Westphalian Eurocentrism in International Relations Theory

Westphalian Eurocentrism in InternationalRelations Theory

Turan Kayaoglu

University of Washington

In the past 10–15 years, an increasing number of revisionist scholarshave rejected the most significant elements of the argument about thecentrality of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the evolution and struc-ture of international society. At the same time, the prominence of thisargument has grown in the English School and constructivist interna-tional relations scholarship. I deconstruct the function of the Westpha-lian narrative to explain its pervasiveness and persistence. I argue that itwas first developed by nineteenth century imperial international juristsand that the Westphalian narrative perpetuates a Eurocentric bias ininternational relations theory. This bias maintains that Westphalia cre-ated an international society, consolidating a normative divergencebetween European international relations and the rest of the interna-tional system. This dualism is predicated on the assumption that withWestphalia European states had solved the anarchy problem eitherthrough cultural or contractual evolution. Non-European states, lackingthis European culture and social contract, remained in anarchy untilthe European states allowed them to join the internationalsociety—upon their achievement of the ‘‘standards of civilization.’’ ThisWestphalian narrative distorts the emergence of the modern interna-tional system and leads to misdiagnoses of major problems of contem-porary international relations. Furthermore, their commitment to theWestphalian narrative prevents international relations scholars fromadequately theorizing about international interdependencies andaccommodating global pluralism.

The centrality of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the evolution and structureof the international system is a familiar theme in international relations scholar-ship.1 Countless references to these treaties have led to the formation of a frame-work for understanding international history and politics that I call theWestphalian narrative.2 Among the chief elements of this narrative is the ideathat the Peace of Westphalia instituted, or at least embodied, the principles ofsovereignty and secularism. On sovereignty, the Peace is credited with limitingthe hegemonic aims of the Holy Roman Empire, thus allowing the newly sover-eign rulers to establish exclusive territorial domains. Westphalian arrangements

1I would like to thank Katie Baird, Priya Chacko, Rob Farley, Michael Forman, Lucas Freire, Ahmet Kuru, KateMarshall, Jon Mercer, Chuck Rowling, Jason Scheideman, Mike Struasz, and Charles Williams for their criticismsand suggestions on this essay. I would also like to express my gratitude to the journal’s anonymous reviewers fortheir comments. I presented an earlier version of this paper at the 50th Annual Convention of the InternationalStudies Association, New York City, February 15–18, 2009.

2For a classical statement of the Peace of Westphalia’s place in the development of the international system, seeGross (1948).

� 2010 International Studies Association

International Studies Review (2010) 12, 193–217

are said to enable the states to monopolize the means of violence within theirterritories and their control of foreign policy instruments such as war and diplo-macy. Moreover, the notion of respect for each other’s sovereignty (political tol-erance), out of which international law has emerged, has been traced back toWestphalia. On secularism, the Peace allegedly curtailed the universalist claimsof the Catholic Church and made possible the separation of the public domainof the state from that of the private domain of religion. Furthermore, the princi-ple of non-intervention on religious issues together with a newly instituted spiritof religious tolerance led to peaceful coexistence within and among states.Taken together, these so-called Westphalian principles and institutions were ide-alized as engines responsible for transforming early modern Europe into a soci-ety of states. Once this ‘‘Westphalian’’ international society—shared ideas andinstitutions grounded in political and religious tolerance—had consolidated itselfin Europe, European colonization then expanded this framework worldwide; thisprocess is described by Bull and Watson (1984).

This Westphalian narrative has its critics. In the past 10–15 years, an increasingnumber of scholars have rejected significant parts of this narrative; Osiander(2001), Beaulac (2004), and Teschke (2003) have even called it a myth. Thesecritiques have argued that many norms and institutions attributed to the Peaceof Westphalia emerged much later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.They have identified some Westphalian anachronisms. For one, ‘‘Westphaliansovereignty’’ is a misnomer; Swiss jurist Emerich de Vattel (1714–1776) was thefirst to develop the idea that state sovereignty requires the exclusion of externalauthority structures from domestic politics (Krasner 1999; Beaulac 2003, 2004).Some major nonstate political entities, including the Holy Roman Empire, sur-vived until the early nineteenth century (dissolved in 1806) (Krasner 1993,1995 ⁄ 96; Osiander 2001). In addition, until the late nineteenth century statescontinued to share the means of violence with a plethora of non state groupssuch as privateers, pirates, and merchant companies (Thomson 1994). Europeanstates often deviated from the norm of territorial jurisdiction and claimed extra-territorial jurisdiction in non-Western states and kept their consular courts therewell into twentieth century (Kayaoglu 2007, 2010). The constituent principles ofsecularism—the separation of church and state and the acceptance of religioustolerance—had little to do with the Peace of Westphalia and they materialized,albeit imperfectly, in Europe in the nineteenth century (Kaplan 2007). High-lighting the anachronisms associated with the Westphalian narrative, these schol-ars discounted the role of the Peace of Westphalia for the origins, evolution, andstructure of international system.

But the Westphalian narrative has been resilient. Among many others, Wendt(1999), Jackson (2000), Philpott (2001), and Clark (2005) have presented argu-ments emphasizing the prominence of the Peace of Westphalia to understandinternational relations. So far Westphalian critiques have not explained the per-sistence of the Westphalian narrative in and its implications for internationalrelations scholarship. To this end I deconstruct the Westphalian narrative to sug-gest that it in part substantiates a perspective of European exceptionalism. Thisexceptionalism idealizes the European ⁄ Western order and elevates its ideas andideals in international relations scholarship. The Westphalian narrative allowsscholars to reinvent an framework of normative hierarchy depending on whereWestern and non-Western societies placed in the narrative. Western states producenorms, principles, and institutions of international society and non-Western stateslack these until they are socialized into the norms, principles, and institutions ofinternational society. In this perspective, international society is a normative hier-archy assumed to reflect the natural division of labor in international relations.

From its early sponsors to its present day supporters, there have been remark-able similarities in the use of the Westphalian narrative. These similarities could

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be grouped as practical, historical, and normative. The narrative is practical inthat it has, albeit arguably, established a plausible freestanding account of thedevelopment of international society to which scholars could refer while tracingthe origins of contemporary international norms or while providing a conciseaccount of the international system in introductory international relationsclasses. It is historical in that it has allowed scholars to challenge ahistoricalapproaches to the study of international law and relations (the nineteenth-century jurists used it against analytical positivist jurists, the English School usedit against behavioralist scholars, and the constructivists used it against structuralrealist and neoliberal theorists). It is normative in that this narrative has estab-lished an understanding of liberal progress toward an international order ofpolitical and religious tolerance embedded in European history, values, andpolitical vision. It is this third use and its consequences that I evaluate in thisarticle.

Essentially, I argue that the Westphalian narrative was first developed byGerman historians and usurped by international jurists in the nineteenth cen-tury. According to its earliest formulation by German historians, the Peace ofWestphalia allowed European states to establish an international order based onmutual independence, political tolerance, and the balance of power. Thesealleged Westphalian sovereign vision stood in stark contrast to the menacingNapoleonic imperial vision. Nineteenth-century jurists added an external dimen-sion to the Westphalian narrative: lacking a Westphalia-like arrangement, non-European societies remained in political disorder and religious intolerance.When these societies ‘‘fulfilled’’ the so-called ‘‘standards of civilization,’’ theEuropean states then ‘‘admitted’’ them into ‘‘international society.’’ EnglishSchool scholars in the 1960s–1980s revived the narrative of the centrality ofWestphalia. With the cultural turn in international relations scholarship in the1980s and 1990s, constructivists brought the Westphalian narrative into the litera-ture on international norms.

But it is time for international relations scholars to do away with the Westpha-lian narrative for four reasons: (i) it distorts our understanding of the emer-gence of the modern international system, (ii) it leads to misdiagnoses of majoraspects of contemporary international relations, and (iii) it prevents interna-tional relations scholars from theorizing cross-civilizational and cross-regionalinterdependencies and (iv) it thwarts the accommodation of pluralism in anincreasingly globalized world. First, by exaggerating some, down-playing other,and ignoring some other aspects of the development of international society, thenarrative has allowed the construction of an essentialized and over-generalizedhistory. In this stylized understanding, Western societies’ achievement of reli-gious and political tolerance originated with Westphalia and was furthered bysubsequent treaties and conventions while non-Western societies’ lack ofreligious and political tolerance was shaped by their intolerant and despoticpast. This ‘‘historical’’ vision is often invoked to justify cultural and legalarguments for guaranteeing the intellectual and political superiority of Europein international relations scholarship.

More perniciously this intellectual construct became an ideological tool toexcuse the coercion used by Western states over non-Western states as a neces-sary evil, required in order to get them to conform to the rules of internationalsociety. For example, in the process of Europe’s colonial and imperial expan-sion, policymakers and scholars invoked Westphalian-grounded principles to jus-tify acts of brutality and subjugation in the name of the privileged position ofstates that were deemed ‘‘civilized’’ in spreading the rule of law, tolerance, andcivilization. Similar to other European-invented narratives (Hobsbawm andRanger 1992; Hodgson 1993; Patterson 1997; Goody 2006), the Westphaliannarrative allows for the continued imagination and invention of Europe’s

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intellectual and political superiority, treating the West as a perennial source ofpolitical and religious tolerance in international society.

