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This chapter locates the discussion in the context of the theoretical literature on international norms, particularly that by Martha Finnemore and Katherine Sikkink. Much of this literature is interested in norm cycles, and the means by which norms come to be disseminated internationally. Building on this work, the chapter argues that the idea of dissemination does not quite capture what in fact have been a series of strategic negotiations between international and world society, often coming during the major peace settlements at the end of wars. Historically, this has often also arisen out of a coalition of interest between powerful state actors, and civil society groups. It is suggested that the framework of negotiation between international and world society allows us to understand this process in a particular way. It also demonstrates how the absorption of norms from world society into international society has complicated the latter's practices of consensus. It opens up major new issues about how consensus is to be developed within world society about changing principles of international legitimacy. These issues are explored in the context of the WTO and G7/8, and illustrated by the Ottawa Convention on Landmines and the formation of the International Criminal Court.

This introductory chapter establishes the four-part agenda. First, it adds to the understanding of international legitimacy by tracing its normative sources. Secondly, it contributes to the IR literature on norms, and their importance. Thirdly, it sheds further light on the historical evolution of international society. Finally, it provides a way of making the concept of world society more accessible. The introduction poses the key puzzling question: why does international society buy into human rights norms in the first place? It sketches the outline answer that this occurs in response to both world society action and world society claims; there is simultaneously a political and a normative process at work.

This chapter demonstrates how the Rome Statute creates a Court that is legally separate from the society of states. To the extent that it gives victims of core crimes a means of legal redress that they would not otherwise have, the Statute helps to constitute ‘world’ as opposed to ‘international’ society. This claim is qualified by noting how the Court will in many respects be dependent on state support and by highlighting how the concessions that were made to the values of international society (i.e. sovereign consent and international order between states) complicates the Court's claim to be independent. As background to this analysis, the chapter summarises the various ways in which the English School have sought to define world society. It also describes how the UN Security Council's creation of ad hoc courts extended a ‘solidarist moment’, which was ultimately weakened by the charge of selective justice and the material costs of setting up and running such courts.

In contrast to Hidemi Suganami in the first chapter, the author argues that the English School of International Relations has made, and can continue to make, an important contribution to the study of world history. In particular, he suggests that the three traditions of world politics – international system, international society, and world society – provide a useful way of thinking about the many different types of international societies and systems that have permeated world history. Adopts a world historical focus on the more familiar distinction drawn by the founding fathers of the English School between the political structures that define an international system and the social structures that define an international society, the aim being to demonstrate that a range of different international societies and systems have, across the course of world history, given way to a single worldwide international society/system. Begins by examining the debate about the validity of distinguishing between international systems and societies, and then looks at the interaction between international systems and societies in the premodern world. Goes on to outline the establishment of the European international system/society and its contact with other international systems/societies, and concludes by assessing the utility of adopting a world historical perspective and drawing a pluralistic distinction between international systems and societies.

Attempts to draw together the ideas presented in the book and to question the continuing relevance of the approach of the English School of International Relations to international relations. Argues that although the School has made a significant contribution to the discipline, more work needs to be done if it is to maintain its relevance. In particular, the School needs to address the relationship between international society and world society in more detail, identify and explore the many structures that underpin international society, rethink the pluralism–solidarism debate, and shed more light on the drivers and dynamics of change in world politics.

The final two chapters in Part One investigate the evolving research agenda of the English School of International Relations and its contribution to contemporary international relations. In this chapter, the author explores what may be described as the ‘new agenda’ in English School thinking about world politics. He begins by briefly tracing the long history of the concept of international society, noting how it has become synonymous with the English School despite the fact that other paradigms have also made use of the term. He moves on to reiterate one of the central claims of the first part of this book: that the English School and the concept of international society have been propelled to the forefront of contemporary debates about world politics by important sociological and normative developments in mainstream international relations in North America. He then identifies four core and as yet unsolved ‘puzzles’ that will frame the English School's new agenda as it continues to develop; these are the relationship between agency and structure, the boundaries between international society and world society, the moral basis of international society, and the tension between forces of society and hierarchy in contemporary world politics.

