Domestic analogy in proposals for world order, 1814-1945: the transfer of legal and political principles from the domestic to the international sphere in thought on international law and relations HIDEMI SUGANAMI Thesis submitted for the Degree of Ph.D. The London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London 1985 2 ABSTRACT The ways in which legal and political principles obtaining within states can profitably be transferred to the relations of states are among the contentious issues in the study of international relations, and the term 'domestic analogy' is used to refer to the argument which supports such transfer. The 'domestic analogy' is analogical reasoning according to which the conditions of order between states are similar to those of order within them, and therefore those institutions which sustain order within states should be transferred to the international system. However, despite the apparent division among writers on international relations between those who favour this analogy and those who are critical of it, no clear analysis has so far been made as to precisely what types of proposal should be treated as exemplifying reliance on this analogy. The first aim of this thesis is to clarify the range and types of proposal this analogy entails. The thesis then examines the role the domestic analogy played in ideas about world order in the period between 1814 and 1945. Particular attention is paid to the influence of changing circumstances in the domestic and international spheres upon the manner and the extent of the use of this analogy. In addition to the ideas of major writers on international law and relations, the creation of the League of Nations and of the United Nations is also examined. The thesis then discusses the merits of the five main types of approach to world order which emerge from the preceding analysis. Each embodies a distinct attitude towards the domestic analogy. The thesis shows that there are weaknesses in the approaches based on the domestic analogy, but that ideas critical of this analogy are not entirely flawless, and explores further the conditions under which the more promising proposals may bear fruit. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Chapter I The Domestic Analogy Debate 20 Chapter II The Range and Types of the Domestic Analogy 40 Chapter III Some Nineteenth Century Examples 66 Chapter IV Contending Doctrines of the Hague Conferences Period 91 Chapter V The Impact of the Great War 116 Chapter VI The Effect of the Failure of the League on Attitudes towards the Domestic Analogy 137 Chapter VII The Domestic Analogy in the Establishment of the United Nations 165 Chapter VIII An Assessment of the Proposals: Part One 186 Chapter IX An Assessment of the Proposals: Part Two 221 Conclusion 250 Notes 264 Bibliography 336 Acknowledgements This thesis could not have been written without the encouragement and criticisms of my two successive supervisors, Professor Alan James and Mr. Michael Donelan; an enduring interest in the subject shared by Dr. John Vincent; and, above all else, without the understanding and unselfish support given to me by my family in Japan. Dr. Andrew Linklater and Mr. Christopher Brewin were generous in taking time to comment on my first draft, as was Dr. Vincent whose timely criticisms of my final draft enabled me to make necessary last-minute adjustments. Keele University gave me on three occasions a term's leave of absence which enabled me to continue my research. I am grateful to them all for having made it possible for me to initiate and continue my study, and at long last to present its outcome in the form_of this thesis. In the second and third years of my study as a research student at the London School of Economics I was fortunate enough to receive the Leverhulme Studentship and the Noel Buxton Studentship in International Relations. I am grateful to the trustees of the funds for their generous support. I would also like to thank Mrs. Ann Williams of the Education Department, Keele for having typed the whole manuscript with great speed and efficiency. 5 Introduction According to Hans Morgenthau, '/tJhe application of domestic legal experience to international law is really the main stock in trade of modern international thought') Charles Beitz made a related point when he remarked: 'Most writers in the modern tradition of political theory, and many contemporary students of international politics, have conceived of international relations on the analogy of the nobbesiani state of nature', and that 11)1erceptions of international relations have been more thoroughly influenced by the analogy of states and persons than by any other device.' 2 What these writers are pointing to is the prevalent influence upon international thought of what is in this thesis called the 'domestic analogy'. Hedley Bull has given a brief account of this analogy as follows: /It is/ the argument from the experience of individual men in domestic society to the experience of states, according to which the need of individual men to stand in awe of a common power in order to live in peace is a ground for holding that states must do the same. The conditions of an orderly social life, on this view, are the same among states as they are within them: they require that the institutions of domestic society be reproduced on a universal scale. 3 This analogy, however, has had its critics, Bull prominent among them. As will be indicated by a brief survey in Chapter I, the validity or otherwise of the domestic analogy has in fact been one of the central issues in the tradition of speculation about how best to organize the world. Nowadays, to be seen to be using the domestic analogy is not a very respectable thing among the professional writers on International Relations. This analogy is associated with 'all that was wrong' about the theory and practice of international relations before E.H. Carr wrote a well-known critique of the League-of-Nations approach to the problem of world order. 4 There is, moreover, something less than fully satisfactory about the use of analogy in what aspires, within the limits of possibility, to be a scientific pursuit. In addition, those who endeavoured to win for International Relations the status of an academic discipline saw in the modern states-system unique qualities which, in their judgement, could best be appreciated if the habit of thought cultivated for the understanding of domestic social phenomena could be discarded. 5 The unpopularity of the domestic analogy within the discipline of International Relations is particularly pronounced from about the late nineteen-thirties, although a tendency to regard inter-state relations as fully comprehensible only through the rejection of this analogy had existed among some political philosophers and legal theorists long before International Relations came to be treated as a special branch of academic enquiry. Against the apparent intellectual legitimacy of the belief in the defectiveness of the domestic analogy particularly among the academic specialists of International Relations, there lingers the notion that perhaps some form of domestic analogy is acceptable after all. More strongly, it is sometimes suggested that we cannot do away with the domestic analogy altogether since some concepts we use in theorizing about international relations must necessarily originate in our domestic social experience. As recently as in l982, Andrew Linklater stated that 'a progressive development of international relations necessitates the transference of understandings of social relations from their original domestic setting to the international arena.' And Moorhead Wright, in his review of Linklater's book, criticized him for a heavy reliance on the 'problematic analogy between domestic and international society. '6 Thus, if what may be called the 'domestic analogy debate' can be said to continue today, what is curious about this 'debate' is that no attempt has been made so far to clarify what precisely the 'domestic analogy' is. Thus, although a cursory survey tends to create the impression that the contributors to this debate are divided into those 'for' and 'against' this analogy, such a clear division cannot be presumed since what is to count as an instance of this analogy has not been clearly defined. Hedley Bull, as we noted above, has given a brief explanation of what this analogy is, but, as will be revealed in Chapter II, his definition is far from unambiguous. In Chapter II, therefore, an attempt is made to analyse the concept of domestic analogy. This is done by examining the range and types of ideas for world order which this analogy may encompass. Particular attention is paid to arguments which are close to, or easily mistaken for, the analogy. Chapters III - VII will then investigate in what ways the domestic analogy has been employed or rejected by thinkers on world order against the historically changing backgrounds in the domestic and international spheres. The following passage from Hans Morgenthau's Scientific Man versus Power Politics most succinctly accounts for the periodization in terms of which the materials are arranged in Chapters III - V: While domestic liberalism converted public opinion in the eighteenth century and conquered the political institution of the Western world during the nineteenth, it was not before the end of the Napoleonic Wars that important sectors of public opinion demanded the application of liberal principles to international affairs. And it was not before the turn of the century that the Hague Peace Conference made the first systematic attempt at establishing the reign of liberalism in the international field. Yet only the end of the first World War saw, in the League of Nations, the triumph of liberalism on the international scene.