Agents versus structures in English School theory: Is co-constitution the answer?
| Author | Cornelia Navari |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219899429 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219899429
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(2) 249 –267
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088219899429
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Agents versus structures
in English School theory: Is
co-constitution the answer?
Cornelia Navari
The University of Buckingham, UK
Abstract
While generally accepted as an interpretive theory, Bull’s emblematic text demonstrates
strong structural characteristics. Subsequent attributions move between the interpretive
or ‘reflexive’ and the institutional and structural. Recently, however, the idea has come
forward that English School theory is, and maybe have been from the beginning, a form of
structuration theory, a theory in which structures are not quite the hard determinants
generally understood in structural theories, and interpreting agents are not quite so
free to interpret structures in any tradition that seems appropriate to a matter at hand.
Keywords
Co-constitution, English School, international society, interpretivism, structuralism
While it is quite possible to read English School (ES) theory as an interpretive exercise,
it is not the only reading available, particularly if we consider The Anarchical Society
(TAS) as its emblematic text. When TAS was ‘received’ in America, it was received as a
structural, not as an interpretive argument (see Morse’s, 1977, review in Foreign Affairs).
Bull’s taxonomy of international system, international society and world society, with
their ‘systemic effects’, is generally presented as the heart of the ES theory, and it is
generally classed as system-level in the European theoretical glosses (see, for example,
Lechner, 2017). Barry Buzan in his 1993 article formally blessed the structural approach,
as opposed to Suganami’s case for Verstehen (see below), by dividing the ES theoretic
corpus into Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft traditions, deriving a gemeinschaft interpre-
tivism from the approach of Martin Wight and a gesellschaft structuralism from the leg-
acy of Hedley Bull. His purpose was to ‘improve’ American structural realism via an
injection of a European sociological understanding of structures, and American regime
Corresponding author:
Cornelia Navari, The University of Buckingham, Hunter Street, Buckingham MK18 1EG, UK.
Email: cornelia.navari@buckingham.ac.uk
899429IPT0010.1177/1755088219899429Journal of International Political TheoryNavari
research-article2020
Article
250 Journal of International Political Theory 16(2)
theory via an understanding of the interpretivist nature of regimes, but the effect was to
ensconce two traditions of ES theorising, allowing those working within the ES tradition
to variously identify.
Opinion by the main ES theorists aside, there are other reasons for doubting that one
can simply choose interpretivism not least the central proposition of the ES theory – that
anarchy is the defining characteristic of the international order, and moreover, that it has
consequences and sets limits to aspirations. In other words, anarchy as understood by
Bull, Manning, the British Committee (BC) and its heirs is a structural concept. One can
of course choose to understand anarchy in an interpretive fashion, as a social construct
(e.g. Donnelly, 2015), but that does not in the least challenge a central insight of the ES,
that anarchy causes things to be a certain way and not another, not to mention the ‘social
fact’ that state sovereignty is an embedded social institution with real-world conse-
quences. To ignore or deny this simply eviscerates the ES theory and turns it into a vari-
ant of Mark Bevir’s radical anti-structuralism.
If one cannot simply choose interpretivism, does that mean that one is stuck with the
irresolvable tensions of a theory with different and contradictory historical roots? There
has been a strong temptation to do just that – to welcome the tensions in the theory as
somehow analytically creative (Buzan, 2014: 81; Zhang, 2016: 104). Such an inclination
has, however, left ES theory conceptually un-rooted. The other way is to interrogate
more closely what the ‘classical school’ of ES theorists might have meant by ‘structures’
(a word they little used), what they meant by ‘institutions’ and how they understood
agency. Recently, the idea has come forward that ES theory is, and maybe have been
from the beginning, a form of structuration theory, a theory in which structures are not
quite the hard determinants generally understood in structural theories, and interpreting
agents are not quite so free to interpret structures in any tradition that seems appropriate
to a matter at hand.
This interrogation will proceed in three parts. First, I will begin with interpretivism and
examine how various ES theorists have actually understood interpretivism. Different ES
theorists have had different ideas of what constituted interpretation and some have used
the term or terms associated with an interpretivist approach to signal nothing more than an
anti-positivist agenda. Second, I will take on the more strenuous task of understanding
what the classical theorists might have meant by structures or as they termed them ‘insti-
tutions’. The classical texts are tantalisingly illusive concerning this central concept; for
decades, it remained largely unexamined, and the question of the ontology of ‘institutions’
almost deliberately ignored. The third part will look more closely at the general under-
standing of institutions as represented in the empirical literature, to see if it provides a
clearer guide. A final section will explain co-constitution and why the ES theory might be
best understood as a theory in which agents and structures co-constitute.
The interpretivist side
The interpretivist possibilities have been explored by Hall and Bevir above. In the
Introduction, they call attention to the first clarion call of British international relations
(IR) against American ‘scientism’. This was Bull’s (1966) ‘International Theory: The
Case for a Classical Approach’, written after a semester in America absorbing the new
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