Once different societies are placed in the Westphalian narrative, this slantedhistory becomes a perspective and an interpretative technique that distorts ourunderstanding of contemporary issues. Starting with the assumption of the cen-trality and the normative value of the Peace of Westphalia in international soci-ety cause observations become what I call ‘‘narrative-laden’’ when analysts focuson historical practices that either largely confirm, in few cases disconfirm, thenarrative. This problem of selection bias is similar to the problem of ‘‘theory-laden’’ observations when analysts focus on cases that confirm the theory ratherthan falsify it. While international relations scholars are arguably alert for thelimitations of the theories and the methodologies they employ, they rarely payattention to the limitations and biases of the historical narratives they employ.This omission is particularly troubling given the centrality of history to the studyof international relations (Elman and Elman 2001).

Moreover, the selection bias is confounded with an interpretative bias: behav-iors are interpreted differently depending on a state’s place in the narrative.The Westphalian narrative produces an interpretive dualism analogous to differ-ent modes of explaining intergroup relations: an in-group’s desirable behavioris attributed to the in-group’s character while an in-group’s undesirable behav-ior is attributed to the external conditions. Similarly an out-group’s undesirablebehavior is attributed to the out-group’s character while out-group’s desirablebehavior is attributed to external conditions (Mercer 1996: chapter 2). Mercer’sinsight sheds some light onto the in-Westphalian and out-Westphalian interpre-tative rationale the Westphalian narrative perpetuates: it creates a dualismbetween Western and non-Western states akin to in-group and out-group iden-tity in a normative hierarchy. Thus, Westphalia-confirming European practices,for example, political and religious tolerance, are attributed to Europe’s inher-ent superiority; Westphalia-disconfirming European practices, for example,lack of political and religious tolerance, are attributed to either conditions not-inherent to Europe, conditions European states could not stop, or used asevidence for the evolving practices of the Westphalian order. Conversely,Westphalia-confirming non-Western practices are attributed to conditions exter-nal to non-Western states, such as their socialization by European states; West-phalia-disconfirming non-Western practices are attributed to non-Western states’inherent inferiority and an example of the challenge thy pose the Westphalianorder.

This hierarchy has been used to justify the notion that Western states shouldfollow different norms and principles toward non-Western societies as these soci-eties have different norms, principles, and institutions. While non-Western socie-ties were gradually admitted into international society, international societycontinues to expand its normative scope, reaching higher levels of religious andpolitical tolerance. Paradoxically, the Westphalian international society has deep-ened more rapidly than it has widened: the normative gap in the origins of theemergence of international society between Western and non-Western societiesand the disparities of progress between them means that non-Western societiesmust perpetually chase the progress of Western states and the European order.The normative divergence will persist because Western societies continuouslyevolve faster than the non-Western states are socialized by adopting the existingnorms, principles, and institutions. Perpetual progress of the Western normativeorder will continue to sustain a normative hierarchy in which the non-Westerntortoise will never catch the European hare.

Three caveats are necessary before further elaborating my argumentthat reducing the origins and structure of international society to the Peace ofWestphalia reflects a Eurocentric bias in international relations scholarship. To


begin with, I do not offer an alternative history of international society free fromthe inconsistencies that I claim the Westphalian narrative produces.3 Rather, Ioffer a historiography of Westphalian international society by exploring its initialinvention by nineteenth-century jurists and subsequent refinement by the Eng-lish School scholars and some constructivist scholars. Furthermore, while refer-ences to the Westphalian narrative also exist in other international relationstheories, such as neorealism and neoliberalism, I do discuss these theories.Because the presumption of Westphalia does not occupy a central position inthese theories and they emphasize other aspects of the international system—likeanarchy and the distribution of power for neorealism and interdependence andrational-choice for neoliberalism. Finally, I do not dispute the existence of inter-national society—shared ideas and institutions based on political and religioustolerance—or the importance of international society in achieving internationalpeace, development, or human rights. Rather, I argue that international rela-tions scholars must move away from a Westphalian-based, and thus Eurocentric,notion of international society to one that more thoroughly accommodates glo-bal diversity and plurality. This shift in narratives can bolster the legitimacy andefficiency of international society.

I develop my argument regarding the Eurocentrism endemic to the Westpha-lian narrative in international relations scholarship in the following three sec-tions. These sections offer a chronological view of the notion of Westphalianinternational society. The chronological order also allows me to illustrate howlater generations of scholars inherited and re-invented the ethnocentrism of pastscholars. First, I examine the origins of the Westphalian narrative: nineteenth-century international jurists’ attempts to build a Westphalian narrative to supporttheir claims for the existence of international law. Second, I discuss the EnglishSchool’s concept of international society and its relation to the Westphalian nar-rative. Third, I explore the current constructivist international relations litera-ture, tracing the durability of the Westphalian myth to the presence ofEurocentrism in current international relations theory.

The Construction of the Westphalian Narrative

The construction of the Westphalian narrative postdates the Peace of Westphalia(1648): it was the product of nineteenth-century intellectual and political devel-opments. The initial sponsors of this narrative were German historians and inter-national jurists of the nineteenth century—not the rulers of the seventeenthcentury. There is good reason why the Westphalian narrative did not emergeuntil the nineteenth century: natural law, which had been the dominant interna-tional legal discourse until the late eighteenth century, did not need to rely on ahistorical incident or treaty to justify the existence of international society andlaw. Connecting law, justice, and morality, natural law posited that the contentof law is set by a transcendental source above states. Jurists of natural law pointedto numerous sources for the law: religion, human nature, nature, and finally, inthe age the Enlightenment, natural reason. Since the transcendental quality oflaw made it valid everywhere and for everyone at all times regardless of politicalboundaries, any treaty, including the Peace of Westphalia, was insignificant forthe legal and political order envisioned by the natural law theorists envisioned.The universalist assumptions of natural law allowed these scholars to assume theexistence of an international society, preventing them from clarifying discrimina-tory doctrines such as sovereign recognition and sovereign territoriality, and thusmaking the issues central to the Westphalian narrative marginal to thesescholars’ theories.

3Hodgson (1993) provides some preliminary ideas as to what such a history might look like.

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But in the nineteenth century, this was to change. The transformation fromnatural law to legal positivism occurred in the late eighteenth and early nine-teenth century (Nussbaum 1954:157–185). Emer de Vattel’s The Law of Nations,first published in 1758, was one of the important bridges from natural to positivelaw. Deviating from the earlier naturalist ‘‘law of nations,’’ Vattel made sover-eignty central to his framework of international law by adding an externaldimension to the domestic sovereignty developed by Hobbes and Bodin. Theexternal dimension of sovereignty entails two qualities: the sovereign state’s privi-lege as the sole representative of a country’s population, and the exclusion ofwhat the ruler considers ‘‘external’’ from domestic authority structures. With thisexternal dimension, now known as Westphalian sovereignty, sovereign statesbecame the sole representatives of their populations and the sole subjects of thelaw of nations (Krasner 1999:20–21; Beaulac 2003). Like other Enlightenmentthinkers, Vattel (1916: Book 3, Chapter 3, §47) referred to the ‘‘societal’’ quali-ties of Europe using the term republic:

Europe forms a political system, an integral body, closely connected by the rela-tions and different interests of the nations inhabiting this part of the world. It isnot, as formerly, a confused heap of detached pieces, each of which though her-self very little concerned in the fate of the others, and seldom regarded thingswhich did not immediately concern her. The continual attention of sovereigns toevery occurrence, the constant residence of ministers, and the perpetual negotia-tions, make of modern Europe a kind of republic, of which the members—eachindependent, but all linked together by the ties of common interest—unite forthe maintenance of order and liberty. Hence arose that famous scheme of thepolitical balance, or the equilibrium of power; by which is understood such a dis-position of things, as that no one potentate be able absolutely to predominate,and prescribe laws to the others.

Although Beaulac (2003, 2004) implicitly and Krasner (1999:20–1) explicitlycredit ‘‘Westphalian sovereignty’’ to Vattel, and as the quote suggests the paral-lels between the Vattel’s argument for the uniqueness of Europe’s political sys-tems and the argument of Westphalian system are striking, surprisingly, Vattellinked neither his argument of sovereignty nor the uniqueness of Europeanpolitical order to the Peace of Westphalia. In The Law of Nations, he invokesWestphalia only five times on issues such as the papal rejection of treaties (Vattel1916: Book 2, Chapter 15, §223) and the rights of German states against theHoly Roman Empire (Vattel 1916: Book 4, Chapter 6, §59). The incidental andinfrequent references to Westphalia in Vattel is striking compared with the treat-ment Westphalia receives by one of the most prominent international jurists ofthe nineteenth century: Henry Wheaton. Wheaton starts his section on ‘‘TheHistory of the Modern Law of Nations’’ in the History by stating: ‘‘The Peace ofWestphalia, 1648, may be chosen as the epoch from which to deduce the historyof the modern science of international law. This great transaction marks animportant era in the progress of law of nations’’; Wheaton then lists numerousfundamental changes he attributes to Westphalia (Wheaton 1973 [1845]:70).

