The Globalization of International Society

The Globalization of International Society re-examines the development of today's society of sovereign states, drawing on a wealth of new scholarship to challenge the landmark account presented in Bull and Watson's classic work, The Expansion of International Society (OUP, 1984). For Bull and Watson, international society originated in Europe, and expanded as successive waves of new states were integrated into a rule-governed order. International society, on their view, was thus a European cultural artefact - a claim that is at odds with recent scholarship in history, politics, and related fields of research.

Bringing together leading scholars from Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States, this book provides an alternative account: it draws out the diversity of polities that existed at around c1500; it shows how interacting identities, political orders, and economic forces were intensifying within and across regions; it details the tangled dynamics that helped to globalize the European conception of a pluralist international society, through patterns of warfare and between East and West.

The Globalization of International Society examines the institutional contours of contemporary international society, with its unique blend of universal sovereignty and global law, and its forms of hierarchy that coexist with commitments to international human rights. The book explores the multiple forms of contestation that challenge international society today: contests over the limits of sovereignty in relation to cosmopolitan conceptions of responsibility, disputes over global governance, concerns about persistent economic, racial, and gender-based patterns of disadvantage, and lastly the threat to the established order opened up by the disruptive power of digital communications.

Tim Dunne, Professor of International Relations and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Queensland,Christian Reus-Smit, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland

Tim Dunne is Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Queensland where he is also Professor of International Relations in the School of Political Science and International Studies. Previously he was Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, where he continues to be a Senior Researcher. He has written and edited twelve books, including Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (1998), Human Rights in Global Politics (co-edited with Nicholas J. Wheeler, 1999), Worlds in Collision (co-edited with Ken Booth, 2002), Terror in our Time (co-authored with Ken Booth, 2012), International Relations Theories (co-edited with Milja Kurki and Steve Smith, 2016), Liberal World Orders (co-edited with Trine Flockhart, 2013), and The Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect (co-edited with Alex J. Bellamy, 2016).


Christian Reus-Smit is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland. He is author of Individual Rights and the Making of the International System (2013), American Power and World Order (2004), The Moral Purpose of the State (1999), Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (co-authored with Mlada Bukovansky, Ian Clark, Robyn Eckersley, Richard Price, and Nicholas J. Wheeler, 2012), The Politics of International Law (editor, Cambridge University Press, 2004), The Oxford Handbook of International Relations (co-edited with Duncan Snidal, 2008), Resolving International Crises of Legitimacy (co-edited with Ian Clark, special issue, International Politics 2007), and Between Sovereignty and Global Governance (co-edited with Albert J. Paolini and Anthony P. Jarvis, 1998).