english school

The English School maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despite the condition of anarchy .The English school stands for the conviction that ideas, rather than simply material capabilities, shape the conduct of international politics, and therefore deserve analysis and critique. The English School simplifies the world of IR by describing it in terms of one or more international societies. One such society might be associated with the practice of diplomatic immunity, which states around the world generally accept as a rule of their international relationships. The main goal of the English School, as can be seen, is about constraining power of rules and norms in a fruitful direction for an interpretive methodology.
The main point of focus in the English School, ‘the international society’ in Bull’s words, comes into being 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 with one another, and share in the working of common institutions’. The first key element of it is the unique character of the membership which is ‘confined to member states which relies upon mutual recognition’. Second element, he further suggests, is the acceptance of diplomatic and foreign policy elite as the real agents behind the making of international society. Last element, in this respect, is the acknowledgement of the International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) as influential members of the international network. To Bull, a pluralist international society is a practical institutional adaptation to human diversity as it provides ‘a structure of coexistence based on the mutual recognition of the states as independent and legally equal members of the society’. A solidarist international society, as a critique of the former and argued by the ones who simply do not believe in a pluralist form of