ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ I - Deneme Sınavı - 11

The term “English School” was first coined by Roy Jones in a 1981 article titled as “The English School of International Relations: A Case for Closure”.

According to Locke and Rousseau, by forming a higher authority, individuals would accept voluntarily to leave their certain rights to preserve their freedoms and security (freedom of life). Social contract theory depends on the assumption that the individuals might voluntarily bind themselves to the certain principles. From this point, like stag hunt model of game theory, individuals would sacrifice their small satisfactions to reach a highest satisfaction.

Locke’s arguments for the social contract, and for the right of citizens to revolt against their king were enormously influential on the democratic revolutions that followed, especially on Thomas Jefferson, and the founders of the United States.

Rawl’s concept of justice founded the background of new economic order demands of poor Third World countries to fill the rift between North and South (Viotti and Kauppi, 1993: 534).

Barry Buzan made a call for the reconvening of the English School in 1999 and took the issue with the naming of the School. By that time, besides the “English School”, the School was variously named by different scholars such as “British School, British Institutionalists, International Society Approach, the Classical School, British Idealists and Rationalism”. As a result of Buzan’s call for reconvening, there emerged some agreement upon the name “English School” and since then it has been commonplace name for the School.

Jus ad bellum refers to the conditions under which States may resort to war or to the use of armed force in general. The prohibition against the use of force amongst States and the exceptions to it (self-defence and UN authorization for the use of force), set out in the United Nations Charter of 1945, are the core ingredients of jus ad bellum.

A principle of international law that treaties and other international engagements are binding upon the nations that accede to them, and obligations accepted under such engagements must be performed, or reparations made in the event of a breach.

In addition to the fact that foreign policy

activities are tied to moral principles, some foreign

policy goals also have ethical and moral content.

Foreign policy goals are addressed to certain

concepts such as peace, law, justice, international

stability, social solidarity and freedom.

The two prominent scholars of the first generation of the School, Hedley Bull and Charles Manning, were not English; the first one being an Australian and the second one a South African.

In order to speak of the existence of a distinct English School, or any school within a particular discipline for that matter, the three conditions must be satisfied: 1) there must be some commonalities of the views in terms of the subject matter, concepts, principles and methods among the scholars/ members in concern, 2) conscious self-identification with the school by the members, and 3) recognition by the larger community of the discipline. The commonality of the view is required because if the scholars in concern do not have anything in common, then, we cannot speak of them as being part of a group, let alone a distinct school.

The second generation scholars emerging with the 1990s onwards such as Barry Buzan, Tim Dunne, Peter Wilson, Hidemi Suganami, Nicholas Wheeler and Robert Jackson, to name but a few.

Kenneth Thompson, whom was a member of the (American) Committee on the Theory of International Politics founded in 1954, suggested the idea as he thought that a similar committee in Britain would help the study of international relations. The initial funding for the British Committee came from the Rockefeller Foundation for which Thompson was then working

For the Realists, the determining factor in international relations is power and other elements are neglected.

For the Marxists, the determining element in international relations is economy (welfare) and other factors are neglected.

According to Jones, there were four defining elements shared by the authors of this school:

1) English school scholars consider International Relations (IR) as an autonomous subject rather than being a part of (International) Politics.

2) They examine order in the world in terms of the structure of relations between sovereign nation-states.

3) They have a common style that involves no use of statistics, geometry and algebra, no rhetoric of world problems, such as poverty and monetary reform.

4) The English School has a commitment to holism in the sense that the whole is more than the mere summation of its parts.

The English School has a historical approach as a combination of the past, the present and the future.

The distinctions of the English School from the other schools and its merits are: a) ontological and epistemological pluralism, b) its historical approach repudiating both determinism and presentism, c) the significance given to values and cultural and civilizational identities.

Hidemi Suganami (1983) agreed with Jones on the existence of a distinct school and called it as “British institutionalist approach”. He identified five factors that united the authors of this approach:

1) aspiration to werthfreiheit (morally neutral analysis),

2) rejection of behaviourism or scientism,

3) reliance on sociological methods (institutional analysis),

4) unity and specificity of the states- system (autonomy of IR)

5) rejection of utopianism.

Suganami however disagreed with Jones and considered the contribution of the School to be significant and consequently he did not call for a closure.

Peter Wilson formidably argued for the existence of a distinct English School. He identified six characteristics of the School:

1) a perspective of the whole (holism), in other words, the view that international relations constitute a whole,

2) the idea of international society, the view that international relations can be conceptualized in terms of a society,

3) the existence of order within international relations unlike the prevalent conception of anarchy or disorder,

4) the institutional basis of international order rather than mechanical or hegemonial/hegemonic imposition,

5) rejection of utopian schemes

6) rejection of behaviourism.

Yurdusev argued for the existence of a distinct school and outlined basic premises as follows:

1) concern for history, historical explanation and classical works

2) international relations being an orderly realm

3) the view of the whole

4) the adherence to a via media (middle way) approach, in other words, precaution and refrain from the extremes

5) the significance of and emphasis upon cultural/ civilizational factors in international relations

6) the volitional/voluntaristic conceptualization of international society/system against mechanical/ structural conception

7) a broad historical perspective and the use of historical parallels to current problems (rejection of presentism)

8) avoidance of scientific jargon.