TRANSNATIONAL REGIONAL SOCIETY DONALD KOSSUTH

Transcription

1 TRANSNATIONAL REGIONAL SOCIETY by DONALD KOSSUTH B.A. (Hons.), Queen's University, 1991 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Department of Political Science We accept this thesis as conforming _ to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA November 1996 Donald Kossuth, 1996

2 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head! of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of ^LfffOfL-?C ] B yj^ T The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada "Date J -? 1 P&utM%&^. DE-6 (2/88)

3 ABSTRACT This thesis explores the phenomena of transnational regional society and its effect on international relations. It attempts to answer two main questions: What are transnational regional societies, and what can they tell us about the condition of the society of states? In chapter one, 'international society' arguments are reviewed to illustrate how transnational regional society has been ignored by that literature and to develop a normative theoretic approach to understanding cross-border, non-statist forms of human society. In chapter two, the transnational and regional aspects of these human societies are explored more fully, and as any wholly 'positivist' delineation of a 'region' is difficult, examples of transnational regional societies are identified not only by their congruence with economically- and ecologically-localized territory, but by the entrenchment of their primary norm: the pursuit of the 'better' life, understood as the human desire for heightened socioeconomic well-being beyond the basic safety, order and social welfare the state can provide. So defined, transnational regional societies help advance three important debates in international relations theory. First, they offer a novel approach to the 'nature of security' debate, for they necessitate a focus on socioeconomic as well as physical or Hobbesian security. Second, transnational regional societies shed new light on the 'democracies do not go to war' argument. Third, they help assess the relative strength of communitarian and cosmopolitan impulses in world politics. Chapter three explores these debates, arguing that transnational regional societies help confirm a healthy prognosis for the 'state' and 'society of states,' for as transnational regional societies require international peace and order to thrive, they do not undermine the norms of state sovereignty and nonintervention. In short, the notable degree of cosmopolitanism in transnational regional society will not fuel the decline of the society of states into one global society of humankind. ii

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii iii iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 - SOCIETY & NORMATIVE THEORY 15 International Systems and Societies: The Hegemony to Independence Spectrum Normative Theory and Transnational Regional Society 26 CHAPTER 2 - TRANSNATIONAL REGIONAL SOCIETY 36 Transnational ism 36 Regions and International Relations Theory 43 A Normative Approach to a Regional Typology 53 Transnational Regional Societies: Some Empirical Examples 58 CHAPTER 3 - TRANSNATIONAL REGIONAL SOCIETIES & THE SOCIETY OF STATES 66 The 'Condition' of the Society of States 67 The 'Nature of Security' Debate 71 The 'Democracies No Longer Fight Other Democracies' Argument 78 The 'Pluralist versus Solidarist' Debate 83 CONCLUSION 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY 99 iii

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis is dedicated to Dr. Robert Jackson, without whose help and guidance it would never have been written. I would like express my most sincere thanks to Dr. Jackson, whose kindness, humility and wisdom has restored my faith in the academic enterprise. I am also most grateful for the support and friendship of Will Bain, who strengthened my arguments and challenged me to articulate my ideas more clearly. Many thanks also to my family and other friends whose encouragement kept me focused on the task at hand despite many distractions. Finally, a word of gratitude to my employers who both enabled and allowed me to pursue my master's degree while working full-time. iv

6 INTRODUCTION 'There is no region or aggregate of national units that can in the very strict sense of boundary congruence be identified as a subsystem of the international system.' Bruce M. Russett, 1967' 'Regionalization can also involve increasing flows of people, the development of multiple channels and complex social networks by which ideas, political attitudes, and ways of tjiinking spread from one area to another, and the creation of a transnational regional civil society.' Andrew Hurrell, Over the last thirty years, many international relations scholars have either chosen or been obliged to grapple with the enigmatic concept of 'region' while trying to understand the workings of world politics. Even though Bruce Russett's now classic positivist analysis of international regions concluded that no grouping of states could constitute a 'subsystem' of the international system, theorists still continue to try and identify forms of human society that somehow transcend state boundaries while falling short of a Utopian, all inclusive global society of humankind. The challenge to understanding human communities that disregard borders in a pluralist world of states has greatly enriched the study of world politics; arguably, this curiosity led Karl Deutsch to develop the idea of security communities, Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane to explore the concept of transnational ism, and Hedley Bull to differentiate between systems and societies of states, to cite but a few examples. In short, the historiography of regional theorizing by international relations scholars can be firmly situated in the discipline's larger quest to understand the nature of human social relations. 1 Bruce M. Russett, International Regions and the International System: A Study in Politic Ecology. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967, p Andrew Hurrell, "Regionalism in Theoretical Perspective." Fawcett, Louise, & Andrew Hurrell, eds. Regionalism in World Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p

