Tag: Hedley Bull

Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society has become a classic International Relations text in the United Kingdom since it was first published in 1977. Its name in large part describes Bull’s thesis: the current system of states is anarchical in that there is no higher level of authority over states, each state having ultimate sovereignty over its citizens within its borders; and the system forms a society in that there are certain „common rules and institutions” (25) which provides order to the international arena. Neither statement seems very novel to a student of International Relations; indeed, it seems to be an overview of the common neo-realist/neo-liberal position. The Anarchical Society’s value seems to be that it was one of the first books to comprehensively present such ideas in a book that most of all helps one to analyze world politics from many angles – albeit always from a neo-realist/neo-liberal perspective.