The Napoleonic Wars were mostly responsible for the emergence the Westpha-lian narrative. As Edward Keene has persuasively demonstrated, the earliest formof the Westphalian narrative was product of early nineteenth-century Germanhistoriography. The initial purpose of the Westphalian narrative was ‘‘to stigma-tize the French Revolution, and especially the Napoleonic imperial system, asunlawful interims of the traditional principles of European public law andorder’’ (Keene 2002:16). Elucidated by the German historians W.C. Koch andA.H.L. Hareen, this historiography developed the idea that the Peace of West-phalia established a decentralized system of mutually independent sovereignstates and thus distinguished medieval Europe from modern European politics.


The moniker attached to the modern European political order was states-system,originating from the Peace of Westphalia.

The counter-revolutionary German historians had a good reason to advancethe Westphalian narrative. The alleged role of Westphalia in justifying and guar-anteeing the mutual independence of states allowed the historians to justify thetraditional liberties of German states secured from the Hapsburg Dynasty butnow under a similar threat from the Napoleonic dynasty. While legal scholars,like Vattel, also supported the idea of states’ mutual independence, German his-torians could not easily rely on them because these scholars, influenced by natu-ral law, would find revolutions and foreign interventions justified ‘‘if a ruler hadviolated the fundamental principles of natural law’’ (Keene 2002:17). Ratherthan natural law, these German scholars thus turned to historical analyses ofEuropean legal systems, focusing in particular on the treaties underlining thesesystems. These scholars argued that the Peace of Westphalia established thefoundation of the European legal order. The treaties of the Peace of Westphaliahad been ‘‘constantly refreshed by all the subsequent treaties up to the FrenchRevolution’’ and the Peace was thus ‘‘the turning-point of modern politics’’(Koch cited in Keene 2002:20). In a manner serving German interests in the firsthalf of the nineteenth century, the German historians Koch and Hareen arguedthat the significance of the system established by Westphalia was its confirmationof the German states’ territorial supremacy, rights, and privileges, and by settingGerman states as barriers between major European powers, the Peace of West-phalia secured both the mutual independence of European states and Europe’sbalance of power (Keene 2002:21).

Upon the foundation invented by German historians, international jurists ofthe nineteenth century built a comprehensive narrative of the development polit-ical and legal order of Europe that stressed its uniqueness. The jurists’ construc-tion of ‘‘Westphalian’’ international society was part of the larger intellectualtrend of nineteenth century, European exceptionalism. According to this per-spective, European societies and political systems were superior to the Europeanpast and to the rest of the world. In the humanities and social sciences, nine-teenth-century European uniqueness and superiority were taken for granted.A wide range of academic disciplines like philosophy, history, anthropology,jurisprudence, and sociology almost simultaneously and in tandem establishedtheir own episteme of European exceptionalism. In the epistemic exceptional-ism, what was ‘‘law’’ to John Austin, ‘‘science’’ to Auguste Comte, ‘‘contract’’ toSir Henry Maine, ‘‘capitalism’’ to Marx, ‘‘legal-rationality’’ and ‘‘protestant eth-ics’’ to Max Weber, was ‘‘Westphalian order’’ to international jurists. The claimof European normative exclusivity and supremacy was constructed in conjunctionwith the creation of inferiority of the Other. In this epistemic the inferiority,what was ‘‘custom’’ to John Austin, ‘‘metaphysical’’ to Auguste Comte, ‘‘status’’to Sir Henry Maine, ‘‘Asian Mode of Production’’ to Marx, ‘‘kadi justice’’ to MaxWeber, was ‘‘anarchy’’ to international jurists.

In addition to this intellectual background, the creation of the Westphalian nar-rative with its emphasis on treaties and conventions in the making of internationallaw was instrumental in the international jurists’ need to justify the existence ofinternational law when legal naturalism and its transcendental basis for law, likenatural reason, became untenable with the rise of legal positivism (Anghie2005:40–52). The ascendance of positive law (formulated by utilitarian philoso-phers such as J. Bentham, J. Austin, and J.S. Mill) over natural law in late eigh-teenth and early nineteenth century in Anglo-American jurisprudence madenatural law an unacceptable justification for international law. According to posi-tivists, the state was the ultimate and only source of law. The reduction of law-mak-ing authority to state legislation, the reduction of law-interpretation to stateadjudication, and the reduction of law–enforcing authority to state enforcement

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denied the existence of any law outside and above the state. The rise of positivistjurisprudence in international law was slow, incomplete, and contested; thoughnot every jurist was a positivist or equally committed to its principles (Koskenniemi2001; Slyvest 2007), every Anglo-American jurist did take the positivist critique ofinternational law seriously. Since the late nineteenth century, all major interna-tional law texts have addressed the legal positivists’ denial of international law, usu-ally focusing on the critique offered by John Austin (2000 [1832]).

In response to the earlier positivist claims that international law is not proper‘‘law,’’ nineteenth-century Anglo-American jurists, like Wheaton (1973 [1845]),Twiss (1884), Hall (1894), Westlake (1894), and Holland (1898), developed twolines of justification—a dualism, arguably, that still characterizes the major doc-trinal and interpretative disagreements in international law (Koskenniemi 2005[1989]). Despite the differences between these two justifications, both routinelyinvoked Westphalia to ground international law in European thought and prac-tices. The first justification was a historical one that attributed the origins ofinternational law to customary law. According to this perspective, law emergedfrom the spontaneous functioning of a society, in addition to the enactments ofa sovereign. Much of European law was customary in that it had emerged sponta-neously to regulate inter-European relations. Essentially, historical jurists reducedlaw, including international law, to the product of a European consciousnessand culture. The second justification was an analytical argument with an empha-sis on the positivist and contractual qualities of law. The analytical school justi-fied international law based on the sovereigns’ explicit consent to it. Convincedof the necessity of sovereign will in the creation of law, these jurists argued thatinternational law is law because the collectivity of states enacted the internationallaw, and each states enforced it through its domestic courts. States act with theirsovereignty when they agree on treaties. The treaty ratifications, marking the sov-ereign legislative will, elevate treaties and conventions into a form of positivelaw, thereby internationalizing positive law.

For both the historical and analytical schools, the Westphalian narrative wasindispensable. For the historical school, it represented the growth of a culturalrevolution triggered by Protestant religious ideas then combined with pre-Westphalian legal and political ideas. Philosophers like Grotius, Bodin, andHobbes offered robust theoretical justifications for sovereignty; theologians andphilosophers, like Luther, Costello, and Locke provided strong arguments forreligious tolerance, and both groups provided intellectual and cultural frame-works for customary international law. For the analytical school, the Westphaliannarrative represented the establishment of a clear break from the feudal systemof overlapping authority structures wherein rulers vied with the Holy RomanEmperor and Catholic Church in a system of exclusive territorial sovereignty.The narrative corresponded to a structure of contractual relationships, onebetween the rulers and their subjects sanctifying religious tolerance, and anotheramong rulers for upholding political tolerance. It turned the political stalemateamong the political and religious groups unleashed by the Reformation into anaffirmation of political and religious live-and-let-live policies, ending the Thirty-Year Wars. Once these Westphalian constitutional principles and institutionsbecame well-established in Europe, European rulers signed additional treatiesand conventions to further develop international law. Essentially, internationallaw of the late nineteenth century became a ‘‘Westphalian’’ international lawwhose historical development and sources were closely linked to the Peace ofWestphalia and subsequent European treaties and conventions.

The writings of nineteenth-century jurists provide many examples of the‘‘Westphalian’’ international law. As mentioned earlier, Wheaton, possibly themost prominent jurist of the first half of the nineteenth century, was particularlyinfluential in integrating a Westphalian narrative to explain the development of


European legal and political order. In his commentary on Wheaton, NicholasOnuf observes: ‘‘Wheaton adopted Vattel’s position that Europe constituted anactual international society’’ but ‘‘[h]e also took a step that neither Vattel nor,as far as I have been able to tell, anyone else before him taken[:]. . .he identifieda specifically juridical basis for a distinctively European international law’’ (Onuf2000:6). While Wheaton also noted the contribution of Europe’s Roman andChristian heritage in the development of a distinctively European internationallaw, Westphalia was the most significant factor in European distinctivenessregarding international law. In Wheaton’s (1973 [1845]: preface) view, Westpha-lia, an avowed positivist, starts by citing legal positivist Austin (2000[1832]:147–148): ‘‘It has been very justly observed that ‘international law isfound only on the opinions generally received among civilized nations, and itsduties are enforced only by moral sanctions; by fear on the part of nations, or byfear on the part of sovereigns, of provoking general hostility and incurring itsprobable evils, in case they should violate maxims generally received andrespected.’’’ Agreeing with the claim that international law could be seen as aninternational morality, Wheaton moves on to explaining European distinctive-ness regarding international law.