7 Thus, when Andrew Hurrell discerns a relationship between 'regionalization' and the emergence of what he terms 'transnational regional civil societies,' he too engages the discipline's quest to understand cosmopolitan human impulses in a communitarian world of states. By studying 'regional civil societies,' he introduces yet another set of intriguing questions for international relations theorists, especially its 'international society' scholars. If, for example, the post-cold War era is marked, among its many other attributes, by a renewed focus on 'regions' and 'regionalism' by both statespeople and theorists, 3 is it still possible to debate the relative vitality of 'international' versus 'global' civil society without acknowledging the real possibility of 'regional' civil society as well? By extension, is the discipline any clearer on what is meant by 'region' and 'regionalization' in the discourse of international relations, let alone international society? And if empirical case studies do indeed reveal the existence of transnational regions with high degrees of 'civil society,' meaning regions with a significant level of social relations occurring between humans with a degree of 'indifference' to the states involved, which 'tradition' of international theory best accounts for their existence? In other words, where does the distinctive band of 'transnational regional society' appear on the spectrum ranging from pluralist to solidarist conceptions of world politics? In an attempt to begin answering some of these questions, this thesis explores the phenomenon of transnational regional society and tries to understand its place within the society of states. In doing so, it is unabashedly conceptual: this thesis endeavours to think 3 For a brief account of this renewed emphasis, see W. W. Rostow, "The Coming Age of Regionalism." Encounter 74.5 (June 1990):

8 the subject of transnational regional society through to some meaningful conclusions. As such, empirical examples of the phenomenon are only highlighted herein as necessary; an exhaustive comparative analysis of empirical cases would require a book-length manuscript, which suggests a detailed research project should follow this conceptual introduction. This thesis is therefore framed by two main goals. First, it aims to create a degree of definitional or terminological familiarity with the no doubt enigmatic concept of 'transnational regional society.' Second, it tries to use the concept to assess the general 'condition' of international society as the twentieth-century comes to a close. Thus, while this thesis is rooted in our own particular historical epoch, it will hopefully encourage further study of transnational regional society and its effects on the society of states during other historical periods of its evolution; the extent and impact of transnational regional societies on states during the Westphalian era, the period of the Concert of Europe, and the various stages of international society's 'globalization' would all seem to be prime cases for further research and analysis. International Society and Normative Theory Before trying to understand what 'transnational regional society' can tell us about the current condition of the society of states, a fuller comprehension of this multifarious concept must first be developed through a closer look at each of its primary components. To begin establishing this definitional familiarity, chapter one explores the concept of human 'society' in world political theory, doing so in two main ways. First, the literature shaping the key 'international society' debates is reviewed to reveal the almost complete lack of attention that has been paid to the concept of transnational regional society by international society scholars. This critique helps to delineate one key component of transnational regional 3

9 society: primarily, it helps clarify what is meant by 'society' in its cross-border community sense. That this concept has been ignored is by no means indicative of its insignificance. On the contrary, it reveals a degree of poverty in the evolution of international society dialogue, and in its consideration of non-statist cross-border communities, including the notion of neo-medievalism. Second, the international society dialogue provides a very useful framework from which to develop a 'normative' theoretical approach to understanding transnational regional society. Chapter one thus attempts to show how this form of human society is identifiable by the extent to which its fundamental norm has become entrenched in a localized cross-border region. This norm, the human pursuit of the 'better' life, is herein defined as the efforts of individuals to secure a 'condition' of socioeconomic well-being that goes beyond the more basic level of physical security and social welfare provided for by the state. As the norms of sovereignty and nonintervention shape international society, so too do the norms that encourage the pursuit of 'well-being' by a distinct community of individuals occupying a localized cross-border tract of territory mould transnational regional societies. The concept of striving for 'well-being' within a specific tract of cross-border territory is thus crucial to distinguishing transnational regional society from other kinds of 'transnationalism' such as international commerce or trade within and between states that lacks a regional focus. 'Wellbeing' is thus herein conceived of as a 'condition' that entails more than the cross-border pursuit of material goods. While material gain is no doubt vital to achieving a heightened degree of 'well-being,' the pursuit of the 'better' life also entails striving for a heightened sense of 'belonging' to a physical place by a group of individuals and their efforts to enhance 4

