Abstract
This chapter models international society as a two-level structure, made up of primary or foundation institutions, as that term was understood by Hedley Bull, and international organizations. It suggests that the two sorts of institutions have a non-deterministic but probabilistic relationship in which primary institutions constrain international organizations, while international organizations introduce changes into primary institutions. The model is a construct out of intimations, suggestions and finally modelling stricto sensu contained in six key arguments concerning the relations of fundamental institutions and international organizations. It is a process model that outlines, in ideal form, how messages are conceived, the routes that they take, when they are likely to be frustrated and by what agency. It suggests both structure and agency and shows how they are related.
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Notes
- 1.
In the theoretical sense, indicating significant generalizations that express underlying regularities.
- 2.
The idea of a legal system was first theorized by John Austin (1832) and elaborated by H.L.A. Hart (1961), who argued that a legal system must not only have rules binding persons but also rules about rules. According to the idea, a complete legal order should consist of three forms of rules. First, constitutive principles, which create ‘legal facts’, such as the constitutive principles of a liberal democracy that give rise to, for example, the institutions of a representative democracy. Secondly, it will have procedural rules—with reference to liberal orders, for example, a bill of rights; and, thirdly, it will have instructions for the ‘rule carriers’ on how to perform their roles.
- 3.
Krasner (1983, 2) defined principles as beliefs of fact, causation and rectitude; norms as standards of behaviour defined in terms of rights and obligations; and rules as specific prescriptions for actions, to which he added ‘decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area’.
- 4.
Buzan’s Table 1 (2004, 174) indicates the various choices for ‘principal, or master or bedrock’ institutions.
- 5.
Holsti follows Bull and the traditional English School approach in treating foundation institutions as identifying a genus: the institution of sovereignty serves in ‘markedly distinguishing’ the state system ‘from empires, migrant clans and lineages, the…medieval system… leagues of cities, suzerainty systems and other formats for organizing distinct political communities’ (Holsti 2004, 25).
- 6.
Holst associated GPM with the formal arrangements of the Concert of Europe; Knudsen would argue that GPM as a principle is constantly recurring and takes different forms as a practice; see Chap. 2 above.
- 7.
In ‘Of the Laws of Nations’, Chapter XI of ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’, Book III ‘Of Morals’.
- 8.
For a discussion of the ‘many uses’ of the concept of interest, and of Hume’s, Bentham’s and Mill’s uses in particular, see Swedberg, 19–24. Legitimacy claims are spiritual benefits in the language of ‘interests’.
- 9.
Macauley’s fierce criticism of James Mill’s Essay on Government, with its Benthamite claim that the government was established for the ‘happiness of the people’ was published in the Edinburgh Review of March 1829.
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Navari, C. (2019). Modelling the Relations of Fundamental Institutions and International Organizations. In: Brems Knudsen, T., Navari, C. (eds) International Organization in the Anarchical Society. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71622-0_3
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