According to Wheaton (1973 [1845]:70) this uniqueness lays with the Peace ofWestphalia in creating the modern international law. The scope and substanceof the consequences that Wheaton (69–71) attributes to the Peace of Westphaliais remarkable. According to him, the treaty established secularism and religioustolerance, and thus ended the religious revolutions. It freed states from the reli-gious authorities of the Church and from the secular authorities of the HolyRoman Empire. It also established a right of resistance against oppressive rulers.Wheaton furthermore claims that the peace secured Germany as a safe havenfrom religious and political persecution and as a place for refugees to ‘‘appealto the public opinion of Europe’’ in case of oppression. The peace replacedEuropean customary law with the new law of Europe. The treaties also markedthe inauguration of modern diplomacy through which the European peace wasmaintained. With all these distinctive qualities, Westphalia thus established aEuropean order based on public law. Wheaton’s ‘‘Westphalian’’ internationallaw disqualified non-Western societies. In the Elements, he stats: ‘‘The Publiclaw, with slight exceptions, has always been, and still is, limited to civilized andChristian people or to those of European origin’’(Wheaton 1936 [1866]:15).

Reducing international law to European history and culture in the form of‘‘Westphalian’’ international law became widespread as the nineteenth centuryprogressed. In the second part of the century, W.E. Hall, a prominent interna-tional jurist with a strong positivist orientation, justified the existence of interna-tional law based on the strength of European culture: ‘‘it is scarcely necessary topoint out that as international law is a product of the special civilization of mod-ern Europe, and forms a highly artificial system of which the principle could notbe supposed to be understood or recognized by countries differently civilized,such states only can be presumed to be subject to it as are inheritors of that civi-lization.’’ States ‘‘outside European civilization,’’ Hall continued, ‘‘must formallyenter into the circle of law-governed countries. They must do something withthe acquiescence of the latter, or of some of them, which amounts in its entiretybeyond all possibility of misconstruction’’ (Cited in Wight 1977:115).

Sir Travers Twiss, a counsel to the British Crown and to King Leopold ofBelgium (Koskenniemi 2001:33, 108; Hocshchild 1999:71), offered a more con-tractual understanding of Westphalia. Twiss (1884:xvii) argued that Westphaliahad ‘‘laid the foundation of a new European State-System, by grouping for thefirst time together the States of Central Europe after the fashion of a family, themembers of which were acknowledged to independent, and, although ofunequal power were recognized as an equality of Right.’’ While his jurisprudence

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combined positivist and naturalist elements, he emphasized that the consent ofstates was necessary for international law (xli) and that Westphalia marked aturning point for international law because it unambiguously showed that staterulers consented to the creation of a positive international law, replacing naturallaw (155).

The above arguments are but a sampling (and one can find plenty of otherinternational jurists making similar arguments Anghie (2005:32–114) and Keal(2003:84–112), however they represented the jurisprudential consensus of thelate nineteenth century asserting European exceptionalism in establishing a dis-tinctive legal and political order promoting mutual independence and tolerance.According to the international jurists of the age of Empire, such as Wheaton,Hall, Westlake, Twiss, Lawrance, Oppenheim, Europe had formed a superiororder composed of sovereign and secular states, an order significantly shaped bythe Peace of Westphalia and the increasing number of treaties and conventionsfollowed Westphalia, making international law, in essence ‘‘Westphalian.’’

With respect to the non-Western world, this argument meant that non-Westernsocieties did not have any place in ‘‘Westphalian’’ international law, becausethese societies were not signatories to the treaties and conventions that madeinternational law. But the narrative included a vision in which non-Western socie-ties could be part of the political and legal order marked by European progress.Once in place, the order was self-perpetuating: deepening within Europe and dif-fusing out of Europe. Deepening has occurred as the international laws, norms,and institutions of Europe that Westphalia had inaugurated spilled over intoother issue areas. This led to further cooperation in Europe and to further dif-ferentiation between Europe and the rest of the international system. Diffusionhas occurred as ‘‘Westphalian’’ international law, norms, and institutions spreadto non-European areas. They spread first to the civilized American states, then tothe semi-civilized Asian states, and last to the then uncivilized African states (Bulland Watson 1984).

Apart from a few marginalized voices opposing the discriminatory interpreta-tion and application of international law and the removal of non-Western socie-ties from its realm (Pitts 2007), by the end of nineteenth century mostinternational jurists took the existence of a normative hierarchy as the naturaldivision in the international system. Combined with other nineteenth-centuryhierarchical discriminations, like scientific racism, ‘‘scientific’’ international lawallowed jurists to argue that the unique combination of rationality and culturethat existed in Europe enabled the European political order to evolve towardmore efficient outcomes, fueled by the Peace of Westphalia and bolstered by sub-sequent treaties and conventions. In contrast, the narrative encapsulated that theother societies were in disorder in terms of their political and legal system(Turner 1978; Hodgson 1993:86). In other words, the construction of Europeanexceptionalism and Orientalism were codependent. While the former elevatedthe European ‘‘order’’ as just and progressive, the latter denigrated the Orientalsystem as corrupt and decaying. Jurists constructed ‘‘Westphalian’’ internationallaw and Oriental anarchy and despotism in the same crucible. This view offereda stark image of the world; to paraphrase the seminal title of Eric Wolf’s (1982)book, this dichotomy can be understood as Westphalian Europe and peoplewithout Westphalia—that is, a non-European political space lacking the crucialdimension of international society, Westphalia, and the political and religioustolerance it generated. To justify their version of what Laura Nader (2005)labels ‘‘law and the theory of lack,’’ jurists and scholars contrasted the law-basedWestphalian international order of mutual independence and tolerance with acaricaturized image of, for example, a monolithic Islamic despotism under theauthority of the caliph with an ideology of constant warfare with non-Muslims.Likewise, the Chinese Middle Kingdom was portrayed as a territory ruled by a


self-important feudal-isolationist emperor. Non-Western societies were conse-quently, constantly, and unfairly defined by reference to a cluster of absences ofthe qualities that enabled Europeans to establish an international society.

More than simply an intellectual exercise, ‘‘Westphalian’’ international lawhad enormous political implications. As Paul Keal, in his analysis of internationalsociety and the rights of indigenous peoples, observes in the nineteenth century,‘‘political and legal thought asserted the superiority of European culture andserved to justify the dispassion of non-Europeans’’ (Keal 2003:185). In tandemwith the development of ‘‘Westphalian’’ international law and the ascendance oflegal positivism, international legal discourse in Europe became increasinglyexclusive to European societies. Keal (87–107) observes an evolutionary trend inthe deterioration of the legal status of non-European peoples in internationallaw: while prior to the seventeenth-century jurists like Gentili, Vitoria, Las Casas,Grotius, and Pufendorff recognized sovereignty in non-European peoples, eigh-teenth-century jurists like Vattel, G.F. Von Martens and some nineteenth juristslike Phillimore and Bluntschili recognized limited sovereignty of non-Europeanpeoples, most of the nineteenth-century jurists like Hall, Westlake, Lawrance,Oppenheim denied sovereign rights to non-Europeans. These nineteenth-cen-tury jurists, whose jurisprudence was influenced by legal positivism and natural-ism and whose political ideology was shaped by political liberalism (Koskenniemi2001), were often united in their support as both apologists and ideologists ofimperialism. In this sense, nineteenth-century international law was integral toEuropean domination as it justified the normative discrimination of the Westernstates against non-Western societies.

The Westphalian narrative allowed the jurists to construct a European past ofWestphalian religious and political tolerance and a non-Western past of disorderand intolerance. Once this narrative was in place, nineteenth-century interna-tional problems like the Eastern Crisis, the Far Eastern Crisis, and the barbarityof Africa became easy to identify. The appropriateness and necessity of theexpansion of European order to solve these problems logically followed. In a sig-nificant way, the perceived European superiority was predicated on theEuropean ability and willingness to expand via colonialism. From the vantagepoint of the Westphalian narrative, Western colonial expansion was the expan-sion of international society, a ‘‘civilizing process’’ for which European principlesof political and religious tolerance could be ignored (Keene 2002; Anghie 2005).For example, John Westlake argued in a 1914 British Military Manual where heagued that even the laws of war do not constrain ‘‘civilized states’’ in their warswith uncivilized societies (Megret 2006).

Compatible with the civilizing mission of nineteenth-century international jur-ists’ vision of global order, from 1840 to 1870, Britain established its informalimperialism. The economic, financial, political, and legal systems of the OttomanEmpire, China, Thailand, and Iran were increasingly constrained by decisionsmade in European capitals. European-imposed tariff regimes, the favorable treat-ment of European companies, and the European establishment of consularcourts compromised the sovereignty of non-Western states. Elsewhere I have ana-lyzed what I call legal imperialism, the processes by which Western powersexpanded their legal authority into non-Western societies (Kayaoglu 2010). Thisexpansion came through extraterritorial courts. These courts, operated in allnon-Western states for example in Japan (1856–1899), the Ottoman Empire ⁄ Tur-key (1825–1923), and China (1842–1943), created as a separate legal system forWestern citizens.

Even though these states were not formal European colonies, these courts lim-iting and denying non-Western legal authority over Western foreigners turnedthese states into, to use Mao’s term, semi-colonies. During the mid-1880s, forexample, a total of 44 Western extraterritorial courts operated in Japan’s treaty

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ports. In 1895, 32 British courts operated in the Ottoman Empire. Three dec-ades later (circa 1926), 26 British, 18 American, and 18 French courts existedChina’s ports and cities. Some of these courts like the British Her Majesty’sSupreme Court at Constantinople and the US Court for China had significantlegal authority. Legal positivism, by its categorical delegitimation of non-Westernlaw, and international jurists, by their legal tools like extraterritoriality, had a sig-nificant effect in motivating and justifying Western courts in non-Western socie-ties. Western states imposed what is known as the standard of ‘‘civilization’’ toend their extraterritorial claims, a standard established and articulated bynineteenth-century jurists (Gong 1984; Kayaoglu 2010).

While the scramble for concessions from China and the Ottoman Empireremained limited to ‘‘unequal treaties’’ of consular jurisdiction and tariff limita-tions, a new wave of imperial expansion from 1870 to 1914 brought all of Africa,with the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, under formal European imperialism(Hobsbawm 1989; Doyle 1986; Abernethy 2000).

As legal scholars Anghie (2005:65–100) and Koskenniemi (2001:110–177)argue despite the rhetoric of ‘‘the gentle civilizer of nations,’’ the involvementof European international jurists in the scramble for Africa epitomized by theBerlin Conference of 1884–1885, was anything but benign. Most of the interna-tional jurists acted like ideologists of European colonialism through the doc-trines like Westphalian sovereignty that dispossessed non-Western rights orthrough extraterritoriality policies that limited non-Western legal authority, oracted as apologists for Europe’s excessive brutality in the name of its civilizingmission and expansion of international society. In sum, international jurists wereoften complicit in, and frequently ardent supporters of, European colonialism.In addition, some current scholars of international society have offered insightfulanalyses linking the nineteenth century discourse of international society withimperialism and colonialism. For example, Keal (2003) examines what he callsthe ‘‘moral backwardness of international society’’: the role of nineteenth-centurylegal discourse in dispossessing the rights of individual peoples and facilitatingEuropean conquest. Suzuki’s (2009) interesting analysis shows how the emergenceof Japanese imperialism was rooted in Japan’s socialization into what he labels asthe ‘‘dark side’’ of international society in the late nineteenth century.

The English School’s Westphalian International Society

No group of international relations scholars has been more active in promotingthe Westphalian narrative than the English School. Since the early 1960s,members of the English School have engaged in a sustained and collective effortto articulate a historically informed and normatively progressive theory basedon the concept of international society. Working within the notion of theWestphalian international society framework, English School scholars have pro-duced studies exploring the historical foundations, expansion, and contemporaryimplications of international society. Essentially, these scholars trace the idea ofa distinctively European civilization both to Ancient Greece and the RomanEmpire. The later is particularly important as under its reign a Christian commu-nity was created. Following the secularization of this community with the Peaceof Westphalia, Europe institutionalized common principles and institutions;these took the form of international society. Following the admission of Russiaand the Americas, European imperialism expanded international society andEuropeans started to admit the non-colonized states of Asia (the OttomanEmpire, Japan, Iran, Thailand, and China) into international society uponthese states’ fulfillment of the ‘‘standards of civilization.’’ According to first gen-eration English School scholars (Bull and Watson 1984; Gong 1984; Jackson


1990), international society became truly global only after the decolonization fol-lowing the Second World War.

The existence of an international society is a foundational premise of theEnglish School (Manning 1962; Wight 1977; Bull 1977); some reviewers (Suga-nami 2000) have even suggested that the term ‘‘English School’’ is a misleadingterm for a multi-national group, and thus the ‘‘international society approach’’would be a better descriptor, since this term identifies the group’s core researchagenda. Part of the reason for the English School’s intellectual coherence wasmethodological: English School scholars emphasized diplomacy, law, history, andphilosophy in international relations theory, offering an alternative to thebehavioral-positivist framework then dominant in American internationalrelations scholarship. However, this intellectual coherence was also institutionalas scholars of The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (aRockefeller-funded committee, 1959–1984) established the core ideas and meth-odologies of what would later come to be called the English School (Dunne1998). Well-known English School scholars such as Herbert Butterfield, MartinWight, Adam Watson, and Hedley Bull, were consecutive chairs of the BritishCommittee. Over time, the number of scholars identifying themselves with theEnglish School has increased and diversified, however the emergence and evolu-tion of international society has remained the focus of their scholarship, in thewords of Barry Buzan, its flagship idea (Buzan 2004:1).

The concept of international society is particularly central to Hedley Bull’sworks. Often referred to as the classical definition of international society, Bull’sdefinition has certainly been the most influential (Bull 1977; Alderson andHurrell 2000; Bellamy 2005). The distinction between ‘‘international system’’and ‘‘international society’’ is key for Bull. States constitute an international sys-tem when their interactions influence each other’s behavior mechanically, with-out the states sharing principles and institutions to regulate their interactions.States constitute an international society when ‘‘conscious of certain commoninterest and common values…they conceive themselves to be bound by a com-mon set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working ofcommon institutions.’’ In Bull’s dualist perspective, the international system cor-responds to Hobbesian anarchy, and the international society corresponds to aLockean contractual society that features ‘‘order, regularity, predictability andlong periods of peace’’ (Cited in Alderson and Hurrell 2000:3).

On these parallel dichotomies of system ⁄ society, Hobbesian ⁄ Lockean, Bull suc-cessfully reinvents the nineteenth-century notion of the Westphalian narrative ofEuropean ⁄ non-European normative orders using a legal and historical perspec-tive. His legalism is compatible to the English School’s Grotian approach tointernational relations. As elaborated by Wight (1991) the Grotian legal-rationalapproach offers a state-centric middle way between that of Hobbesian anarchyand Kantian cosmopolitanism. Within this broader Grotian tradition, Bull furtherrefines his view of international society. Bull is particularly reliant upon nine-teenth-century international jurists, especially Oppenheim (Bull 1966).

Bull substantiates the nineteenth century legalistic notion of international soci-ety with a Eurocentric history, following the German historian A.H.L. Hareen(Keene 2002:22–29). As Alderson and Hurrell (2000:4) argue, for Bull, the Euro-pean origins of international society are ‘‘a matter of historical fact.’’ Westphaliais key in this history because ‘‘[t]he idea of international society, which Grotiuspropounded was given concrete expression in the Peace of Westphalia’’ (Bull1992:75). The Peace of Westphalia marked ‘‘the emergence of an internationalsociety as distinct from a mere international system, the acceptance by states ofrules and institutions binding on them in their relations with one another, andof a common interest in maintaining them’’ (Bull 1992:75–76). According toBull (1992:77–78), Westphalia removed the problem of religious conflict and

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affirmed a ‘‘general commitment to peaceful coexistence.’’ The treatiesadvanced ‘‘external sovereignty,’’ ‘‘internal sovereignty’’ and curtailed thehegemonic efforts of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church.Moreover, ‘‘the Westphalian treaties demonstrated…that the independence ofsovereignty of states was not incompatible with their subjection to law or theirrecognition of the common bonds of society.’’ In essence, Westphalia createdthe European order by providing ‘‘a kind of constitutional foundation of inter-national society’’ (Bull 1992:77).

The English School’s Westphalian international society in general and Bull’sapproach in particular have been criticized for their Eurocentrism (Keal 2003;Suzuki 2009). Several scholars (Cutler 1991; Kingsbury 1997 ⁄ 1998; Bartelson1996; and Keene 2002) note the problems with Bull’s anachronistic interpreta-tion of Grotius as the first theorist of international society. For example, Keene(2002:35–38) argues that Bull’s state-centric and positivist notion of internationalsociety imposes a ‘‘peculiarly narrow and twisted perspective of order in modernworld politics’’ onto Grotius by squeezing ‘‘Grotius’ extremely eclectic and wideranging account of the law of nations into a small box.’’ Moreover, as critics likeSuzuki (2009), Keal (2003), and, more elaborately, Keene (2002) argue, theEurocentric conceptualization of international society allowed the English Schoolscholars to ignore the function of international society outside of Europe. In par-ticular, international society discourse equated European international societywith political and religious tolerance and, conversely, equated non-European sys-tems with political disorder and religious intolerance. With this dualism, theEurocentric notion of international society was invoked to promote the ‘‘stan-dard of civilization.’’ thereby legitimizing colonialism (Keene 2002: chapter 4),dispossessing the rights of indigenous people (Keal 2003), and even socializingJapan into an imperialist state (Suzuki 2009).

While Suzuki (2009) and Keene (2002) identify problems associated with thenormative divergence that the notion of international society presumes betweenEurope and Europe’s relations with those deemed outsiders and while thesescholars provide incisive critiques of the English School’s notion of internationalsociety, they fall short in theorizing the relationship between different aspects ofinternational society. For example, Keene largely treats dualism in the workingsof the international society’s European and extra-European spheres as unrelatedto each other, neglecting to examine how the construction of the Europeaninternational society of tolerance may have presupposed the view of non-European societies as intolerant. Similarly, Suzuki refers to imperialism as the‘‘dark side’’ of international society without elaborating how this ‘‘dark side’’and a presumably ‘‘good side’’ of international society have been related. Theanalyses of Keal (2003) and Callahan (2004), however, rightly suggest that differ-ent aspects of international society have been complementary. They arguethat European self-identification depended on various European other-identifica-tions; the assertion of the complete superiority and exceptionalism of theEuropean political and legal order has necessitated the European willingness tospread it, even if the process of civilizing non-European societies frequentlyrequires some evil.

The political impetus that gave rise to the first generation of English Schoolscholars was decolonization, namely the possibility of sustaining the internationalorder that European imperialism had created in the postcolonial world. This wasassociated with an anxiety that a non-Western ‘‘revolt’’ could further challengeWestern dominance and values (Callahan 2004). Once the notion of interna-tional society was secured within European history and values, this perspectivefacilitates a pessimistic scenario: any non-Western disagreement with the Westis potentially also a revolt against Western values. A revolt against Westernvalues can destroy the foundations of the international society. Bull believed


international society and international law were in decline in part because of anon-Western revolt against Western values (Bull 1984).

The second generation of English School scholars refined and elaborated thevarious aspects of international society (Bellamy 2005; Linklater and Suganami2006). One issue of scholarly debate is the normative scope of international soci-ety: so-called solidarists and pluralists differ on this point. The pluralists’ empha-sis on state sovereignty allows only a thin version of international society(Jackson 2000); the solidarists’ emphasis on shared norms, values, and institu-tions overriding state sovereignty allows a thicker version of international society(Clark 2005; Wheeler 2005).

In the rest of this section, I discuss Clark’s solidarist theory of internationalsociety and Jackson’s pluralist one, both of which are rooted in the EnglishSchool tradition. Although they represent different versions of international soci-ety, the Westphalian narrative remains central to both of them: each scholaridentifies the most important principles of contemporary international society(legitimacy to Clark and pluralism to Jackson) and then traces these principlesback to the Peace of Westphalia. With these ‘‘Westphalian’’ legitimacy and‘‘Westphalian’’ global covenant, each to varying degrees reproducing a Eurocen-tric account of international history and structure.

According to Ian Clark, the most important principle of international societyis legitimacy. Legitimacy shapes, and in turn is shaped by, rules about member-ship and conduct in international society. But legitimacy is an elusive concept.Clark argues that legitimacy is a product of diverse factors that include the distri-bution of power as well as moral, legal, constitutional, and international pro-cesses. While the definition of legitimacy, the defining characteristic ofinternational society, remains amorphous, its origins are clear to Clark: the Peaceof Westphalia (Clark 2005:51–70). The scope of membership in internationalsociety has evolved from Westphalia’s early exclusion of papal authority to con-temporary international society’s exclusion of non-democratic states. Similarly,rules about the use of power in international society have also evolved within theEuropean ⁄ Western state system. In Clark’s account legitimacy emerges andevolves solely within a Western system. In this narrative of ‘‘Westphalian’’ legiti-macy, European powers were largely responsible for the evolution and imple-mentation of this legitimacy prior to World War II, while the United Statesbecame the engine of legitimacy after World War II (Clark 2005:131–54). In thepost-Cold War era, democratic governance is required for membership in inter-national society. Yet membership in contemporary international society alsorequires adherence to a new set of standards of civilization including compliancewith human rights norms and the implementation of free-market economic prin-ciples (173–90).

Clark (2005:33, 36) states his concerns with problems of Eurocentrism in theo-rizing international relations. Yet Clark reproduces it through his use of the West-phalian narrative and the normative categories associated with the narrative it. Heessentially produces what can be called a narrative of ‘‘Westphalian’’ legitimacy tocorrespond international legitimacy. Based on almost exclusively European diplo-matic history, his analysis of the origins, development, and evolution of legitimacymarginalizes non-Western societies. He does not discuss how non-Western, non-European societies develop concepts of legitimacy and how these differentnotions may be similar to or different from Western types of legitimacy. Worse,the only time these societies are included in the narrative is to show how thesenon-Western societies violated the principle of legitimacy and thus are deniedmembership in international society and sanctioned by Western states. As theobject of ‘‘Westphalian’’ legitimacy, their contribution to the development ofinternational legitimacy is minimal and passive, serving as foil for the coreWestern states that are the authors of the ‘‘Westphalian’’ legitimacy. Since

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Westphalia, core Western states, possessing an unquestioned claim on legitimacy,have interpreted and applied the legitimacy principle in part in their encounterswith non-Western societies; whereas non-Western states, lacking this legitimacy,have been subjected to Western interpretations and applications of the legitimacyprinciple. Once the dichotomous normative framework was established in Clark’stheory of legitimacy, deviations among core European and Western states wereframed as instances of reinterpretation and contestation of the legitimacy princi-ple while the deviations of non-Western states from Western-expected behaviorshave been framed as non-Western violations of the legitimacy principle.

In Robert Jackson’s idea of international society, the most important elementis pluralism, and he traces this back to the Peace of Westphalia. For his pluralisttheory of international society, he takes international legal sovereignty, territorialintegrity, and non-intervention as givens and theorizes a thin transnational nor-mative content from these basic principles (Jackson 2000:16–25). In his view, thenarrow scope of international society reduces the possibility of value conflictsassociated with the difficulty of building international consensus on issues wherecultural perspectives may vary. Jackson unequivocally rejects a thick understand-ing of international society because it fosters paternalism, the tendency of impos-ing one’s preferred values onto others. For example he correctly notes that thecivilizing missions of the late nineteenth century and the articulation of ‘‘stan-dards of civilization’’ illustrate this paternalism (412–416). Also figuring promi-nently in Jackson’s arguments is the reciprocal recognition of sovereignty andstate-centrism; this emphasizes the centrality of the great powers. This centralityis not incompatible with his anti-paternalism because great power privileges arelimited to the organization of international security rather than to the organiza-tion of the cultures of the lesser powers, a view that accommodates some degreeof global pluralism.

While Jackson supports pluralism, his narrative of the emergence, spread, andevolution of pluralism remains grounded in the Westphalian narrative (162–5,419–26). He argues that the Peace of Westphalia has symbolized the emergenceof a pluralist ethos. Initially, this pluralism was a religious one, based on a rejec-tion of Latin Christendom’s universalist claims in order to accommodate reli-gious pluralism. Eventually, however, this pluralism symbolized a more expansivepolitical transformation: ‘‘as a reconstitution of European politics from that of auniversitas, based on the solidarist norms of Latin Christendom, to that of a societ-as, based on the pluralist norms of state sovereignty, on political independence’’(164). In other words, Jackson equates the Westphalian narrative with the accom-modation of global pluralism like a global covenant. Essentially he offers a narra-tive and theory of ‘‘Westphalian’’ covenant advancing global pluralism.

Jackson’s commitment to the Westphalian narrative makes even a pluralist ver-sion of international society Eurocentric. Some of this ethnocentric bias surfaceswhen he, perhaps unwittingly, stereotypes Islam by pairing ‘‘democracy,’’ a formof political tolerance, with ‘‘jihad,’’ a form of political and religious intolerance.These are the examples in his argument against paternalism, where ‘‘democ-racy’’ defines and represents Western political value and ‘‘jihad’’ defines andrepresents Islamic political values (182, 368).4 Like other English School schol-ars, he recognizes the Eurocentric roots of his theory of pluralism, but does notbelieve its Eurocentrism invalidates his theory: ‘‘[A]lthough global covenant ishistorically rooted in particular civilization, that of post-medieval Europe, it is nolonger associated with exclusively with Western civilization as it still laws as

4Of course ‘‘Jihad’’ has many different meanings, and Jackson does not define which one he is using. However,the context in which he uses it suggests he defines it as ‘‘holy war,’’ and not as spiritual striving, which is how manyMuslims would define it.


recently as 1945. It now it serves as a bridge between the diverse cultures and civ-ilizations of the contemporary world’’ (24–25).

Although Jackson’s attempt to accommodate global pluralism is a step in theright direction, it falls short. International demands for cultural and civiliza-tional recognition, accommodation, and representation cannot be solved byconfining these demands within the boundaries of the state. Nor can demandsfor cultural and civilizational recognition be solved by accepting the Westerninvention of ‘‘global’’ covenant, thereby privileging Western states in the pro-cess of the interpreting and changing the ‘‘global’’ covenant. Originating indiverse moral traditions, an increasing number of global voices (manifestingthemselves in various UN agendas, such as Dialogue of Civilizations, interfaithdialogues) are seeking a global dialogue and to negotiate principles of interna-tional society as equals (for more on cultural diversity and international society,see Falk 2000: chapter 8; Dallmayr and Manoochehri 2007; Sullivan andKymlicka 2008).

In sum, the Westphalian narrative seems to do a disservice to the notion ofinternational society. Most harmed by the use of this narrative are the EnglishSchool scholars whose scholarship relies extensively on European exceptionalism.By acknowledging the importance of the values, norms, and institutions thatstates share, and theorizing how values, norms, and institutions shape interna-tional relations, the English School has advanced our understanding of interna-tional relations and created a vision for a more stable and peaceful internationalsystem. However, the commitment of English School scholars to the Westphaliannarrative prevents them both from exploring the contribution of non-Westernnormative and historical sources adequately, apart from passing references tothese contributions (Bull and Watson 1984:6), and from theorizing about cross-cultural interactions in contemporary international relations.

Constructivist Westphalian Eurocentrism

Like the English School, constructivism stresses the role of culture, ideas, andhistorical contingencies in explaining world politics (Alderson and Hurrell2000:29–46; Reus-Smit 2002). While the roots of the English School lie withinthe European legal and philosophical tradition, the emergence of constructivismis related to critical international relations theory (Ashley 1989, Walker 1993).Critical theorists were united in their rejection of taking international structuresand state interests as givens. Rather, they believe that international structures,state identitie and interests are constructed through the interaction of variousstate and nonstate actors. These interactions are largely a reflection of worldviewand shared ideas among these actors and the larger ideational context makingthese interactions possible (Ruggie 1998, Biersteker and Weber 1996). By fixingdomestic authority within states and establishing international sovereignty as ashared understanding among sovereign-territorial states, Westphalian order has afundamental place in constituting international structure.

Although constructivists differ on which ideas are the most relevant in explain-ing the consolidation of the Westphalian order, a broader consensus existswhereby of the consolidation of the Westphalian order and other types ofsystem-wide normative changes are seen as two-step processes: the emergenceof norms in Europe and then their subsequent diffusion to non-European enti-ties through state socialization. Essentially, international norms like sovereignty,secularism, and human rights emerge from the norm-generating European core,and then diffuse into the norm-receiving non-European periphery. Core statesuse a variety of means (socialization, shaming, persuasion, coercion) to inducenon-Western states to comply with Western identities, ideas, and norms. By aturn of circular logic, Western and non-Western dualism and categories are used

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to re-invent the Westphalian narrative, and then the narrative is used to justifyfurther dualism.

For example, this two-step approach—most visible in constructivist studies onhuman rights (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink1999)—limits the emergence of international norms geographically (Europe)and normatively (the Enlightenment ideals) and results in several problems.First this view leads them to either ignore the non-Western ideas and norms oracknowledge them only to illustrate their incompatibility of the WesternWestphalian ones that embodies political and religious tolerance, like that ofChinese suzerainty system or Ottoman Empire’s alleged ‘‘house of war’’ versus‘‘house of peace’’ jihad-oriented Islamic worldview (Spruyt 1994:16–17, Philpott2001:15–20). Second, the two-step approach allows scholars to ignore the sys-tematic European practices that are incompatible with the Enlightenment ide-als such as Western colonization and imperialism. Third, this two-step dualismcauses the constructivist scholars to discount the role of power asymmetry innorm-construction by isolating norm-construction from the categories of norm-exclusion. Only after distancing themselves from the concerns of those who areexcluded and disempowered, can constructivists move to emphasize shared ideaswhich in turn suggests that norm-construction is an empowering process lead-ing to superior outcomes allegedly for all (Kurki-Sinclair 2010). As a result,constructivist arguments for norm-construction may inadvertently—butsystematically—marginalize and stigmatize non-European norms, values, andinstitutions.

These problems also appear in the constructivists’ interpretation of the Peaceof Westphalia as pivotal in the construction of the international system. Amongconstructivist scholars, Alexander Wendt and Daniel Philpott are most explicit intheir Eurocentrism. Unlike the English School scholars, who more or less sharecommon theoretical assumptions, institutional affiliations, and identification as agroup, constructivists are a more diverse group whose foundational assumptionsare disputed. For example, Reus-Smit (2001) divides constructivists into conven-tional and critical categories and further sub-divides the critical category intomodernist and postmodernist camps. These groups also differ regarding the nat-ure of the international system and the centrality of the Westphalian narrative.Both Wendt and Philpott can be called conventional as they try to construct agrand theory of international relations. In addition, both of them adhere, tovarying degrees, to the Westphalian narrative, Wendt both metaphorically andhistorically, and Philpott historically.

Wendt’s social identity theory of international relations emphasizes the changeand evolution of international structures. According to Wendt, shared knowledgeabout state identities is more important than the distribution of material capabil-ities enabling and constraining interstate interactions. Wendt’s theory reinventsthe Westphalian narrative by creating ideal-type categories based on what he calls‘‘cultures of anarchy,’’ a tripartite typology of international structures—Hobbes-ian, Lockean, and Kantian. This typology invokes the English School’s categoriesand thus indirectly links Wendt to the nineteenth-century international jurists’categories of European civilized ⁄ Asian barbarians ⁄ African savages. In Wendt’stypology, Hobbesian anarchy is a system in which states take on the role ofenemy with respect to each other; this system is identified with unmitigated vio-lence. According to Wendt, Hobbesian anarchy describes significant portions ofinternational history, except for the post-Westphalian European ⁄ Western system.Wendt’s Hobbesian anarchy is therefore similar to Bull’s international system.What distinguishes Wendt’s theory is his argument that this state of war is consti-tuted by shared ideas of enmity, not by the logic of anarchy or human nature(Wendt 1999:260).


Wendt’s argument elevates the European order not only categorically but alsosubstantially. In Wendt’s analysis of cultures of anarchy and the progress withinthe hierarchy of cultures of anarchy, Westphalia is crucial. In this line of think-ing, Westphalia transformed a culture of anarchy in Europe from a Hobbesian(enmity) one to a Lockean (rivals) one. In particular, two features identified withWestphalia were important in this shift (279–97). First ‘‘Westphalian’’ statesdeveloped a capability of political restraint, a form of political tolerance, andstarted to treat other states like rivals, not enemies. Second ‘‘Westphalian’’ statesaccepted a set of norms (like the Just War Theory), and a also a different one(like that of the ‘‘standards of civilization’’) dealing with non-Westphalian states.After establishing Lockean anarchy as the dominant quality of post-WestphalianEurope, Wendt minimizes elements that are inconsistent with Lockean anarchypresumably has operated in Europe since the Peace of Westphalia. For example,he argues that despite the dominance of Lockean anarchy in Europe, Europeanstates occasionally fell back into Hobbesian anarchy, during the NapoleonicWars, the First World War, and the Second World War among others. In addi-tion, he concedes that European states used the logic of Hobbesian anarchy topursue colonization. But in Wendt’s account these are treated as isolatedfallbacks that do not disqualify his conclusion of post-Westphalian Europedominated by a logic of Lockean anarchy and its self-restraint.

However, according to Wendt, it is Kantian anarchy, in which states have inter-nalized the role of friend. Hence Kantian anarchy represents the highest stage ofthe ‘‘culture of anarchy;’’ this is exemplified by the post-World World II behaviorof the North Atlantic states (Wendt 1999:297).5

Three aspects of Wendt’s theory are remarkably Eurocentric. First, WhileWendt (242–3) accepts the possibility that Kantian international culture is ‘‘mul-tiply realizable’’ through, for example, ‘‘Islamic states,’’ ‘‘socialist states,’’ and‘‘Asian Way states,’’ he exclusively focuses on Western states and explains theevolution of the European international system from the Hobbesian state of nat-ure into a Kantian peace. According to Wendt (354), values like self-restraint,that ‘‘essence of civilization,’’ is an enabling factor in the realization of otherimportant factors (homogeneity, interdependence, common fate). According toWendt, self-restraint, a form of political tolerance, is most likely to be found indemocratic states. Second, in addition to self-restraint, Wendt identifies homoge-neity, common fate, and interdependence (most likely, to be found in capitalistsocieties, he agues) as being necessary for states to develop what he calls ‘‘proso-cial behavior’’ required for Kantian anarchy. Thus, it is difficult to see how histheory allows for a diversity of political forms. Since states identities are formed,Wendt (1999:366) claims, through imitation and social learning, and since the‘‘Western way’’ appears to be the preeminent model of behavior in Kantian anar-chy, non-Western states needed to ‘‘socialize’’ into the Western internationalorder to realize Kantian anarchy. Third, Wendt also, in a Eurocentric blindness,ignores imperialism. His references to the mechanisms of imitation and socializa-tion through which units develop collective identities ignore the coercive natureof the ‘‘expansion’’ of ‘‘international society.’’ Somewhat unsurprisingly, hisSocial Theory of International Relations does not even have an index entry for impe-rialism or colonialism.

Compared to Wendt’s structural-cultural approach and his metaphorical use ofthe Westphalian narrative, Daniel Philpott offers a Weberian ideational accountthat reconstructs the Westphalian narrative as a historical claim. Philpott (2001)examines the role of social justice ideas in the emergence of the modern statesystem with a particular focus on two ‘‘revolutions’’ in international society. The

5Chacko (2008) offers a critique of Wendt’s use of ‘‘anarchy.’’ Schmidt (1998) offers a similar critique for theconcept of anarchy in international relations theory.

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first revolution began with the Protestant Reformation and culminated with thePeace of Westphalia, ending medieval Christendom and bringing about a systemof sovereign states in Europe. The second revolution sprang from the postwarideas of equality and colonial nationalism, ending the colonial empires andbringing sovereignty to the rest of international system. In both cases, revolutionsin ideas about legitimate political authority profoundly altered the ‘‘constitu-tion’’ that established basic authority in the international system. These revolu-tions stemmed from earlier understandings of justice and political authority.In Philpott’s theory of change, new ideas challenge the legitimacy of existingorder leading to crises, and thus trigger a revolution that creates a new order.