10 social interaction with each other across borders. The sense of 'comfort' that an individual derives from identifying with a specific community that is cross-border yet sub-national, in addition to the material pursuits he or she can make within its localized market, is key to distinguishing transnational regional societies. This concept of the localized pursuit of the 'better' life helps distinguish transnational regional societies from the larger quest for material goods and well-being that transpires at the domestic, state or global levels not only because it is specific to distinct territorial areas marked in part by cross-border yet-sub-national economic markets, but because the concept also encompasses the group's pursuit of a sense of 'community,' their desire for a feeling of 'place' and 'belonging' to a geographic or physical space, and the quest for social interaction by people sharing a common language, culture, and history (among other 'empirical' traits) that so happen to live in neighbouring parts of separate states. Thus, while transnational regional societies are all identifiable as a unique form of cross-border human society due to their well-entrenched pursuit of 'well-being' and the 'better' life, the specifics of this pursuit vary quite widely, thereby rendering each transnational regional society to a degree 'distinct.' Different notions of wealth, differing tastes, and of course different resource bases and economies all have an impact on the particular form these localized pursuits of the 'better life' can take. As such, it is recognized that the examples of transnational regional society identified herein have very different identities; what is important, however, is to remember that their inhabitants all share a common desire to improve their lives by interacting as a localized community across the international borders that so happen to divide them into different nation states. 5

11 Transnational Regional Society Once our understanding of 'society' has been refined by reviewing its use and non-use in the international society literature and by establishing a theoretic focus on a society's constitutive norms, the concepts of 'transnationalism' and 'regionalism,' and their importance to a more complete understanding of cross-border human societies can then be considered. In chapter two, definitional familiarity with transnational regional society is further enhanced by first reviewing the traditional connotation of 'transnational' in the jargon of world politics. This usual meaning of the term, largely developed in Nye and Keohane's pioneering work, is of the sum of trans-border flows and transactions, primarily of an economic nature, between two or more (usually contiguous) states, including the activities of nongovernmental actors and sub-state intergovernmental agents. Thus, while this connotation of 'transnational' advocates for the inclusion of actors other than statespeople in the study of international relations, it remains firmly focussed on inter-state transactions. It was the transactions between nation-states, albeit those conducted by a wider range of actors, that were of empirical concern to the transnational relations scholars of the 1970s. However, this thesis contributes to a different and perhaps less well understood connotation of transnational ism. Building in part on the impact that geographers have had on the study of world politics, and on the work of international relations theorists who place the notion of 'territory' at the forefront of their analyses (especially with regards to secession and the environment), 'transnational' is used herein to refer to those transactions that occur between actors in specific parts of congruent states, as opposed to the entire nation-states themselves. While the intent still remains the inclusion of actors other than statespeople in 6

12 the study of international relations, the cross-border territorial 'area' within which they interact is no longer solely delineated by the state boundaries involved. Human transactions between parts of states, whether they be politically demarcated sub-units like provinces, or other ecologically and geographically distinct tracts of territory that cross state borders, are the primary focus of transnational ism in this sense. Realizing that transnational activity often takes place within a territorial area, or 'region,' that is not only demarcated by the states involved is crucial to a more complete understanding of transnational regional society. For when defined as human social interaction occurring within territorially-localized cross-border geographic areas not solely delineated by state borders, transnationalism necessitates a more rigorous analysis of the concept of 'region' in world political theory. Arguably, 'region' has most often referred to two or more states that are, usually with some basis in geographic contiguity, 'grouped' together by practitioners and theorists alike: the EU, ASEAN and even the NAFTA are considered 'regions' in this sense. In a similar vein, large continental or sub-continental geographic references to a 'region' of states, like North America, western Europe, south east Asia and sub-saharan Africa, are often made for analytical convenience by international relations scholars. What is key to this conceptions of 'region' is that entire states comprise the most basic regional 'unit;' they can thus be called inter-state or international regions. Especially with regard to self-determination and secession, wholly contained parts of states or other units in political federations are also frequently referred to as regions by those international relations scholars studying issues like imperialism, decolonization and state formation. Thus in exploring how, for example, a domestic region striving for recognition 7

