*Originally published in 2017. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

This feature is for the new student interested in becoming familiar with the study of International Relations (IR) and also for students struggling to grasp how IR fits together as a whole. The aim is to show how the different parts of IR fit together as an intellectual whole in such a way that it enables the student’s intellectual participation in the study. As an intellectual whole, IR is based in questions. One of my best teachers once suggested that we academic students of IR might do well to think of ourselves as ‘children of Vattel’. How we think about IR finds an intellectual wellspring in Emmerich de Vattel’s questions about the law of nations. It comes out of his distinction between ‘necessary’ and ‘voluntary’ laws, those that all nations abide, necessarily, involuntarily, vs. those that nations construct and agreed to.[1] In this distinction we find an early expression of the kinds of questions we as academic IR students ask: What goes on amongst nations necessarily, and what does not? What goes on amongst nations voluntarily, and what cannot? Today we study more than nations, but it is these kinds of questions that bring parts of our intellectual study together – what, why, and how we study IR. For example, it is a finding of our study that wars have not occurred amongst democratic nations. Is this necessarily so? And, can a democratic peace be made amongst all nations? It is these kinds of questions about what does, can, and cannot go on in international relations that give academic students of IR an intellectual footing. The student thinks about IR in an academic way by posing these kinds of questions. IR is a specialist study. Like in Medicine or Law, each student finds their special expertise, and the student reader should begin to find what their expertise might be, via the IR questions they are concerned with. In this respect, some of this brief general introduction is an exploration of how the specialist parts form a whole, but it is also about how the whole forms the parts.

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What? - International Systems

What is it that we study in IR? What are Vattel’s questions about? Of all the things in the cosmos, from the physics of black holes and quantum mechanics, to art, language, and music, and the biological diversity of species, students of IR study international systems. When I say international systems, I mean more than modern nation-states. I mean systems of political entities broadly speaking, those that are made up of groups of people, with some durability, like clans, city-states, empires, or the nation-states of modern times. International Relations is about the study of the relations of these collective political “units”. When two or more political units relate and interact on a regular basis, they form a system, a system being the context of regular relations amongst multiple units. This is what I mean by an “international system”. I use the term because it has some precedence, and it also finds a balance, as a term, between being too abstract and too specific.[2] The term “international” was coined by Jeremy Bentham, in modern times, but for the majority of human history, humankind has been organized into bands and clans. This form of political organization is not “national” but it is about multiple political units that interact on a regular basis, through trade, diplomacy, war, etc. This is part of what IR is about too. Many modern indigenous peoples, a significant portion of humankind, in every continent, are still organized in this form and conduct regular relations, forming systems, amongst one another, as well as with the new nation-states.

In ancient history, with agriculture and other inventions, humankind built up different kinds of units with larger numbers, the first of which were the city-states of the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent. After these emerged empires. The first of these imperial units was Sargon’s Akkadian empire, that conquered the city-states of Mesopotamia. An empire, properly speaking, is one unit dominating one or more other units. In international systems, empires are the predators, preying upon weaker units. After the organization of bands and clans, empires are the second most common form of political organization in human history, dominating international systems from remote history up to contemporary times. Modern nation-states can be empires too, like the empire of France that expanded through imperialism dominating other units. In addition to these units, there are also a variety of non-state units that are not “peoples”, but which have a life in the system. These are the small fish that still play a role in the system. The Oracle at Delphi, for example, in ancient Greece, had influential relations with all the Greek city-states. In Medieval times, the Knights Templar, for example, were not a people, but formed something of a political unit nonetheless, having relations with kingdoms and empires. In modern times, these small fish have taken on various bureaucratic forms. One form is the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Another form of non-state unit is the International Organization (IO), like the secretariat and organs of the United Nations, the European Union, and older Organization of American States. These units are not states or peoples, but they are political units, with political agendas and political relations. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are included in the category of non-state units as well.

