William Bain

A key debate within the English School centres on the concepts of pluralism and solidarism. Pluralism describes international societies with a relatively low degree of shared norms, rules, and institutions. Solidarism describes international societies with a relatively high degree of shared norms, rules, and institutions. In other words, pluralism presupposes coexistence in recognition of the value of diversity; solidarism presupposes the pursuit of one or more substantive goals that are true for all states and peoples. The debate to which these concepts lend their name is about how international society relates to world society, which is wider and more fundamental than an association of states (Bull 1977: 22). It is about reducing the tension between the needs and imperatives of states and the needs and imperatives of humankind. This tension is often framed by the ostensible con ict between order and justice. Most English School scholars operate within the parameters of this debate. The civil war in Syria illustrates the basic claims of debate. According to a pluralist interpretation, Syria is a sovereign state, responsible for its territory and population, and this status should be respected so long as the war does not threaten international peace and security. A solidarist position stresses the overriding obligation to protect human life and justi es

This article reflects on themes of continuity and change over the past century of international relations. In 1919 the victors of the First World War endeavoured to remake international relations by abolishing war and erecting institutional structures that were intended to promote a more just world order. The achievements and failures of this project can be discerned in overlapping patterns of continuity and change that portray a world that is at once old and new. The discourse of change tends to dominate thinking about international relations. Technological innovation, globalisation, and human rights, among other factors, cultivate the progressive 'one-worldism' of an interconnected global community of nations and peoples. But, evidence of change notwithstanding, much of contemporary international relations would be intelligible to persons who lived a century ago. International relations is still fundamentally about order and security, power and restraint, and freedom and equality. These patterns provide an important reminder that progress is possible but that international relations involves an open-ended project of continuous renovation and conservation.

This is the table of contents of my forthcoming book, Political Theology of International Order, Oxford University Press, 2020. It investigates presuppositions of international order that originate in medieval theology. The main argument is that international order understood in terms of individuals—either states or human beings—and artificial relations, established by the operation of an impersonal mechanism or the adoption of positive rules, is a worldly application of a theological pattern. The book uncovers these presuppositions as they emerged in a medieval dispute about the nature of God and the extent of his power and its traces their assimilation into modern politics and law.

Anarchy is one of the most important concepts in international theory; Thomas Hobbes is regularly invoked to illustrate the character and the consequences of anarchy.  This article interrogates the theological aspect of Hobbes’s political philosophy in a bid to move beyond the distorting mythology that has grown-up around ‘Hobbesian’ international relations.  In doing so, it advances a positive argument that presents Hobbes as a theorist of interstate society that is made and unmade in the way that God made the universe.  The anarchy that is attributed to Hobbes is rooted in a theological dispute about the nature of God and the extent of his power, and which entails a particular way of constituting and comprehending reality.  When the implications of this dispute are taken into account it becomes evident that anarchy is neither an objective feature of a world composed of independent states nor an inescapable logical condition that follows the absence of central authority.  Rather, anarchy is an achievement of thought, born of a particular time and place, which seeks a reflection of itself in the mirror of eternity.

Scholars of international relations generally invoke Hobbes as the quintessential theorist of international anarchy. David Armitage challenges this characerisation, arguing that Hobbes is regarded as a foundational figure in international relations theory in spite of as much as because of what he wrote on the subject. Thus, for Armitage, Hobbes is not the theorist of anarchy that he is made out to be. This article agrees with the general thrust of Armitage’s critque while maintaining that it is still possible to imagine Hobbes as a theorist of anarchy. Hobbes is a theorist of anarchy, not in a political sense, but in a metaphysical sense. This conception of anarchy is a reflection of a comprehensive theological account of reality that is grounded in an omnipotent God. Any historical inquiry into the foundations of modern international thought must take account of theology, because theology defines the ultimate coordinates of reality in terms of which the concepts of international thought are intelligible.

