‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’: Rethinking order and justice in international society
| Author | Richard Shapcott |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119866083 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119866083
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2019, Vol. 21(4) 633 –649
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148119866083
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‘If we want things to stay as
they are, things will have to
change’: Rethinking order and
justice in international society
Richard Shapcott
Abstract
This article argues that conceptualising the ethical/moral possibilities of international society can
be enhanced by utilising the distinction between positive and negative duties rather than order
versus justice. The main argument of the article targets the traditional pluralist account and claims
that within this account far greater moves towards justice are possible, which can be seen through
the lens of order versus justice. More specifically, it argues that a pluralist international society
need not be indifferent to global injustices such as poverty, if the range of negative duties is
expanded.
Keywords
cosmopolitanism, English school, Hedley Bull, international society, negative duties, order versus
justice, pluralism
Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi
The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Introduction
Since Hedley Bull’s time, English School (ES) thinkers have wrestled with the relation-
ship between order and justice in the society of states. The dominant ES normative frame-
work revolves around pluralist and solidarist versions of international society with
pluralism favouring order and solidarism advancing the case for justice and human rights.
School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Corresponding author:
Richard Shapcott, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland, Brisbane,
QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: r.shapcott@uq.edu.au
866083BPI0010.1177/1369148119866083The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsShapcott
research-article2019
Original Article
634 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 21(4)
In Bull’s seminal works, these two values seem to be in opposition forming two ends of a
binary in which justice could only be pursued at the expense of order. However, in his last
major statement about IS, Bull addressed the possibility of reform and argued that inter-
national society should give some ground to the case for justice to prevent greater threats
to order arising. While recent ES scholarship has sought to unpack this binary and portray
a spectrum of positions with different mixes of both order and justice, and pluralism and
solidarism (Bain, 2007; Buzan, 2004, 2015; Wheeler, 2000), pluralist thinkers, such as
Robert Jackson (2000), have been more conservative than Bull and less willing to adapt
their normative vision, continuing to present justice as a threat to international order. This
article argues that contemporary pluralism needs to be reminded of Bull’s lesson in the
Hagey lectures to investigate ways in which international society can better accommodate
demands for justice. In particular, it argues that ES thinking in general can benefit by
employing the distinction between positive and negative duties when addressing norma-
tive concerns. The case is made that if the ES reconceptualises its analysis in terms of
positive and negative duties, both of which are duties of justice, then there is no tension
between order and justice.
In order to demonstrate this, the article further employs Thomas Pogge’s (2002a)
account of global poverty to argue that international society can fulfil cosmopolitan nega-
tive duties of justice by ceasing to harm the global poor while remaining true to pluralist
concerns with order and non-intervention. In this context, the article takes up Bull’s
reformist insight and argues that such cosmopolitan reforms will not necessarily under-
mine a state-based international order and may actually contribute to its maintenance.
The article argues that, on one hand, traditional pluralism is challenged by empirical
changes in the relations between states and so its normative vision stands in need of revi-
sion, while, on the other, it acknowledges recent scholarship suggesting the Solidarist push
of the 1990s and 2000s has perhaps run its course and that international society is again
entering a phase characterised by the rise of ‘pluralist’ states such as China and Russia and
arguably even the United States (see Dunne and Devetak, 2017). If this is the case and this
shift implies a narrowing of the opportunities to pursue the agenda of justice in interna-
tional forums, then it is worth investigating ways in which the concern for justice may be
made consistent with pluralist values in a cosmopolitan pluralism. Overall, the emphasis
of the argument is conceptual and normative rather than empirical and explanatory. I argue
that order and justice can be conceptually reconciled if the institutions of international
society recognise negative duties to refrain from harming the world’s poor.
Order and justice
Bull’s conclusion in the Hagey lectures was similar to the conclusion drawn reluctantly by
Don Fabrizio, the aristocratic patriarch of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s great conservative
novel The Leopard, that reform was necessary for the old order to survive. In that novel,
set in Sicily during and after the Risorgimento, when faced with the prospect of marrying
off his favoured nephew to a member of the nouveau riche, the prince reluctantly accepts
his nephew’s plea that ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’
and consents to the marriage. Bull, like Prince Fabrizio, lived through a time of great
change in which the older order seemed to be under threat from newly emergent social
forces and political movements. Like Fabrizio, Bull was a man of learning and enlighten-
ment who was nonetheless sceptical of grand talk of progress, radical change and any idea
of improving or controlling human nature (Bull, 1966, 1972). Bull experienced the same
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