Rebooting Global International Society

This book asks if it is time to “reboot” the fundamental institutions of global international society. The volume revisits Hedley Bull’s seminal contribution The Anarchical Society by exploring the interconnected nature of change, contestation and resilience for maintaining order in today’s uncertain and complex environment. The volume adds to Bull’s theorizing by recognizing that order demands change, that contestation should be welcomed, and that resilience is anchored in local and agent-led forms of ordering. The contributors to Part One of the book focus on theoretical and conceptual issues related to order in the global international society, whilst the contributors to Part Two of the book focus on the primary institutions as listed by Hedley Bull with the addition of a chapter on the market adding a distinctive commentary on new and important dynamics of change, contestation and resilience of the existing institutions.

“This is an ambitious volume of essays that addresses how change is enabled and produced by the institutions of global international society. In their quest, contributors intelligently blend classical and new English School writings with constructivist insights. The result is a thoroughly engaging and innovative book that is likely to stimulate a new wave of theorizing change in the global order.” (Tim Dunne, Provost at the University of Surrey, UK, and Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland, Australia)

“One of Hedley Bull’s many achievements was to harness the intellectual resources of the sociological concept of fundamental institutions to give, in his day, a superior account of international order. Today, Flockhart, Paikin and their collaborators avail themselves of those same resources to revisit order in contemporary global international society, and the burning questions of the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of change in this society. It is a rich contributionto the International Relations discipline’s attempt to understand order.” (Laust Schouenborg, Associate Professor of International Politics, Roskilde University, Denmark)

“This is an interesting book, full of thought-provoking questions about change and adaptation in world order. It brings together traditional English School thinking about international society with alternative perspectives that enrich our thinking about global international society, and whether it needs ‘rebooting’, specifically in order to become less Eurocentric and more just. With their diverse line-up of contributors, Flockhart and Paikin manage to shine light from several angles on the idea of an evolving and adapting global international society. Using the key themes of change, contestation, and resilience, they combine traditional thinking about international society’s institutions with a broader view of the mechanisms of adaptation in international order. The result is an inspiring and fascinating read.” (Charlotta Friedner Parrat, Assistant professor, Swedish Defence University, Sweden)

Trine Flockhart is Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and Co-Director of the Center for War Studies at SDU. She is Chair of Business and Social Science at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study and series editor for the Palgrave series, Governance, Security and Development. Her research focuses on international order and transformational change, constructivism, ontological security, NATO, European Security, the liberal international order (and its crisis), transatlantic relations and multi-order governance. She is currently working on a monograph on the transformation towards a multi-order world.

Zachary Paikin is Researcher in the EU Foreign Policy unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and a Non-Resident Research Fellow with the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy (IPD) in Toronto. He is also a member of the Network for Strategic Analysis, funded by the Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS) programme of the Department of National Defence of Canada. His research interests centre on English School theory, international order, great power relations, Euro-Atlantic security, Russian foreign policy and Canadian foreign policy. His recent publications include ‘Through thick and thin: Russia, China and the future of Eurasian International Society’, International Politics 58(3) 2021 and ‘Great power rivalry and the weakening of collective hegemony: revisiting the relationship between international society and international order’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34(1) 2021. Paikin holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent.