This paper reviews and summarizes Hedley Bull's 1977 landmark work, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, tracing its three central questions about order, sovereign states, and viable paths to global stability. The paper draws on scholarly commentary from Stanley Hoffmann, Ian Harris, Michael J. Tucker, and Samuel M. Makinda to assess Bull's contributions and shortcomings. Key themes include Bull's rejection of scientific approaches to international relations, his distinction between international systems and societies, his tripartite conception of justice, and his ambiguous treatment of order as both fact and value. Despite identified gaps, scholars consistently affirm Bull's enduring relevance to international relations theory.
The paper demonstrates effective use of the scholarly conversation technique: rather than simply summarizing Bull, it positions multiple critics in dialogue with one another, showing how Hoffmann, Harris, Tucker, and Makinda each arrive at similar conclusions — admiration combined with pointed critique of Bull's ambiguity — from different disciplinary angles. This layering of perspectives adds analytical depth without requiring the author to originate new theoretical claims.
The paper opens with a contextual introduction to Bull and his book, then walks through the book's core arguments before devoting a section to each major critic. Each critic section follows the same internal logic: introduce the scholar's stance, explain their praise, then explain their critique. The conclusion briefly synthesizes the collective scholarly verdict. This parallel structure makes the paper easy to follow and reinforces the central finding that Bull's work, despite its gaps, remains foundational to international relations theory.
Hedley Bull wrote The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics in 1977 — nearly twenty-five years before the September 11, 2001 attacks brought down the World Trade Center and changed the political climate worldwide. Nevertheless, what he wrote in that book, and in other books and articles, is considered highly germane and pertinent to today's world order. The scholars who have written about Bull's work have provided a variety of approaches to the value and tone of his offering. This paper reviews and summarizes Bull's book and provides insights from scholars who offer substantial commentary and analysis on Bull's research and narrative.
In his Introduction, Bull notes that his book approaches three "basic questions." First, what is order in world politics? Second, how is that order maintained "within the present system of sovereign states?" And third, does the system of sovereign states continue to provide a "viable path to world order?" In his opening narrative, Bull takes great pains to emphasize that his book is about "world order" — not necessarily world politics or world power leaders, nor is it about "enduring issues of human political structure or institutions" (Bull xiii). He ends his Introduction by making it clear that this is not an objective book. "I am no more capable than anyone else of being detached about a subject such as this," he writes (Bull xv).
Bull is the kind of intellect and author who likes to break subjects down into categories. Although not all of his categories are neat compartments, he does try to bring his reader to a point of understanding through a kind of grouping and common-sense explanation. Bull's Anarchical Society discusses what he means by states, society of states, and system of states before setting out the goals that societies are seeking to meet and sustain in the international order he describes. The remaining thirteen chapters are broken down into three parts: the nature of order in world politics; order in the contemporary international system; and alternative paths to world order.
Bull sets out three goals that societies are seeking to meet — or should be seeking to obtain — and sustain in the international order. The first goal of a society, he says, is "the goal of preservation of the system and society of states itself" (Bull 16). Modern states have traditionally been united "in the belief that they are the principal actors in world politics and chief bearers of rights and duties within it."
The second goal is the process of maintaining "the independence or external sovereignty of individual states" (Bull 17). What each state "chiefly hopes to gain" in the world order is "recognition of its independence of outside authority" and its "supreme jurisdiction over its subjects and territory" (Bull 17). The main price to pay in this regard, Bull continues, is the recognition of "like rights" — the independence and sovereignty of all other states.
The third goal is logical and important: the goal of peace, defined as "the maintenance of peace in the sense of the absence of war" with other states (Bull 18).
Bull's last section is perhaps most compelling in terms of his overriding philosophy — that of an advocate for disarmament and cooperation among nations. On page 235, he notes that there are always objections to "total disarmament" because "the physical capacity for organized violence is inherent in human society" and cannot possibly be "abolished by treaty" (Bull 235). Still, he believes that a world organization along the lines of the United Nations, along with a kind of "ideological homogeneity" (Bull 243), are both possible and desirable.