13 as an independent state becomes an issue of concern for the international community, international relations scholars have developed a second, fairly common, usage for the term: that of the domestic or intrastate region potentially becoming the world's next sovereign state. Quebec is a leading contemporary example. It is, however, with a third type of region, the transnational region, that this thesis is primarily concerned. Perhaps the most interesting and poorly understood region-type, transnational regions are in essence comprised of contiguous parts of two or more neighbouring states. They are thus the least 'political' of the three 'region types,' for they lack sharp borders and distinct political infrastructures. But by encompassing neighbouring tracts of physical territory in which much transnational activity takes place, activity that affects not only the particular states involved but also the larger society of states, transnational regions are in fact of great importance to a deeper understanding of world politics. As earlier empirical studies have illustrated, much transnational activity is 'economic' in nature, and transnational ism is often equated with 'economic interdependence.' It should not be surprising, then, that transnational regions are, at their core, economically- and ecologically-localized tracts of cross-border territory upon which distinctive human societies arise. For in addition to being delineated by their geo-physical endowments, and by the economies to which these endowments give rise, transnational regions are identifiable by the distinct human societies who occupy this territory, and who by-in-large produce and consume in its localized market. In short, the study of transnational regional society continues to focus on individuals as economic actors; however, it is their pursuit of the 'better' life within a transnational region that demands a new normative approach be applied to their analysis. 8

14 Clearly then, the study of transnational regional society has a strong affinity with both 'economic interdependence' and 'normative' approaches to world politics; the pursuit of the 'better' life, after all, has much to do with the socioeconomic well-being that wealth can provide. Ultimately, each individual's quest is only made possible by, and in doing so helps to constitute, the larger human societies in which they live. While the pursuit of the 'better' life within a transnational regional society is justified by norms that encourage the individual's quest for a heightened condition of socioeconomic well-being beyond that provided for by the welfare state and the society of states, just what constitutes the 'better' life for humans in different transnational regional societies varies quite widely. Partly to recognize this variance, and in order to encourage further familiarity with the concept of transnational regional society, chapter two concludes by raising a few empirical examples. To illustrate that what constitutes the requisite level or form of the 'better' life does indeed differ between transnational regional societies, examples are drawn from both North America and western Europe. It is in the 'first world' where the most advanced examples of transnational regional society can be found; the pacific northwest of North America, sometimes referred to as Cascadia, and 'transfrontier' regions in western Europe like Alsace and the Basque area, illustrate how the pursuit of the 'better' life is most advanced in those parts of the world where physical security and order is largely guaranteed and where strong regional economies can provide for enhanced material well-being. Undoubtedly, the entities being referred to as 'Cascadia,' 'Alsace' and 'Basque' differ from each other in many significant ways. To name but a few, Cascadia (which derives its name from the Cascade mountain range) usually describes an economic territory and the 9

15 distinct 'northwest coast' lifestyle of its immigrant-based inhabitants. The Alsace region can be delineated more precisely geographically, and is by-in-large an historical product of the many border disputes between France and Germany and their effects on its largely Germanic people. At this time, neither Cascadia or Alsace are marked by the extreme separatist sentiments of those Basques whose terrorist activities are aimed at achieving independent statehood. However, while these entities obviously have different 'identities,' they all possess the key characteristics of any transnational regional society. First and foremost, they are identifiable as a tract of physical territory that is cross-border yet sub-national and therefore non-sovereign. This territory is marked by its unique natural endowments and physical geography. Second, a distinctive if 'non-political' human society occupies this territory. The society is rendered distinct by its shared language or languages, by its common customs and practices, and by the desire of its members to foster a 'community' with a strong sense of belonging to the physical place it occupies. Third, these entities are marked by their localized economic market which arise from its natural endowments and to meet its consumer demands and tastes; they are therefore identifiable by the cross-border yet sub-national activity of its inhabitants in their socioeconomic pursuit of heightened well-being and the 'better' life. Transnational Regional Society and the Condition of the Society of States Having hopefully established an adequate degree of theoretic and empirical familiarity with the idea of 'transnational regional society,' this thesis attempts to draw some meaningful conclusions about the current and future condition of the society of states. It short, it tries to assess whether transnational regional society ultimately strengthens or weakens the 'state' as 10

