between political groups is comparatively rare. The ancient Greeks con­structed an international society which survived for several centuries in a surrounding political environment of various hegemonic empires, including Persia, Macedonia, and the Roman empire. At that time there were also great empires and suzerain-state systems beyond Europe and the Middle East, including the Chinese empire which was the greatest of them all and which lasted for millennia, albeit in different dynastic incarnations.

Empire was the prevalent mode of large-scale political group relations in Western Europe throughout the era of the Roman empire and that of its successor, medieval Christendom, which lasted until about the sixteenth century. In the late Middle Ages (1300-1500) the Renaissance Italians constructed and operated a small regional interna­tional society based on the city states of northern and central Italy. The first modern international society based on large-scale territorial states came into existence a little later in north-western Europe out of which the contemporary global interna­tional society has evolved (see chronology below). But empires continued to exist in Europe and many other parts of the world down to the twentieth cen­tury. Eastern Europe was dominated by empires until the end of the First World War. Although Europeans created a society of states among them­selves which was the very definition of political modernity, at the very same time they constructed vast empires to rule non-European political com­munities in the rest of the world. International soci­ety is thus uncommon in history even though it has become globalized in the twentieth century and now prevails in every continent.