The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edition

Abstract

The third edition of The Anarchical Society marks the 25th anniversary of its publication. Bull's central theme is the problem of achieving order in a system of sovereign nation-states. To a contemporary political theory audience, this topic might seem more relevant to the world of the 19th century than to that of the 21st century. Since the first edition was published, the study of international relations has been systematically exposed to normative concerns. This has opened up an important place for ethical debate that has, to an extent, displaced Bull's focus on the problem of achieving international order. Nevertheless, a weakness of the wave of normative literature, even in its communitarian guise, is that it has often tended to lack a sophisticated sociological analysis of the states system that is able to bridge the divide between of theory and practice. The publication of the third edition of Bull's Anarchical Society should be taken as an invitation to political theorists interested in international relations to fill this gap in their emerging research agenda