Systems of states

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONMartin Wight and the study of international relationsThe papers collected in this volume, all of which relate to the theme of systems of states, were written by Martin Wight in the last eight years of his life for meetings of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics. Apart from the paper on 'International Legitimacy', which appeared in slighdy different form in the May 1972 issue of International Relations, and is reprinted here by kind permission of the editor, they have not previously been published.The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics has met regularly since 1958 with the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation. At the time of his death in July 1972 Martin Wight was Convenor of the Committee, having succeeded Sir Herbert Butterfield in this role after the latter's retirement in 1967 from the Mastership of Peterhouse. When these papers were written the other members of the Committee were Sir Herbert Butterfield, Adam Watson, the late Geoffrey Hudson, the late Donald Mac- Lachlan, Michael Howard, Coral Bell, Desmond Williams, Donald MacKinnon, Robert Wade-Gery, Maurice Keens-Soper and the editor of this volume. While they have no common view of the Theory of International Politics, their general approach to it is illustrated in Diplomatic Investigations, a sample of the papers written for the Committee, edited by Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, and published by Allen and Unwin in 1966. As the editors of that volume note in their Introduction, the Committee - by contrast with students of the Theory of International Politics in the United States of America - 'have probably been more concerned with the historical than the contemporary, with the normative than the scientific, with the philosophical than the methodological, with principles than policy'. The present papers represent Martin Wight's contribution to a collective exploration, by members of the Committee, of the concept of states-systems, the workings of the modern or Western states-system and of other historical states-systems. n n n

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