In this final chapter of Part Two, the author addresses arguably the central stumbling block for those who would enlarge international society to incorporate elements of world society, alternative levels of analysis, and subject matters: namely, the problem of order. He argues that a concern with order, in its methodological, theoretical, and empirical guises, is the principal feature of the understanding of international society by the English School of International Relations. While order may endorse methodological pluralism, the author argues that the approach does not embrace it and has powerful canons that structure its work, one being the requirement that to count as valid knowledge about international society, a piece of work must begin by referring to the established fathers of the tradition. This preoccupation with order carries over into the empirical and theoretical work conducted by those associated with the School, and the author attempts to critique this by challenging the assumption, central to English School theorizing since Henry Bull, that a degree of order is necessary for the achievement of social goods. Instead, he argues that an over‐preoccupation with order can serve the cause of oppression, and therefore insists that progressive change tends to come about through periods of disorder.

The final two chapters in Part One investigate the evolving research agenda of the English School of International Relations and its contribution to contemporary international relations. In this chapter, the author investigates the emerging dialogue between English School and constructivist approaches in order to explore how they help to understand the post‐September 11 world, arguing, in particular, that, taken together, both English School and constructivist scholarship can add much to the understanding of contemporary international society. The chapter undertakes two tasks, first, it revisits an argument made elsewhere by the author: that although constructivism and the English School share much in common, and there is considerable scope for productive engagement, scholars on both sides are currently mired in an unproductive dialogue of stereotypes. In this dialogue, constructivists draw little more from the English School than the well‐rehearsed proposition that states can form international societies not just systems, and English School scholars focus too heavily on the statist, positivistic form of constructivism associated with the writings of Alexander Wendt – although it is likely to be far more fruitful to see both perspectives as bounded realms of debate, each characterized by significant internal debates over ontology, methods, and ethics. The chapter's second task is to suggest how an enriched dialogue between constructivism and the English School could be productively deployed to grapple with some of the central research questions of the post‐September 11 world: namely, the relationship between power and institutions, international society and world society, and order and justice.

Part Three of the book turns to the question of international society and international relations after September 11, starting with a chapter by Richard Falk, who argues that international society remains a useful starting point for studying today's globalized world because it is predicated on the dual assertions of international anarchy and a (potentially) global normative order – a duality that provides a fertile breeding ground for different accounts of what the world should look like. The author discusses the changing geopolitical context of globalization and global governance, suggesting that if globalization is to be retained as a label for the current phase of international relations, its net must be cast far more broadly than it has been – since the events of 2001 it needs to be interpreted far less economistically, and more comprehensively. The last part of the chapter considers approaches to global governance, international society, and world society given this altered understanding of ‘globalization’. The author identifies five overlapping accounts of globalization that provide alternative and competing pictures of the future of global governance and international society: corporate globalization, which refers to the growth of transnational business and the forging of common interests and values based on neoliberal economics; civic globalization, which in many ways is a civil society response to the corporate variety and has manifested itself in a number of transnational anti‐globalization movements, but has now moved beyond straightforward opposition towards the articulation of new global political agendas; imperial globalization, which is a US‐led form of globalization that seeks not the creation of a genuinely multinational neoliberal global economy but rather the extension of American power and the satisfaction of US interests narrowly conceived; apocalyptic globalization, the variant promoted by Osama Bin Laden and his followers and aims to overthrow the society of states and replace it with an Islamic world state; and regional globalization, in which a number of regions around the world are developing their own subsystems as a way of moderating pressures created by the global flow of capital. The author argues that none of these forms of globalization is likely to predominate completely, but that the relationship between them is likely to shape the nature of global governance for the foreseeable future.

This chapter argues that the ICC is not merely a response to a developed consensus of the idea that individuals should be held criminally responsible for gross human rights violations. It is also a response to what Alexander Wendt might call the ‘instability’ of an international society that has enabled unaccountable great powers to decide when and where international criminal justice would be administered and promoted, and to grant effectively for themselves exceptions to the laws they applied to others. In this sense, the rules of international society remained unstable and states responded by creating the ICC, which, in effect, turned the exception into the norm. The chapter seeks to show how the Court's independence from the society of states leads us to contemplate further the other aspect of English School theorizing: world society. From this standpoint, it addresses the crucial issue of why so many states thought it necessary to create the Office of the Prosecutor, and to invest it with the powers to investigate without prior authorization of the UN Security Council.

