Natural Law and the Theory of International Society: Otto von Gierke and the Three Traditions of International Theory
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| DOI | 10.3366/jipt.2012.0025 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Author | Ben Holland |
| Subject Matter | Article |
NATURAL LAW AND THE THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL
SOCIETY: OTTO VON GIERKE AND THE THREE
TRADITIONS OF INTERNATIONAL THEORY
BEN HOLLAND
Abstract: Hedley Bull, in the passage in The Anarchical Society which
introduces the ‘three competing traditions of thought’ associated with the
articulation of the modern states-system, cited Otto von Gierke as the originator
of this influential way of organising international theory. This article examines
Gierke’s work in order to assess the extent of the influence on the English
School that can be ascribed to him. It argues that in fact Gierke’s version
of the three traditions bears little resemblance to that of Bull, and that by
‘international society’ Gierke was referring to confederal structures of political
power. Through an analysis of a significant strand of American revolutionary
thought, the paper seeks to demonstrate the potential that further attention to the
Gierkean understanding of international society could have for advancing the
English School’s research programme and building on its achievements.
Keywords: American Revolution, English School, Hedley Bull, Hugo Grotius,
international society, Otto von Gierke
Introduction
The English School in International Relations is best known for a particular
empirical proposition and a cognate theoretical proposition. The empirical
proposition is that there exists an international society. The theoretical
proposition asserts that ‘international society’ also marks a form of disciplined
speculation on the international realm, denoting a middle way between the poles
of realism and idealism. The English School’s chef d’oeuvre, Hedley Bull’s The
Anarchical Society (1977), discussed ‘three competing traditions of thought’
that had grown up with the ‘modern states-system’: ‘the Hobbesian or realist
tradition, which views international politics as a state of war; the Kantian or
Journal of International Political Theory, 8(1–2) 2012, 48–73
DOI: 10.3366/jipt.2012.0025
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
www.eupjournals.com/jipt
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Natural Law and the Theory of International Society
universalist tradition, which sees at work in international politics a potential
community of mankind; and the Grotian or internationalist tradition, which
views international politics as taking place within an international society’ (Bull
1977: 24). Bull claimed that these traditions each arose in response to the decline
of the political institutions associated with the Roman Catholic Church:
In the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the universal political
organisation of WesternChristendom was still in process of disintegration, and modern
states in process of articulation, the three patterns of thought purporting to describe
the new international politics, and to prescribe the conduct of states within it, first
took shape. On the one hand, thinkers like Machiavelli, Bacon and Hobbes saw the
emerging states as confronting one another in the social and moral vacuum left by
the receding respublica Christiana. On the other hand Papal and Imperialist writers
fought a rearguard action on behalf of the ideas of the universal authority of Pope
and Emperor. As against these alternatives there was asserted by a third group of
thinkers, relying upon the tradition of natural law, the possibility that the princes now
making themselves supreme over local rivals and independent of outside authorities
were nevertheless bound by common interests and rules. (Bull 1977: 27–8)
This third tradition conceived of an ‘international society’. It is associated with
‘Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili, Grotius, Pufendorf’.
Bull substantiated this argument with a long quotation drawn from Otto von
Gierke’s Natural Law and the Theory of Society (1934). For all the considerable
interest that present day English School writers take in the intellectual history of
their approach (e.g. Dunne 1998; Vigezzi 2005; Hall 2006), it is remarkable
that little attention has been paid to the Gierkean provenance of their three
traditions.1This article offers an exposition of Gierke’s work and the place of
the three traditions within it. Bull’s interpretation of Gierke’s argument, I argue,
badly misreads Natural Law and the Theory of Society. When Gierke wrote
about Grotius and Pufendorf on ‘international society’, he was discussing their
writings on the composite polity, or an alliance of formally independent states
each having nonetheless granted some authority to some superintending power
which directs their policy and activity on certain matters of common interest.
The paper moves on to consider how the English School could put Gierke’s
notion of an international society to good use in its own historical research
programme. I show how the notion of the composite polity was central to a legal
discourse about the proper location of sovereignty in the run-up to the American
Revolution, and thereby to the first act in the political expansion of international
society beyond the Old World.
Gierke and the Three Traditions
Otto von Gierke was a German jurist, intellectual historian, and indeed a philoso-
pher in his own right. His major work, Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht
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