16 the primary form of political organization, and challenges the notion that the globalization of international society must necessarily lead to more 'solidarist' forms of human political organization. To do so, chapter three applies the normative and economic approach to transnational regional society developed herein to three broad and somewhat interrelated debates in international relations theory. For when engaged from a transnational regional society perspective, it is argued that the 'nature of security' debate, the 'democracies no longer fight one another' argument, and the 'communitarian versus cosmopolitan' nature of human society debate can help make a more accurate prognosis for the condition of the 'state' and 'society of states' as they continue to evolve in the decades to come. First, the debate as to whether 'security' should, in its traditional Hobbesian sense, refer only to the 'physical' or military conditions of 'safety' and 'order,' and not to some 'material' condition of human socioeconomic well-being that is threatened, can be advanced by a more explicit consideration of transnational regional society. Doing so, it is argued, illustrates that along with base physical threats to the national interest, security theorists should consider threats to the individual's socioeconomic well-being and comfort when assessing the degree of 'security' being guaranteed by their state and the society of states in different regions of the world. For it appears that transnational regional societies, constituted by the important if 'soft' norm that encourages the human pursuit of the 'better' life, can only arise and thrive if the 'hard' norms of state sovereignty and nonintervention (which in constituting international society) have already created a requisite level of physical or military security and therefore safety and order. As such, the material security component to the individual's 'better' life is understood to be contingent on their ability to pursue the 11

17 conditions of socioeconomic well-being in life and not merely the basic survival of life, in its physical safety and social welfare sense. An important contribution to the 'democracies no longer fight one another' argument can thus be made by distinguishing between the state as the provider of physical safety and transnational regional society as the provider of an enhanced condition of 'well-being' made possible by the cross-border pursuit of material 'comfort,' of a heightened sense of belonging to a 'community' and its physical 'place,' and of social interaction among like people that so happen to live in neighbouring parts of separate states. Should empirical studies confirm that transnational regional societies arise primarily between parts of democratic states, and are most advanced in the world's 'zones of peace' where military and physical security concerns, especially the absence of war, have historically been or are being satisfied, then transnational regional society may help explain how the human pursuit of socioeconomic well-being helps mitigate against inter-democratic state warfare. Another important element of the 'nature of security' debate can also be addresses by an explicit consideration of transnational regional society; such a focus can help sharpen the discipline's understanding of 'environmental' security. For if threats, whether perceived or real, to the environments that help sustain a transnational regional society and its economy continue to intensify, will the environment rise in importance on state security agendas? Or given the perceived inability of international society to deal with environmental security concerns, will these threats come to be addressed primarily at the transnational regional society level? Chapter three then argues that a more explicit consideration of transnational regional society can advance considerably the debate as to whether a communitarian or cosmopolitan 12

18 paradigm will come to dominate world politics, and thus the basic form that human political organization could take in the future. That the debate between theorists who believe the state will continue to be the dominant form of human political association and those who argue states must inevitably give way to a larger global community has failed to consider transnational regional society as another viable form of human association is, of course, a key shortcoming this thesis attempts to address. This effort, however, should not be viewed as supporting the movement to 'de-centre' the state as the primary referent for international relations theory. For it is herein argued that transnational regional society, while indicative of cosmopolitan human impulses, and at times a threat to specific states, is not a threat to the pluralist society of states as a whole. In fact, transnational regional societies reinforce the fundamental norms of international society, for the human pursuit of the 'better' life, important a norm as it is, can only take place once a requisite level of safety, order and physical security, made possible by state sovereignty and nonintervention, already exists. Thus, as transnational regional societies do not threaten the 'state' as the primary political unit of human society, they should not be interpreted as proof of an intermediary stage in some larger teleological movement towards a global civil society. Neither should they be perceived as "states in waiting." For while some transnational regional societies contain strong secessionist elements who believe independent statehood would be the best guarantor of the 'better' life, they are manifestations of the localized norms, ethics, identities and loyalties of a group of individuals pursuing heightened well-being within the existing pattern of state borders. Thus, while secession theory is herein employed to emphasize the 'territorial' element behind transnational regional society, these cross-border yet sub-national 13

19 'communities' encompass parts of the states that ultimately enable its inhabitants to pursue socioeconomic well-being by providing for a requisite level of peace, security and order. Transnational regional societies therefore exist in tandem with the society of states, and to argue their rise represents a step towards one global civil society is problematic. While highly unlikely, should the secessionist element of a transnational regional society come to undermine the specific states within which they exist to the point these states fall apart, a new state would be created, with the 'remainder' states probably surviving as well, albeit with curtailed territory. At no point, however, is the concept of the 'state' as the dominant form of human political organization threatened. In conclusion, it is argued that the study of transnational regional society could ultimately help to answer other 'big questions' in the field of international relations theory. By illustrating that a more solidarist form of human society, one that differs from yet still coexists with the pluralist society of states, can indeed be constituted by the individual pursuit of the 'better' life suggests a possible reconciliation between the polarizing 'realist' versus 'liberal' discord in world political theory. For the important but until now neglected study of transnational regional society suggests that communitarian and cosmopolitan impulses do indeed co-exist in world politics. Once understood as a distinctive form of human society arising from both the pluralist and solidarist impulses in world politics, transnational regional society can help explain a number of key patterns in international relations, including the rise of regional interstate political union and 'zones of peace and conflict;' the importance of transnational regional economic and environmental actors and activities; and the place of intrastate regional secession movements and state creation in a post-imperialist world. 14

