The European International Order (1980)

Abstract

The idea of international society inevitably gives rise to questions of boundaries and of identity. If there is such a thing as international society, what are its limits? What is the nature of relations between insiders and outsiders? And what are the criteria for membership? For Bull and the theorists of international society this was one of the principal questions that needed to be addressed in tracing the history of thought on international relations. Moreover, as we have seen, Bull’s conception of international society sees values and a common culture as important potential factors underpinning effective norms and institutions. European international society had, after all, been accompanied by frequent invocations of a common identity and of common cultural values. The transition from a European to a global international society was therefore always going to raise important questions and Bull’s interest was already apparent in the 1960s.* It became central to his work from the mid-1970s (especially after spending 4 months teaching in India in 1974–5). By that time he was arguing that the transition from a European to a global order represented a more fundamental development than the emergence of the power-political and ideological confrontation between East and West.

See, for example, ‘Afro-Asian States and the Western International Order: A Statement of the Problem’. Paper, Department of International Relations, ANU (August 1968), BP.