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Since its reorganization in the early 1990s, the English School of international relations has emerged as a popular theoretical lens through which to examine global events. Those that use the international society approach promote it as a middle-way of theorizing due to its supposed ability to incorporate features from both systemic and domestic perspectives. A noticeable trend in the School since the end of the Cold War has been its interest with domestic and critical theory concerns, often focusing on individual, discursive or emancipatory issues. As a result, the English School has been able to accommodate the growing trends in international theory more generally, with the decline of problem-solving theory and the rise of critical projects. While the School and its practitioners may, for the most part, see value in discussing how domestic or critical variables impact the society of states, such examinations tend to neglect or overlook the systemic level of analysis. This project takes exception to the decline of the English Schools problem-solving foundations and argues that the School must place more emphasis on the systemic level of analysis if it hopes to be relevant in international theory debates. To this end, the criticisms of American scholars regarding the Schools lack of methodological rigour and explanatory power are addressed by demonstrating the added value to the international society approach if the constraints of the international system are included in theoretical explanations. In order to demonstrate how the systemic level alters English School analyses, two areas of popular examination within the School are explored, namely the role of international institutions and the debate over humanitarian intervention. Ultimately, the contention of this work is that English School scholars can greatly benefit from including systems-level thinking because of what it adds to the Schools explanatory power and also its ability to provide methodological rigour. In doing so, it is more likely the English School can penetrate the mainstream of international theory in the future.

The growth and prevalence of the private military industry has led many to conclude that the state has outsourced one of its core functions: public security. As a global non-state actor, PMSCs pose a risk to state sovereignty by undermining the democratic legitimacy of armed forces and challenging the states international monopoly over force. This study, using the tripartite model in English school theory, refutes this commonly held belief by examining the regulatory methods that have brought PMSCs squarely under state control. This study organizes regulatory efforts in a three level concept of national, international and self-regulatory methods, and based on the increased national regulatory methods, mixed with international norms and weak self-regulation, concludes that states maintain their primacy over violence in world politics.

This explanatory single-case study explains why China shifted its policy fromproliferation of nuclear weapons and technology, to nonproliferation. In doing so,English School (ES) theory is used in order to explain this shift – stressing theimportance of both the international system as well as the international society. Tostreamline the methodological inconsistencies of the ES tradition, a constructivistmethodology is applied. The study concludes that China’s perception of theinternational system and society is the most important feature when formulatingforeign policy and complying with the nonproliferation regime. From applying astreamlined constructivist view of ES theory the result is the discovery of China’snational rationale, which serves as a benchmark for its foreign policy. China isprimarily driven by national interest and while adhering to international norms,rules, and structures – it will still see domestic stability and defending itssovereignty as its main priorities.

The overall topic of this thesis is the English School understanding of international order, which I approach specifically by analysing the English School idea of international institutions and their change. The purpose is to develop the theory in a meta-theoretically conscious and coherent way. The three essays in this volume are independent in relation to each other, yet in some ways cumulative. Essays I and II aim to address primarily the question of how to conceptualise the current international order of multilateralism and international organisations. Essay I uses the empirical issue of UN reform to formulate one English School conceptualisation of international order, building specifically on the School’s central theme of international institutions. Essay II theoretically develops the tools of the English School for capturing how international institutions, according to English School theory the fundaments of international order, might change. Essay III approaches the meta-theoretical question of how change itself is understood in the English School, and how different theoretical readings of what we might mean by change give rise to different approaches to the normative question of what might be improvement in the international order. I argue that an internally coherent understanding of change in international society should emphasise change in institutions, made intelligible by ex-post narratives which contribute to establishing the discursive connection between practices and their normative legitimation, and guided by a sustained normative debate on the nature of improvement. This understanding of change signifies a much-needed addition to the English School toolbox, and brings a promise of a meta-theoretical grounding of the theory. In addition, it opens for similar theoretical inquiries into other IR theories.