One world? Many worlds? The place of regions in the study of international society

International Affairs

Volumn 83, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 127-146

  Hurrell, Andrew ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^b NUFFIELD COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846640085     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: 14682346     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2007.00606.x     Document Type: Review

References (47)

1. See, most recently, Ian Hall's excellent study, The international political thought of Martin Wight (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).
2. See also Brunello Vigezzi, The British Committee on the theory of international politics (1954-1985) (Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2005);
3. Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations: a contemporary reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
4. Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds, Diplomatic investigations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 13.
5. Martin Wight, 'Western values in international relations', in Butterfield and Wight, Diplomatic investigations, p. 96.
6. Martin Wight, Systems of states (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), pp. 3, 46.
7. See Scott M. Thomas, 'Faith, history and Martin Wight: the role of religion in the historical sociology of the English School of International Relations', International Affairs 77: 4, Oct. 2001, pp. 905-29.
8. As far as I know Wight did not write in any detail on this subject. He does suggest that, because systemic pressures may vary in strength, 'in certain regions which are culturally united but politically divided, a subordinate international society comes into being, with a states-system reproducing in miniature the features of the general state system': Martin Wight, Power politics (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979 [first publ. 1946]), p. 63. But it is the variation rather than the reproduction that is the focus here.
9. For all the sweep and sophistication of their work, Buzan and Waever are primarily concerned with intraregional security logics, and they tend to view regions as mutually exclusive: Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions as powers: the structure of international security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
10. Katzenstein does look at the place of regions within the broader system, but almost exclusively from the perspective of a US hegemonic order: Peter Katzenstein, A world of regions: Asia and Europe in the American imperium (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
11. Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell, eds, Regionalism in world politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
12. Andrew Gamble and Anthony Payne, eds, Regionalism and world order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996);
13. Edward D. Mansfield and Helen V. Milner, 'The new wave of regionalism', International Organization 53: 3, 1999, pp. 602-608;
14. Björn Hettne, András Inotai and Oswaldo Sunkel, eds, Globalism and the new regionalism (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999);
15. Mary Farrell, Björn Hettne and Luk van Langenbove, eds, Global politics of regionalism: theory and practice (London: Pluto, 2005);
16. Amitav Acharya and Alistair Ian Johnston, eds, Crafting cooperation: regional international institutions in comparative perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
17. See esp. Buzan and Waever, Regions as powers.
18. On the earlier period, see Joseph S. Nye, Peace in parts: integration and conflict in regional organization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
19. For an important exception to the neglect of comparative work, see Walter Mattli, The logic of regional integration: Europe and beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
20. This is a rich vein for further comparative study. For studies that open up some of these questions, see Miguel Centeno, Blood and debt: war and the nation-state in Latin America (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2002);
21. Ian S. Lustick, 'The absence of Middle Eastern great powers: political "backwardness" in historical perspective', International Organization 51: 4, 1997, pp. 653-83.
22. See Amitav Acharya, 'How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism', International Organization 58: 2, Spring 2004, pp. 239-75.
23. See Laurence Whitehead, 'Afterword: on cultures and contexts', in Hans Antlöv and Tak-Wing Ngo, eds, The cultural construction of politics in Asia (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2000), pp. 223-40.
24. See Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: the search for a new ummah (London: Hurst, 2002), pp. 13-29. If Islamism is best understood as a response to modernity, it makes still less sense to view radical jihadists in premodern terms: 'However old-fashioned their theology may seem to Westerners, and whatever they may think of themselves, radical Euro-Islamists are clearly more of a postmodern phenomenon than a premodern one' (p. 303).
25. Raymond Aron, Peace and war: a theory of international relations (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), esp. ch. 3.
26. See e.g. Hedley Bull, 'International Relations as an academic pursuit', in Kai Alderson and Andrew Hurrell, eds, Hedley Bull on international society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), esp. pp. 257-60.
27. Kenneth Prewitt, 'Presidential items', Items 50: 2/3, June-Sept. 1996.
28. See http://www.ssrc.org/publications/items.
29. For an excellent analysis of the debate, see David Ludden, 'Area studies in an age of globalization', 1998, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/areast2. htm, accessed 1 Dec. 2005.
30. Fred Halliday, 'The chimera of the "international university"', International Affairs 75: 1, Jan. 1999, pp. 99-120.
31. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1963 [first publ. 1922]);
32. Arnold Toynbee, A study of history (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934).
33. On Toynbee's great influence on Wight, see Hall, The international thought of Martin Wight, esp. chs 3 and 6.
34. In his conclusion to The international thought of Martin Wight Hall points, intriguingly, to Wight's frequent recourse to categories which are usually considered more proper to literature or aesthetics. For a study of Spengler's influence in terms of its aesthetic attraction and expressive power terms, see J. P. Stern, The dear purchase: a theme in German modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 88-110.
35. James Tully, Strange multiplicity: constitutionalism in an age of diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 11.
36. See e.g. Kalypso Nicolaidis and Robert Howse, '"This is my EUtopia ... " narrative as power', Journal of Common Market Studies 40: 4, 2002, pp. 767-92.
37. Martin Wight, 'The balance of power', in Arnold Toynbee and Frank T. Ashton-Gwatkin, The world in March 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1952), p. 525.
38. On this issue, see Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, 'Who's keeping the peace? Regionalization and contemporary peace operations', International Security 29: 4, 2005, pp. 157-95.
39. See e.g. Bernard M. Hoekman and Michel M. Kostecki, The political economy of the world trading system: the WTO and beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 10.
40. R. J. Vincent, Human rights and international relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 101.
41. John G. Ruggie, 'Territoriality and beyond: problematizing modernity in international relations', International Organization 46: 1, 1993, pp. 139-74;
42. Andrew Linklater, The transformation of political community: ethical foundations of the post-Westphalian era (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), p. 9.
43. See Andrew Hurrell, 'Hegemony in a region that dares not speak its name', International Journal LXI: 3, Summer 2006, pp. 545-66.
44. Martin Wight, 'Why is there no international theory?' in Butterfield and Wight, Diplomatic investigations.
45. See e.g. E. H. Carr, Nationalism and after (London: Macmillan, 1945);
46. Alexandre Kojève, 'Outline of a doctrine of French policy', 27 Aug. 1945, trans. Erik de Vries and with commentary by Robert Howse, repr. in Policy Review, http://www.policyreview.org/aug04, accessed 5 Nov. 2004.
47. Wight, Systems of states, p. 149.