Great Power Management in International Society
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Shunji Cui and Barry Buzan Great power management in international society Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Original citation: Cui, Shunji and Buzan, Barry (2016) Great power management in international society. The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 9 (2). pp. 181-210. ISSN 1750-8916 DOI: 10.1093/cjip/pow005 © 2016 The Authors This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67191/ Available in LSE Research Online: July 2016 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. 1 The Evolution of Great Power Management in International Society Shunji Cui and Barry Buzan1 First draft [14,469 words article text and 2,624 references] Shunji Cui is an Associate Professor of International Politics and Deputy Director in the Department of Political Science, School of Public Affairs at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. She was awarded a British Academy Visiting Fellowship in 2010 at LSE, UK; and a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence in 2012-13 and taught at Marian University, USA. Her research has dealt with international relations and non-traditional security cooperation with reference to China-Japan and East Asian relations. Her publications include: ‘Conflict Transformation: East China Sea Dispute and Lessons from the Ecuador-Peru Border Dispute,’ Asian Perspective (2014); ‘Human Development and Human Dignity: Rethinking the Concept of Human Security’, Journal of International Security Studies (2014, in Chinese); ‘Beyond History: Non-Traditional Security Cooperation and The Construction of Northeast Asian International Society,’ Journal of Contemporary China (2013); ‘Problems of Nationalism and Historical Memory in China’s Relations with Japan,’ Journal of Historical Sociology (2012); ‘(De)Securitising Frontier Security in China: Beyond the Positive and Negative Debate’, Cooperation and Conflict (2011, with Jia Li). Barry Buzan is Professor Emeritus at the LSE, and a Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS. Previously, he was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the LSE. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy, and in the late 1990s he began a project to reconvene the English School. His books relevant to the English School include: International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (2000, with Richard Little); From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (2004); The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First Century (2004); International Society and the Middle East: English School Theory at the Regional Level (2009, co-edited with Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez); International Society and the Contest Over ‘East Asia’ (2014, co-edited with Yongjin Zhang); An Introduction to the English School of 1 We would like to thank Ian Clark, Evelyn Goh, Jorge Lasmar, Richard Little, two anonymous reviewers for, and the editors of, CJIP for comments on earlier drafts of this article. 2 International Relations: The Societal Approach (2014); and The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations (2015, with George Lawson). Abstract This paper is a contribution to the English School’s theory of primary institutions. It offers a historical and structural enquiry into the meaning of great power management (GPM) as a primary institution of international society as it has evolved since the 18th century. We seek to uncover the driving forces that shape this primary institution, and how they are working to redefine its legitimacy in the 21st century. We are particularly interested in uncovering whether and how particular conditions in international systems/societies facilitate or obstruct the operation of GPM. The paper examines how system structures, both material and ideational, have set different conditions for GPM. Using the evolution from traditional to non-traditional security as a template, it sets out the main functions that have evolved for GPM. It shows how the institution has quite different meanings and roles at different times, and how they play into the legitimacy that GPM requires. It considers how GPM works at both regional and global levels, and concludes by both looking ahead at the prospects for GPM, and opening a discussion on how to relate GPM to global governance. 3 1. Introduction The idea of great power management (GPM) stands prominently within the English school approach to IR. It is one of the five classical primary institutions (PIs) of international society identified by Bull, the other four being war, diplomacy, international law and the balance of power.2 In Bull’s formulation, great powers not only assume themselves, but are also recognised by others, to have managerial rights and responsibilities for international order. This idea is also present in hegemonic stability theory, and up to a point in global governance. The key to great power management as an institution of international society is that the powers concerned attract legitimacy to support their unequal status as leaders by accepting special responsibilities as well as claiming special rights.3 They do this both by displaying good manners and by efficiently providing public goods, though in theory and in practice, GPM norms can be driven by calculation or coercion. Holsti shows how the institution of GPM emerged along with the balance of power during the 18th and 19th centuries as replacements for a declining dynastic principle.4 Recently, especially with the rise of China, India and other non-Western powers, there has been growing interest in great powers and their roles and responsibilities in international society.5 There has 2 Although the discussion of classical primary institutions focuses mainly on the five that Bull discusses at length, he also notes that ‘it is states themselves that are the principal institutions of international society’. This means that sovereignty and territoriality, which are the defining principles for modern states, should be added to the other five. A good case can be made for adding nationalism, which since the 19th century has become a key constitutive principle for the modern state. See, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study in World Politics (London: Macmillan Press, 1977), p. 71; James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). For discussion of primary institutions see Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (Cambridge: Polity, 2014). 3 Ian Clark, ‘Towards an English School Theory of Hegemony’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2009), pp. 207-20; Mlada Bukovansky, Ian Clark, Robyn Eckersley, Richard Price, Christian Reus-Smit and Nicholas J. Wheeler, Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 26-27. 4 Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: armed conflicts and international order 1648-1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 71-82, 114-37. 5 Jamie Gaskarth, ed., China, India and the Future of International Society (London: 4 been a particular focus on China, which is pressured from without to become a more responsible great power, and from within to balance the domestic political needs of the Chinese Communist Party with the necessity to engage in a Western-defined global economic order.6 More broadly, there has been interest in how rising powers gain the ‘legitimate’ great power status in ‘recognition games’,7 and some discussions on the legitimacy of power.8 But with a few exceptions there has been surprisingly little attention to the meaning of GPM itself as a primary institution.9 Our study makes a broader historical and structural enquiry into the meaning of GPM as it has evolved since the 18th century, seeking to uncover the driving forces that shape this primary institution, and how they are working to redefine its legitimacy in the 21st century. We are particularly interested in uncovering whether and how particular conditions in international systems/societies facilitate or obstruct the operation of GPM. In the classical formulation, GPM is closely related to another of the classical primary institutions, balance of power (BoP),10 which some writers take to be the fundamental enabling condition for international society.11 A BoP is seen as necessary to preserve a system of sovereign states from both endless war, and domination by some form of universal empire. Great powers are a likely, though not absolutely inevitable, consequence of an anarchic system of states (likely Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). 6 Catherine Jones, ‘Constructing great powers: China’s status in a socially constructed plurality’, International Politics, Vol. 51, No. 5 (2014), pp. 597-618.