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Hedley Bull; Columbia University Press, New Jersey, 2002, 329pp.; ISBN: 0-231-12762-6 / 12763-4.
The third edition of The Anarchical Society marks the 25th anniversary of its publication. Bull's central theme is the problem of achieving order in a system of sovereign nation-states. To a contemporary political theory audience, this topic might seem more relevant to the world of the 19th century than to that of the 21st century. Since the first edition was published, the study of international relations has been systematically exposed to normative concerns. This has opened up an important place for ethical debate that has, to an extent, displaced Bull's focus on the problem of achieving international order. Nevertheless, a weakness of the wave of normative literature, even in its communitarian guise, is that it has often tended to lack a sophisticated sociological analysis of the states system that is able to bridge the divide between of theory and practice. The publication of the third edition of Bull's Anarchical Society should be taken as an invitation to political theorists interested in international relations to fill this gap in their emerging research agenda.
The Anarchical Society examines the nature and workings of the modern states system. This system is anarchic in the sense that it lacks an over-arching framework to enforce law. Nevertheless, Bull argues that through their interaction states form an 'international society' reflecting common norms and rules, and share an interest in maintaining these institutions. The 'institutions' Bull identifies as shaping international anarchy are the very limited ones of the balance of power, war, diplomacy, sovereignty and the special rights and responsibilities of the great powers. Indeed, these institutions are so minimal that to some they constitute a thin veil for the operation of realpolitik. Yet Bull identifies the ways in which they routinely introduce a higher element of regularity into international affairs than might be expected in a Hobbesian state of nature. Bull's world is a pluralist one in which states differ over the values that underpin their internal political constitution. Nevertheless, all states can share in the order that an international society generates.
This framework has presented an anathema to many approaching international relations from a political theory perspective. On one reading, The Anarchical Society suggests that...