20 CHAPTER 1 - SOCIETY & NORMATIVE THEORY What is transnational regional society, and can 'international society' and 'normative' theories help us better understand these multifarious entities? To begin answering these questions, this chapter undertakes an all too brief review of some key international society arguments, doing so with three main ends in mind. First, this critique helps clarify what is meant by a society of states and, as international relations are ultimately human relations, by 'society' in its non-statist, cross-border 'community' sense as well. For even if transnational regional societies do not directly embody specific political communities, all human societies are somewhat political and affect the state as humankind's main unit of political organization. Second, this review highlights a lack of any sustained transnational regional theorizing by international society scholars, especially in their 'evolution of international society' dialogue, and their consideration of non-statist forms of society, including neo-medievalism. Only once the use and non-use of 'society' in world political theory has been reviewed can its transnational and regional components be explored more fully. Third, by considering what norms and values 'constitute' a society, it is possible to model a normative theoretic approach to understanding its transnational regional form. If international society is constituted by a set of 'hard' norms (namely state sovereignty and non-intervention) that guide the state's pursuit of national security and order, then transnational regional society is also identifiable via its fundamental if 'soft' constitutive norm: the human pursuit of the 'better' life, understood as the condition of socioeconomic well-being and the acquisition of material goods, beyond those supplied by the welfare state, that are only attainable when physical security and order are well entrenched. 15

21 International Systems and Societies: The Hegemony to Independence Spectrum The international society school is perhaps most readily associated with the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics and Martin Wight who, with Herbert Butterfield, Adam Watson and Hedley Bull, spent about twenty-five years discussing the nature of systems and societies of states. Arguably the most important of Wight's papers on the subject is his De systematibus civitatum which, taking its cue from Pufendorf, aims to "offer some notes towards clarifying the idea of a states-system, and to formulate some of the questions or propositions which a comparative study of states-systems would examine." 1 The essay is significant not only because it first described a 'state system' as a group of states who recognize no political superior and have more or less permanent relations with one other via messengers and a diplomatic language (i.e., ongoing communication), conferences and congresses (i.e., 'moments of maximum communication'), and trade. As importantly, De systematibus civitatum also prompted much subsequent debate over systems versus societies of states, introduced the need to consider norms, values and cultural unity in their analysis and, important to this thesis, launched the school's preferred 'comparative' approach to studying international systems and societies: Wight's comparison of suzerain to sovereign state systems launched the international society school's 'hegemony' to 'independence' spectrum for analyzing relations between political communities, an approach that has unfortunately marginalized the study of other potential forms of cross-border society, especially those that operate with some degree of indifference to state sovereignty. The international society literature has thus remained oddly silent regarding the 1 Martin Wight, Systems of States. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977, p

22 possibility of transnational or other forms of human community that impact upon both states and any system or society thereof. While the school's comparative and historical approach should be lauded for providing the context necessary for a fuller understanding our present international society, the 'independent' to 'empire' state system spectrum along which the comparisons have been made, as taken by Adam Watson in The Evolution of International Society, has overlooked non-statist cross-border communities, even though this spectrum strongly suggests they be considered. For according to Watson, "To understand even societies of more or less independent states requires a wider purview, which sees independence as only one end of the whole range of human experience in managing the coexistence of large and diverse communities of men." 2 Surely this 'wider purview' should consider geographically localized trans-border communities, identifiable by a significant degree of social interaction occurring with some indifference to the main political 'units' involved, whether they be independent states or other parts of a suzerain state system; even Watson notes that "In practice all known ways of organizing diverse but interconnected communities have operated somewhere between these two extremes." 3 Watson thus subdivides the spectrum of international systems stretching between the extremes of absolute independence and absolute empire into four basic categories: independence, hegemony (including suzerainty), dominion and empire. He does so to show that all state systems contain an intrinsic tension between the desire for order and the desire for independence: "Order promotes peace and prosperity, which are great boons. But there 2 Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society. London: Routledge, 1992, p Ibid., p

