ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ I

Although the British Committee was founded by an initial American funding, it has been a prevalent view in the literature of IR that the English School was somewhat posed against the dominance of American approaches to the study of international relations, especially American Social Science approaches, i.e. the Behaviouralist School, arguing that international relations can be studied with the use of the methods and techniques of the basic sciences. In the 1950s, there were two dominant schools for the study of international relations within the United States, namely Realism and Behaviouralism. In the Preface to Diplomatic Investigations, the seminal work of the British Committee, the editors starkly expressed their differences from the American colleagues.

The first and basic argument of the School is ontological and epistemological pluralism. The English School argues that the reality of IR, i.e. the practice of international relations, cannot be confined, or reduced, to a single element; it is always multi-dimensional. In other words, the reality of international relations is composed of ontologically plural phenomena. This idea of ontological pluralism is expressed in the description of international reality as comprising the elements of international system, international society and world society.

Hidemi Suganami (1983) agreed with Jones on the existence of a distinct school and called it as “British institutionalist approach”.

Indeed, several authors consciously associated with each other and identified themselves as members of the English School from the first generation scholars of the 1950s to 1970s such as Herbert Butterfield, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, Michael Donelan, Roy J. Vincent; to 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.

The British Committee emerged as a result of ironically an American initiative. 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 founding members of the British Committee were Herbert Butterfield
(historian), Martin Wight (IR Scholar), Desmond Williams (historian), Michael Howard (military historian), Geoffrey Hudson (historian), Donald McKinnon (philosopher), William Armstrong (economist from the Treasury Department), Adam Watson (diplomat), and Hedley Bull (IR scholar).

English School and Constructivist School too have similarities and differences. They both strive to show the social bases of international relations and for both of them society is constructed with norms and institutions. They also stress the
significance of norms and other ideational factors such as identity and values. Yet again there are key differences. As Buzan (2014, 33) pointed out the
“English School has its main roots in the study of history, political theory and international law, whereas Constructivism grew out of debates about epistemology and method.

Peter Wilson (1989) replied to Grader and formidably argued for the existence of a distinct English School.He identified six characteristics of the School.

Indeed, several authors consciously associated with each other and identified themselves as members of the English School from the first generation scholars of the 1950s to 1970s such as Herbert Butterfield, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, Michael Donelan, Roy J. Vincent; to 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.

A convenient date for the beginning of the English School is 1959 when the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (hereafter, the British Committee) first met at the Peterhouse College of Cambridge University.

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”.

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.

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.