Stanley Hoffmann is a scholar of European Studies who has written an essay in the journal International Affairs in which he admits at the outset to being "an admirer of the extraordinary sweep of Hedley Bull's mind." Hoffmann mentions that Bull was a realist in the sense that he rejected "all forms of utopianism" in the Anarchical Society, and he "disposed decisively" of "world government, a new medievalism," regional reconstruction of the world, and "revolutionary schemes for change" (Hoffmann 180). Given that Bull was so bright, literate, and renowned for his worldview, it is interesting that Bull never showed "great enthusiasm" for offering policy advice to political leaders. Although he did provide advice and counsel to the British government on matters of arms control, Bull showed "more tolerance than enthusiasm" for the task of advising politicians (Hoffmann 180).
Hoffmann is impressed that Bull rejected the "scientific approach" to world order and international relations. Bull eschewed the scientific approach because he believed it kept its "practitioners from asking what were, according to him, the essential questions about international relations" (Hoffmann 181). A bit of humor comes to light as Hoffmann explains why Bull rejected the scientific approach: those individuals who believed in it, Hoffmann writes, "seemed to Bull like characters who, having lost a watch in the dark, look for it under a light even though they did not lose it there." But those believers in the scientific approach, according to Hoffmann's recollection of what Bull thought, got so locked into their beliefs that it kept them "as remote from the substance of international politics as the inmates of a Victorian nunnery were from the study of sex" (Hoffmann 181).
More practically, Bull disliked the scientific method because he believed that its practitioners were "obsessed by the quest for a far greater degree of precision than the field of international relations allowed" (Hoffmann 181). In other words, international relations is a constantly fluid dynamic, not given to any particular theory or strategy. Bull accused practitioners of "brashness," Hoffmann continued, and objected to their urge to "predict and to resolve the issues which they tackled."
The way Bull approached international relations was quite different from traditional explorations of these issues, Hoffmann explains. Bull was very systematic and insisted on laying out "conceptual distinctions" prior to attempting an analysis (Hoffmann 182). Bull believed that questions relating to international dynamics must first be addressed by referring to the work of "political philosophers" who have already hashed over those questions and "sharpened them" (Hoffmann 182). Secondly, the questions Bull would wish to resolve can only be answered by comparing the present to the past. And thirdly, Hoffmann continues, questions of international relations can only be answered when referenced not only to states' power but also "to the rules which states observe, and particularly to that quite special category of rules which constitutes international law."
Bull was known for his insistence on asking questions — believing it was the job of the social scientist to "ask a lot of moral questions" (Hoffmann 184) while at the same time avoiding "moral preaching" and being skeptical of "moral generalizations." What made Bull a truly original social scientist was his delineation of the difference between systems and society, Hoffmann stresses. Bull was "virtually alone among contemporary theorists of international affairs" in understanding that "society" means "common interests and values, common rules and institutions," while "system" means contact between states "and the impact of one state on another" (Hoffmann 185).
Hoffmann ends his essay by asserting that before he passed away, Bull gave social science the "first comprehensive defense and illustration of arms control" at a time when the threat from nuclear buildup was enormous (Hoffmann 195). Bull gave the field of social science the most "panoramic and incisive analysis" of the rules, institutions, and prospects of the "anarchical society" constituted by the existing modern states system. And finally, Hoffmann concludes, Bull showed that a person could be aware of "the limits of rigor and precision" and be ready to guard against their misuse while still not departing from that rigor and precision "in favor of sloppiness or stridency." There are few voices, Hoffmann insists, with such a high degree of civilized substance, presenting such a fine balance between skepticism and hope.
While scholars and critics have picked apart some of Bull's writing and found inconsistencies and gaps, Bull is nonetheless seen as a powerfully important thinker. For many in the field of social science and international study, his work will continue to create ripples and even waves — which is, ultimately, a positive thing.
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