Natural law is integral to Martin Wight’s conception of international society. It is natural law that grounds the common values, the conditions of cooperation and mutual assistance, and most important of all, the sense of common obligation, which sets international society apart from the precarious, competitive anarchy that is the world of (political) realism. Natural law also holds out an alternative to the revolutionary claims of human solidarity that Wight feared would rend the fabric of the states-system. This article interrogates rival traditions of natural law, implicit in Wight’s rationalist tradition, which disrupts the coherence of ‘three traditions’ framework. In doing so, it calls into question Wight’s hope that natural law could provide the basis of a post-Christian theory of international society. It concludes by arguing that Wight identified the right question: how might international society be grounded in a plural world? The cogency of his question stands, and yet it still begs an answer.

Francisco de Vitoria is regularly included in the genealogy of humani- tarian intervention. He is invoked as both historical precedent and legitimizing author- ity, which raises the question of his trans-historical relevance in contemporary debates on humanitarian intervention. This article argues that Vitoria’s thinking about defend- ing the innocent cannot be abstracted from his theology and remain coherent. Specifi- cally, it argues that the illocutionary force of his position is entirely lost once it is separated from the belief that man is created in the image of God. The article con- cludes by arguing that Vitoria’s thought has little prescriptive value in contemporary debates. Nevertheless, his thought is still worth engaging because it is suggestive of the kinds of questions that contemporary scholars must pose and answer, albeit in the circumstances of their own time and place.

This article explores the way in which the idea of trusteeship shaped questions relating to property and possession in nineteenth-century sub-Saha- ran Africa. Trusteeship is distinctive insofar as it sanctioned European domin- ion over territories in Africa while preserving an indigenous right in the wealth contained in these territories. The article illuminates the character of this rela- tionship, first, by arguing that a narrative that reduces empire to a story of domination and exploitation ends up obscuring the complex property relations entailed by trusteeship. Second, it describes the introduction of trusteeship into the political, economic and social life of sub-Saharan Africa, focusing mainly on the experience of British colonial administration and the Berlin Conference of 1884–5. Third, it clarifies a relationship of unequal reciprocity that joined European commercial interests with the well-being of the so-called ‘native’ tribes of Africa

Advocates of international administration tend to embrace conduct and utterance that proposes to vindicate fundamental human rights and freedoms by suspending an important part of its content: the principle that human beings should not be subject to coercion except where they have given their consent. This article begins by arguing that the character of this dilemma is obscured by a vocabulary of technique that divests the category ‘international administration’ of its normative coherence. In fact, international administration discloses two distinct modes of association—contract and trust—which presuppose different values, different obligations, and different expectations. The article proceeds in arguing that a trust instituted among equals is susceptible to objection in so far as trustee and beneficiary are necessarily joined in a coercive relationship that rules out the possibility of consent. The article concludes by arguing that recent attempts at reconciling this sort of relation with the demands of human rights entails a kind of corruption that is intelligible in making ordinary language correspond with the ideal, so that what was once described as the denial of human dignity—subjection to alien rule—is now described as the promotion and protection of fundamental human rights.

... Pizzaro, Cortes, de Gama, and those who followed, encountered people who held radically different beliefs about government, economy, morality, and all ... The moral substance of this belief is expressed best in an unnamed African's protest to Margery Perham just before the ...

... 7 See John A. Vasquez, 'The Level of Analysis Problem Reconsidered', in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today ... Tellingly, he argues that '[i]f according to the French philosopher Le Senne, “all philosophy is a novel which waits for action to ...

The promise of a peaceful and prosperous post-Cold War world has collapsed in bitter disappointment as daily life in parts of Africa, Asia, and, indeed, Europe continues to be marked by gross human rights abuses, genocide, civil war, mass starvation, mutilation, ...

Bain argues that efforts to include the ethic of human security as a core objective in Canadian foreign policy lack the necessary coherence required to be a useful guide for the conduct of statecraft. He examines Ottawa's doctrine of human security and how it affects its foreign policy. Bain concludes that Canada's doctrine of human security emphasizes norms which are often at odds with those of international society and Canada's traditional foreign policy objectives. Moreover, he cautions against infecting Canada's foreign policy with excessive moralism. Hence, Canadian foreign policy should not be guided by human security concerns. Rather, Canada should only pursue human security issues when the circumstances permit.