To show the autonomous influence of ideas apart from material factors inhis claims of ‘‘Westphalia as origin’’ and ‘‘no Reformation, no Westphalia,’’ (8)Philpott relies on scholarship concerning social movements and internationalnorms. In so doing, he delineates the dual role of ideas in politics (48–51). Intheir first role, ideas create identities when people internalize new ideas andform social movements, including interest groups, lobbies, and parties. In theirsecond role, when a significant number of people accept the new ideas, the ideasturn into a form of social power, persuading rulers to change their policiesincluding forming a new international constitution, supporting new internationalnorms, values, and institutions. In the context of the Westphalian Revolution,Philpott (108) holds that the Protestant ideas ‘‘lay the prescription for the newWestphalian order.’’ In an attempt to link Protestant theology and what can becalled as ‘‘Westphalian’’ freedom, he points to central Protestant tenets such asjustification by faith, salvation through grace, and the complete and uniqueauthority of scripture in creating a new understanding of political authority(104–10).

On this alleged Westphalian foundation, Philpott interprets decolonization asthe second revolution in the creation of the modern international order. Theprinciple of freedom, which Westphalia symbolizes, establishes an ideational linkbetween the Westphalian and decolonization revolutions. While the principle of‘‘Westphalian’’ freedom did not prevent European states from denying this prin-ciple of freedom to non-European societies, according to Philpott, after about athree-century interval, Western elites conceded the colonized peoples’ rights tofreedoms associated with Westphalia and thus Protestant religious principles,resulting in decolonization.

Philpott’s commitment to the Westphalian narrative slants his account ofdecolonization. For example, the most important elements of this normativechallenge to colonialism happen in the Western international system and in thedomestic politics of imperial metropoles and only secondarily among colonialpopulations themselves (chapter 9). In Philpott’s view, even colonial demandsfor independence have European roots, such as the education the colonial elitereceived in the metropoles or the fact that the metropoles established the institu-tions and the principles of equality that the Church had embraced (193). Localideas, norms, and religions do not play any significant role in Philpott’s study ofdecolonization. Even if some (very few) of the actors of the decolonization move-ment are non-Western, their ideas, inspirations, and models are markedly Wes-tern and can be traced back to ideas propagated by theologians andphilosophers of the Reformation and Westphalia. In Philpott’s international his-tory, every freedom enhancing idea and incident is traced back to the Peace ofWestphalia and thus to the Protestant reformation. Conversely, the problems inchronology, the undesirable behaviors of post-Westphalian Western societies, andthe contributions of non-Western ideas and events in the creation of interna-tional society are explained away, if not totally neglected.

In conventional constructivist studies, the centrality of progress and civilizationappear in the form of the Westphalian narrative; with this assumed truth,


constructivist scholars like Wendt and Philpott reinvent and celebrate the trium-phal image of the West based on the concept of Westphalian international soci-ety. Using the Westphalian narrative, they see the origin, development, andcontemporary structure of international society in solely Eurocentric terms. Thisfoundational narrative assumes that the rest of the world has benefited from thespread and imposition of Western values and civilization; this foundational narra-tive transforms itself into a constitutional argument when it posits that non-Wes-tern societies continue to benefit from the spread and imposition of Westernideas such as modernization, state-building, and human rights. This commitmentto the Westphalian narrative limits the usefulness of constructivist insights aboutthe importance of ‘‘shared’’ values in international system and prevents themconstructivists acknowledging how these norms, like human rights, can beaffirmed and supported by non-liberal, non-Western traditions.

Conclusion

International relations scholarship is shaped both by the political and the ideo-logical affinities of international relations scholars (Oren 2003), but also, andperhaps more significantly, by arguments about the superiority of Western valuesand political systems. This presumption of superiority is embedded in the stan-dard historical reference points of the discipline’s description of internationalrelations, descriptions which are drawn almost exclusively from Europe’s internalhistory. This distortion influences theorizing about modern international rela-tions because it presents European thought and practices as the engine of theinternational system and as the source of enlightenment, modernity, democracy,sovereignty, and human rights. Contemporary international relations theoryremains caught in the notion that the West sets the standard for civilized humanconduct; Western liberal democracies are constantly treated as the only entitiescapable of bringing any sort of order to the system.

This ethnocentrism is most evident in the international relations scholars’acceptance of the Westphalian narrative to explain the origins and developmentof international society. Nineteenth-century jurists and some contemporary inter-national relations scholars follow strikingly similar strategies. They identify oneelement associated with political and religious tolerance, broadly correspondingto the ideas of sovereignty and secularism, and they credit the Peace of Westphaliaas the origin of that particular value. This value is international law for the nine-teenth-century international jurists, legitimacy to Clark, pluralism to Jackson, self-restraint to Wendt, and freedom to Philpott. Once these scholars have attributedthese values to Westphalia, they then explicitly reconstruct an international historyin which European societies are assumed to inherit these values from Westphalia.Progress is then defined in terms of progressive refinement of these values. Thesescholars also reconstruct, explicitly or implicitly, a secondary history dealing withnon-Western societies without Westphalia, societies thereby lacking these values.Finally, for European societies, behaviors consistent with these values are attrib-uted to the European political system and culture while behaviors inconsistentwith them are presented as unimportant, caused by external and situational fac-tors. The opposite is true for non-Western societies: behaviors consistent withthese values (law, legitimacy, pluralism, self-restraint, freedom) are attributed toexternal and European influences in these societies while their behaviors inconsis-tent with these values are attributed to their history, religion, and culture.

This skewed understanding of international history and relations is indicativeof the Eurocentrism of international relations scholarship. This Eurocentrismprevents international relations scholars from envisioning the integration ofnon-Western societies in a way that does not involve coercion, domination, andan assumption of Western superiority. There is a great need to broaden and

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deepen global values. The way forward is to investigate how non-Western tradi-tions of political and religious tolerance, like those of the Ottoman millet sys-tem, the Chinese tributary systems, and Mughal Emperor Akhbar’s religiouspluralism or contemporary calls for the coexistence of civilizations or interfaithdialogue, can be appreciated and incorporated into international society. Suchrefocus can facilitate the non-Western affirmation of international society, thepromotion of its fundamental values of peace, development, tolerance, andhuman rights.

International relations theory without Westphalia may open new researchagendas for international relations scholars in three specific ways. First, movingaway from the Westphalian narrative allows a critical evaluation of the emergenceof sovereignty and norms in the international system. If the revisionist scholar-ship is correct that many of the so-called Westphalian norms are a product ofthe nineteenth century, the age of empire (Hobsbawm 1989), then imperialismshould be integral, not incidental, to the emergence of norms in the interna-tional system. Yet the current norm and sovereignty literature emphasizes cul-tural and contractual evolution and ignores the role of power dynamics in normconstruction. Integrating non-European areas into a reexamination of the emer-gence of so-called Westphalian norms, such as sovereignty, may open new ave-nues for examining the nexus of power and ideas. For example, a norm analysisshould address not only how norms benefit the group members but also howthey weaken the ones excluded, rather than treating such exclusion as given.Thinking beyond the Westphalian narrative will shift the attention from the lar-gely functionalist and evolutionary understanding of international society whichemphasizes linear, steady progress to one that better integrates power and inter-est and which indicates the contested and politicized nature of the concept ofinternational society and its various incarnations.

Second, imperialism has been one of the most influential forces shaping worldpolitics. Yet, imperialism remains marginal for many English school scholars andconstructivists. This neglect that comes with emphasizing the Westphalian order,misrepresents the current world order as one based on sovereign equality despitethe pervasiveness of imperial influences and the legacies present in many postco-lonial states. Greater recognition and awareness of international society’s impe-rial origins and its reproduction of the imperial world order can produce betteranalyses of imperialism in the twenty-first century (Jones 2006).

Third, thinking beyond Westphalia offers historical picture of the developmentof the international system that recognizes the interdependence among differentregional systems and acknowledges the need to accommodate global diversityand pluralism. The idea of international society can be indispensable forachieving the universal ideals of peace and the promotion of human rights. TheWestphalian narrative inhibits the legitimacy and efficacy of the notion ofinternational society because of its inherent dualism: it designates ‘‘the West’’ asprimary creator of the ideas of international society and identifies the otherstates as those that must be coerced and coaxed into conforming and complyingwith these ideas. Rather, a truly global international society needs to appeal toand be affirmed by diverse ethical traditions, such as the Chinese, Indian, Jewish,and Islamic (Mapel and Nardin 1998; Sullivan and Kymlicka 2008). Such appealand affirmation requires a prior understanding about what these traditions con-tributed to the development of international society and how they can providetheir own rationales for the necessity of and value in international society. A seri-ous consideration of these diverse traditions could take the form of what JohnRawls (1996) calls an ‘‘overlapping consensus’’ over the substance of interna-tional society. As it now stands, the Westphalian narrative prevents the emer-gence of a genuine cross-civilizational dialogue on how best to achieve politicaland religious tolerance in international society.


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