Abstract
This paper revisits Buzan’s book (From international to world society? English school theory and the social structure of globalization, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), in the light of both the seven papers in this special issue, and the English School literature on world society written since then. The paper focuses on two themes. First, it addresses the different meanings in the usage of ‘world society’. It distils these down into three forms: normative, political and integrated world society, and shows how these relate to, and extend, the earlier taxonomy of interhuman, transnational and interstate domains. Second, it pushes forward on the question of how we might understand the concept of primary institutions in relation to world society. I show how some, but not all, of the primary institutions of interstate society have deep roots in world society. I then propose that the key primary institution for normative world society is collective identity, and for political world society, advocacy.
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Notes
I am grateful to Ian Clark, Thomas Linsenmaier, John Pella, Laust Schouenborg and John Williams, for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
I am grateful to John Williams for this point.
Distinguishing non-state actors from states is not straightforward. Many non-state actors depend on the legal and political framework provided by states even if they are substantially autonomous as actors (e.g. Amnesty International). But some apparently non-state actors are closely tied to states by finance or ideology (e.g. peace groups in the Soviet Union).
Primary institutions originally evolve in some place and time. After that, they can be imposed upon, or adopted by, others, as was the case with sovereignty, nationalism and territoriality during the expansion of Western international society to global scale. I am grateful to Mutsumi Hirano for this point.
Under this logic, states are also a type of secondary institution, but are differentiated from non-state actors because of their claim to political primacy over both people and other forms of organization. For discussion, see Buzan (2004: 90–97, 118–128).
A precondition for this is that there has to be in place an epistemological infrastructure that makes normative theorizing possible. For collective identity to work as a primary institution, it is essential that the validity and political salience of ethics and associated normative projects for achieving ethically valid change are accepted as valid modes of intellectual activity and bases for political engagement. I am grateful to John Williams for this point.
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Buzan, B. Revisiting world society . Int Polit 55, 125–140 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0065-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0065-5