23 is a price. All order constrains the freedom of action of communities..." 4 Watson's point is significant because it suggests that another approach to studying cross-border communities, one more conducive to the study of transnational regional societies, is indeed possible. For if there is an inherent tension between the desire for order and prosperity, and the desire for independence and freedom, could not this tension give rise to multiple or different forms of human community that operate simultaneously instead of their being only one form of society somewhere along a spectrum? If order results from the independent political units of a 'system' surrendering some of their freedom in return for the benefits of 'society,' could not the human desire for freedom simultaneously find expression via some different constitution of society altogether? While Watson recognizes this possibility by asserting the provision of the good life "can be assigned to various confederal or society-wide bodies without destroying the identity and ultimate sovereignty of the state," 5 he does not dwell on what these confederal associations could be, except to assert, as did Wight, that they only arise within historical and cultural regions or periods as diverse as Macedonia, Islam and medieval Europe. 6 Watson's not directly addressing the theoretic possibility of transnational regional society is especially curious given his agreement with Wight that a state system will only evolve when a degree of cultural unity exists among its members. In his essay "Systems of 4 Ibid., p Ibid., p Each chapter of Watson's book is devoted to a different cultural region or 'period' of societal confederation from ancient states systems (like the Macedonian and Islamic), through the expansion of European international society (from medieval Europe), to today's global international society. 18

24 States," Watson claims to "know of no international society that did not originate inside a single dominant culture," 7 a statement that prompts two important considerations. First, just what is meant by 'culture,' and second, what is the relationship between a 'culture' and a 'system' versus a 'society?' For if culture is regionally delineated, should not all systems and societies by extension have a definite regional basis, and is culture not nebulous enough to find expression in communities other nation states, humankind's primary political units? These questions are far from semantic, and considering them would help determine whether international and transnational societies only arise between contiguous states or communities, whether the norms, formal rules and institutions that transform an international system into a society can be cross-cultural, and whether a society, once it has evolved within a distinct culture, can indeed spread beyond its contiguous units to become, in a sense, more 'global.' Of course, this evolution of international systems into societies, and the future of international society itself, are of considerable concern to scholars like Watson and Hedley Bull. In their introductory chapter to The Expansion of International Society, they explore the relationship between regions, societies and culture. Bull and Watson assert that before today's "single international system or society," the world was "comprised [of] several regional international systems (or what we choose to call international systems, with some danger of anachronism), each with its own distinctive rules and institutions, reflecting a dominant regional culture." 8 This claim is important for several reasons. First, it suggests Adam Watson, "Systems of States." Review of International Studies 16 (April 1990), p. 8 Hedley Bull & Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, p

25 that independent political communities, and not just states, are able to form cross-border societies; international does not necessarily mean inter-state. Second, it confirms that human societies in the past had strong regional foundations arising from distinct cultures. Before the global expansion of the dominant European system, the most important regional international systems, according to Bull and Watson, were the Arab-Islamic, the Indian subcontinent, the Eurasian steppes, and the Chinese, all of which "were built on elaborate civilizations, including complex religions, governments, law, commerce, written records, and financial accounts." Beyond these regions lay 'areas' such as sub-saharan Africa, the Americas and Australasia, where "political communities were often stateless." 9 This focus on regional international systems suggests Bull and Watson are poised to explore in greater detail the dynamics of not necessarily statist yet geographically localized patterns of human society. However, they choose instead to study regional systems via the 'hegemony' versus 'independence' spectrum, and not by considering those factors which made or make each one unique. Accordingly, Bull and Watson claim "regional international systems were, of course, very different from one another... But they had one feature in common: they were all, at least in the theory that underlay them, hegemonial or imperial." 10 Thus, for Bull and Watson, regional international systems are ultimately suzerain-state systems; states remain the basic political communities for analysis, and regional systems are considered to be primarily inter-state by nature. As such, before the global expansion of the European system, no "relations between states or rulers that were members of different 9 Ibid., p Ibid., p

