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Culture and International Society
Barry Buzan, January 2010
This article investigates a hypothesis drawn from Martin Wight, that a society of states lacking a shared culture, as a result of expansion beyond its original base, will be unstable. This instability hypothesis has been influential in how the English School has presented the history of the expansion of European international society to a global scale.
The article argues that culture is less of a problem for international society than Wight, and much of the English School, suppose. The key problem is not culture, but socio-political structure. How can what North et al. call natural states and open access orders find shared practices and institutions that do not destabilize international society?
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