Order in International Politics

Abstract

Abstract The international anarchy, the coexistence of independent political communities, if not in a state of nature then certainly in the absence of a common government, Hedley Bull took to be the central fact of international life and the starting-point for theorizing about it.1 Then the central theoretical task was to decide how it was that order could obtain in this anarchy: what was order, how was it maintained in international politics; and was order in world politics as a whole best sustained by the socie of sovereign states or by some other political arrangement? It is possible to see in the recurrence of these questions in Hedley Bull’s work the remarkable unity and coherence which Stanley Hoffmann draws our attention to in his chapter, so that matters as diverse as the objectives of arms control, the sophistication of Australian foreign policy, the superpower balance, reform in South Africa, the relaunch of Europe, and the rise of the Third World, can all be interpreted from the standpoint of the maintenance of international order.

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