The English school of international relations: evidence and evaluation

Abstract

In January 1981, an article by Professor Roy E. Jones, entitled The English school of international relations: a case for closure', appeared in this Review.1 Immediately after its publications the late Professor Northedge asked a seminar of research students at the London School of Economics for their views on the article. To his. obvious chagrin, no one, including myself, responded. On several occasions during the next years Professor Northedge drew attention to the challenge laid down by Professor Jones. Did this persistent questioning indicate a concern that Professor Jones should be answered—and, in which case, why did he not take this task upon himself? If he had, and if, as has been suggested, Professor Northedge believed that there was an ‘English school’, but that he was not part of it, then he would have had to show both that the gap between himself and the rest of the ‘school’ was greater than the differences between other members, and, at the same time, that all the scholars under review, himself included, belonged to a common discipline. This analysis would go beyond description; it would require not only a clear demarcation of the several different ways in which his colleagues had understood international politics, but also an attempt to distinguish between ‘school’ and ‘discipline’ and their relationship to the field of International Relations. Such an exercise would be philosophical in nature, and Professor Northedge's well-known empiricism would not, I submit, have been helpful. To demonstrate, as this paper attempts to do, that the scholars in question can be characterized by their differing philosophical approaches would refute Professor Jones' major thesis that there is an English school of international relations. It also seriously undermines his substantive criticisms, for obviously the non-existence of the ‘English school’ makes the question of its wrong-headedness irrelevant.

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