26 regional international systems could be conducted on the same moral and legal basis as relations within the same system, for this basis was provided in part by principles that were culturally particular and exclusive." 11 There could thus be no international society between regional international systems until Europe itself came to repudiate any hegemonial principle, become a society itself, and simultaneously spread its rules and principles to the far corners of the globe. The two key principles the Europeans spread were, of course, that all member states should be regarded as juridically equal, and that their sovereignty was absolute. Perceiving these principles to be the basis of international society is perhaps the school's most important contribution to world political theory. Bull is usually credited with developing a more exacting delineation between international 'systems' and 'societies,' and his essay in The Expansion of International Society is no exception. In it, Bull asserts that the "expansion of Europe from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth... gradually brought into being an international system linking the various regional systems together, which by the middle of the nineteenth century was nearly universal. This did not mean, however, that there existed a universal international society." 12 For Bull, "An actual international society worldwide in its dimensions... emerged only as European states and the various independent political communities with which they were involved in a common international system came to perceive common interests in a structure of coexistence and co-operation and tacitly or 11 Ibid., p Hedley Bull, "The Emergence of a Universal International Society" in Bull & Watson, Op. Cit., p

27 explicitly to consent to common rules and institutions." 13 Again, this important insight reveals two reasons for the lack of transnational regional theorizing by international society scholars. First, any 'regional' basis to international society is effectively marginalized by Bull's focus on a worldwide or universal society, and to make his argument, Bull must claim that "Developments such as these could not have taken place except as the consequence of processes of cultural change within the countries concerned in which attitudes hostile to international norms based on equality and reciprocity were replaced by attitudes more favourable to them." 14 Second, in Bull's conception of a universal society, states are the only form of human community worth considering. He says that by the First World War, "the coming together of numerous and extremely diverse political entities to form a single international society presupposed that these entities had come to resemble one another at least to the extent that they were all, in some comparable sense, states." 15 This state-centric focus is similarly evident in Bull's The Anarchical Society, arguably the seminal work of the international society school. In his now classic comparison between a 'system' and a 'society' of states, Bull says that a "system of states (or international system) is formed when two or more states have sufficient contact between them, and have sufficient impact on one another's decisions, to cause them to behave-at least in some measure-as parts of a whole." 16 He chooses not to 13 Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977, p

28 focus on the different forms this 'whole' could take, a focus that would arguably lead to some consideration of transnational regional society. Instead, Bull chooses to focus on the international society of states and the role it plays in maintaining international order. "A society of states (or international society)," according to Bull, "exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, forms a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations to one another, and share in the workings of common institutions." 17 It is, in essence, this 'binding' that enables a modicum of peace and order to be established. Bull does assert that in a world of 'states but not a system,' "States might be linked with each other so as to form systems of states in particular regions," and that it "is of course possible to see a trend in contemporary world politics towards greater regionalism," but he does not really consider this option to be a viable path to world order. 18 Bull gives some plausibility to the emergence of a 'new mediaevalism' whereby the states-system could become undermined by regional integration, state disintegration, the restoration of private international violence, and transnational organizations. For Bull, "it is not fanciful to imagine... a modern and secular... system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalty," 19 and this concept of neo-medievalism has indeed been incorporated into subsequent theories Ibid., p Ibid., pp. 250, Ibid., p Robert Jackson and Mark Zacher have, for example, challenged the recent theoretic perspective that "political authority is migrating away from states towards a condition that is perhaps reminiscent of the medieval era: up to international institutions and down to local organizations and nongovernmental networks." See Robert H. Jackson & Mark W. Zacher, "Westphalian Liberalism 23

29 However, Bull views neo-medievalism in universalist and not regionalist terms, and suggests that order could only be maintained through "a structure of overlapping authorities and crisscrossing loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society, while at the same time avoiding the concentration of power inherent in a world government. " 21 Bull also recognizes the challenges that ecological degradation and, building on the work of Rajni Kothari, third world regional federations could have on the international society of states. Yet ultimately, Bull remains a staunch advocate of the state, and remains optimistic for international society; as such, he too chooses not to consider the possibility of transnational regional society as an important theoretic unit of analysis in world politics. In his recent book The Structure of International Society, Geoffrey Stern comes closest to a direct consideration of the nature of transnational society. His analysis of (neo)medievalism suggests an important distinction must be made between the feudal forms of decentralized authority and multiple identity of the past, and the world of multiple, overlapping identities and unbundled territory that is arguably emerging today. For Stern reminds us that in the medieval world, the protection of and 'good' life for the individual was made possible in return for their service and deference; in other words, one medieval 'system' was responsible for both order and welfare. But Stern then suggests that, in the modern world, the society of states is ultimately responsible for order and an individual's protection, while another form of society, perhaps transnational or regional, could be and the International Territorial Order." Unpublished manuscript, 1996, p Bull, The Anarchical Society, p