The English school and the classical approach: Between modernism and interpretivism
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088219898883 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219898883
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(2) 153 –170
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088219898883
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The English school and
the classical approach:
Between modernism
and interpretivism
Mark Bevir
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Ian Hall
Griffith University, Australia
Abstract
This article analyses the evolution of the English school’s approach to international
relations from the work of the early British Committee in the late 1950s and early
1960s to its revival in the 1990s and afterwards. It argues that the school’s so-called
‘classical approach’ was shaped by the crisis of developmental historicism brought on
by the First World War and by the reactions of historians like Herbert Butterfield
and Martin Wight to the rise of modernist social science in the twentieth century.
It characterises the classical approach, as advanced by Hedley Bull, as a form of
‘reluctant modernism’ with underlying interpretivist commitments and unresolved
tensions with modernist approaches. It argues that to resolve some of the confusion
concerning its preferred approach to the study of international relations, the English
school should return to the interpretivist commitments of its early thinkers.
Keywords
Classical approach, English school of international relations, historicism, international
relations theory, interpretive theory, interpretivism
The English school of international relations (IR) has long been criticised for an apparent
lack of clarity about its preferred approach to researching the field (see, for example,
Copeland, 2003 or Finnemore, 2001). Indeed, some have gone so far as to suggest that the
Corresponding author:
Ian Hall, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia.
Email: i.hall@griffith.edu.au
898883IPT0010.1177/1755088219898883Journal of International Political TheoryBevir and Hall
research-article2020
Article
154 Journal of International Political Theory 16(2)
school is characterised by ‘methodological naïveté’ (Holsti, 2009: 126). In response, some
in the English school argue that an absence of commitments to particular philosophical
and methodological positions is actually an advantage, because it supposedly provides its
adherents more analytical flexibility than its competitors (see, for example, Little, 2000).
Others have responded by seeking to clarify a set of methods they think appropriate for
the school (see especially Navari, 2009; cf. Murray, 2013). Rightly, in our view, they con-
tend that the school stands for more than just a concept or set of concepts, as Little (2000)
or Buzan (2014) suggest, and that it represents a distinctive way of studying IR.
We argue, however, that not enough has yet been done to lay out the philosophical
commitments of the school and its key figures, despite the pioneering work of Suganami
(1983), Dunne (1998) and others. This work is necessary, we think, both because the
early school did stand for a particular, so-called ‘classical approach’ distinct from other
contemporary schools of thought, and because the interpretivism of some of its members
holds out the possibility of developing new and valuable research agendas in contempo-
rary IR. This article therefore seeks to explain the foundations of the English school’s
so-called ‘classical approach’ (Bull, 1966) and to make the case for re-grounding the
contemporary school in a thoroughgoing interpretivism. It revisits the work of the early
school, especially the work of Herbert Butterfield, Martin Wight and Hedley Bull. To
better grasp their commitments, it discusses their work in the wider context of intellec-
tual debates about the study of history and politics that arose after the end of the First
World War. In particular, it situates it in the crisis of what we call ‘developmental histori-
cism’ and the emergence of the modernist social sciences. The article then traces how the
classical approach emerged as a response to those two pressures and why it took the form
that it did, as a kind of halfway house between interpretivism and modernism.1
Throughout, we highlight the early English school’s commitments to interpretivist
positions: to historicism and historical explanation; to the investigation of beliefs, theo-
ries, ideas and ethical principles, and their relationship to social institutions, norms and
rules; and to explaining social behaviour by reference to the meanings that actions have
for socially situated agents.2 We recognise, of course, that parts of the early English
school – and indeed the revived school, from the mid-1990s onwards – are committed to
other approaches borrowed from what we call the ‘modernist social sciences’. But we
argue that this borrowing – which over time produced what we call a kind of ‘reluctant
modernism’3 – undermines the claim that the ‘classical approach’ offers a distinctive and
superior way of researching IR, fuelling the charge that the school is confused and naive.
In sum, we suggest that a thoroughgoing interpretivism offers both a better way of doing
social science and a better foundation for the English school.
The origins of the classical approach
Like the wider field of IR in Britain, the English school was established by scholars from
different disciplines, including law, philosophy and theology. Historians, however, pre-
dominated (Dunne, 1999; Hall, 2012, 2019). Their disciplinary background and beliefs
shaped the evolution of the field, the school and the classical approach. But so too did
developments within history and within the social sciences in the inter-war and post-war
years to which they had to respond, especially the collapse of ‘developmental
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