This chapter presents a broad-ranging account of the impact of the emergence of ‘world society’ on the ideals of constitutional democracy. This argument is based on the premise that constitutionalism has always maintained the Janus-face of inclusion and exclusion, emancipation and oppression. Although Western constitutionalism has acquired its inclusive qualities at the price of its cosmopolitan claims, it has nevertheless been able to provide a legal means of coordinating conflicting powers within nation-state systems. The democratic possibilities which are inherent in the emergence of a world society can be realised only by promoting an agenda of radical reform which, in conceptual terms, requires us to overcome the limitations of dualistic and representational thinking.

This chapter shows how coalitions formed around different understandings of Germany in the early postwar period. Once decided upon a policy of rehabilitation toward Germany, the American government promoted a Cold War narrative of Germany that legitimized America's struggle against the Soviet Union. With the prestige and stature that the U.S. government enjoyed after victory in World War II, the dawning of a new ideological struggle with the Soviet Union, and a widespread fear of communist subversion, an era of consensus settled in that discouraged dissent. While some actors, such as the Federal Republic of Germany and the American Council on Germany, promoted the Cold War narrative based on their respective self-interests, major Jewish groups like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League offered their support, or at least refused to dissent, out of fear of being labeled anti-American or sympathetic to Bolshevism. The only organization that remained faithful to the world war narrative and resolved to stand against the power of the state was the Society for the Prevention of World War III. It was marginalized in the larger society and abandoned by its erstwhile allies.

This chapter casts a net on the previous chapters, gathering the main problems which have been grappled in the book, and surveying the solutions proposed from the discussion that has unfolded. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the critical assessment of international institutions undertaken by the various contributors to this book: states to continue playing a dominant role; there is no hope for a reform of the United Nations; world society is still governed by state interest; and there is room both for enhancing some nascent ‘communitarian’ features of the international order and for legal change in many areas.

This chapter focuses on the evolution of civil society participation in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process and the rise of “multistakeholderism” as a new principle with the potential to inform more of information and communications technology (ICT) global governance. After discussing the role of the WSIS in fostering a new trilateral relationship among governments, private industry, and civil society and in promoting international diplomacy, the chapter looks at the Carlsbad Treaty of 1819, the debate over the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), the Global Information Infrastructure Initiative, and the Working Group on Internet Governance.

This chapter presents the theoretical framework, building on sociological institutionalism and its two strands, namely organization studies and world society theory. The chapter starts with a presentation of how world society is formed, which actors are important and how change in world society can be caused. The idea of institutional entrepreneurship is introduced, including a section on how institutional entrepreneurs can be analyzed and how they can use networks to bring change. The chapter continues with an analysis of the concepts of rationalization. The oft-assumed homogenous world culture is analyzed with regard to internal variance, relying on the concept of institutional logics. In the final section, these findings are connected to institutional entrepreneurship and the analytical framework that guides the rest of the book’s chapters is established. The chapter concludes with a hypothesis on how institutional entrepreneurship and rationalization determine different forms of global governance.

World society has become something of a trope in International Relations (IR) theory to capture a web of relations between diverse actors operating outside the formal rubric of the state. One presupposition of world society and its cosmopolitan iterations is particularly problematic, as it concerns reciprocal, inter-human recognition. Given multiple practices and instances of dehumanization and misrecognition which undermine or deny the rights and status claims of certain ‘types’ of people – or even their claim to being human in the first place – we must turn this assumptive ideal of universal recognition into a question. How, this chapter asks, is recognition cultivated if it is not automatically bestowed? The chapter explores a set of processes that aid in the constitution of inter-human recognition. Because of their socio-political ramifications, these generative processes function as a first-order practice or, in IR theoretical terms, a primary, constitutive institution of world society conceived of as an inter-human society.

This introductory chapter takes a broad approach to introduce global crime governance and represents a substantial overview of the research field, the book, and its findings. The first section clarifies what global crime governance is and how it relates to domestic crime policies. The second section presents perspectives on crime and its governance, shedding light on research questions related to crime in different academic disciplines. In the third section, available explanations for global crime governance are presented, including the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. In the fourth section, sociological institutionalism is introduced, placing emphasis on world society theory as well as organizational analyses, and elaborating on how to link these strands. The chapter concludes with a detailed plan of the book.