Different kinds of units have different internal forms, different kinds of internal politics, but, as students of IR, we are interested in the forms in which the units relate to one another, the pattern of their regular relations. This pattern or form of relations is often referred to as the structure of the system. Martin Wight gave us two categories of systemic forms: sovereign and suzerain.[3] We can also use the language of anarchy and hierarchy that Kenneth Waltz used to describe these categories. Sovereign systems are relations of multiple units that recognize none of the others as superior. In this abstract sense, they have no ruler, no arkhon, they are, categorically speaking, anarchical. The city-state system of ancient Greece is the usual example of this kind of systemic structure. Each city-state defended its independence. Suzerain systems by contrast have some units, often one imperial unit, that rules the system as a recognized superior to the rest. Suzerain systems have a hierarchical structure. The tributary system of China is often given as an example of a suzerain system, where imperial China was thought to stand at the centre of the cosmos, with a divine mandate, issuing out in circles of civilization. In historical experience, systems have almost always been a mixed type, where some units wish to be suzerains, whilst others resist, and relations have a complex form.

In sum, there are several kinds of political units: clans, city-states, empires, nation-states, and variety of non-state units. These units, through regular relations of trade, warfare, and diplomacy, form international systems that have, categorically speaking, two kinds of forms: anarchic and hierarchic. In practice, political units are almost always a complex mix of the two. This, in general, is much of what international relations are.

Examples of past systems give us a stock of evidence to think about our questions of what does, can, and cannot go on in international relations.[4] I will provide brief illustrative examples here to cement the idea of an international system, with different kinds of structural forms, and a number of kinds of units. Most of human history, when the majority of humankind was organized as bands and clans, is prehistory, unrecorded. Its record is mostly one of the vast migrations in remote human history. The recorded history of the ancient and classical world has many international systems. The general trend, ever since the invention of the wheel and the sail, has been towards larger more expansive systems, where technology enables regular relations amongst units at ever-greater distances.

The Mesopotamian system connected, later, with ancient Egypt, altogether forming the basis of the Amarna System, stretching from Egypt and its western and southern frontiers, into relations with the Babylon, Hatti, and Asyria.[5] This system was neither entirely hierarchical nor anarchical, and was more of a “secondary” system of systems, where each empire dominated their realm but formed relations amongst one another as well. In their diplomatic correspondence, Egyptian Pharaohs, for instance, were referred to as ‘brother’, by their imperial counterparts, but the Pharoahs recognized no equal, referring to everyone else as ‘sons’. The structure of the system was not clearly settled amongst all parties.

Periods of the tributary system of China illustrate a contrasting case. China itself formed an international system, particularly in its Warring States Period of history. Yet, its unification, especially in the Han Dynasty, began the development of a hierarchical system in the region. China, as an imperially unified unit, came to occupy the top/center of the hierarchical order, in a larger Confucian civilization that tributary states were members of.

The Mayan city-states system is a fascinating example, because so little is known of it. The Mayan city-states appear to have been independent and recognizing no superior, although some were more militarily and economically powerful, with evidence of hegemonic powers. These city-states engaged in trade, diplomacy, and warfare. An interesting practice of this system is that when an alliance was made between two city-states, it is said that a road was built between them, likely of symbolic and practical military and economic importance.

The early modern system of European empires was the first worldwide system, eventually connecting all the rest. Its structure was hierarchical. Amongst the European states no superior was recognized, but they mutually recognized their superiority over the rest. Attempts to dominate Europe by the Hapsburgs, Napoleon, and Germany were unsuccessful. Chairman Mao is said to have called World War I and II, the ‘European civil wars’. This is not entirely inaccurate if we recognize the imperial pact of the Europeans against the world. The decline of European empire, and process of decolonization in the 20th century, globalized this society of sovereign nation-states.[6]

The Contemporary System

The modern world preoccupies most of IR studies because this is the period of most relevance to today. Like all past systems, relations amongst the contemporary units are primarily through trade, diplomacy, and warfare, but today these take on modern contemporary forms of capitalism, the use of embassies, and modern industrial warfare. International diplomats refer to this contemporary system of modern nation-state as the international community, and international lawyers use the language of international society to convey a sense of the contemporary system as an “internationalist” collaboration of states. This period has seen collaborative experiments in International Organization, with the League of Nations and United Nations. This period has also witnessed the rise of non-state units, with thousands of NGOs and IO’s with worldwide mandates, like the World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, and International Labour Organization. The collaboration of IOs, NGOs, MNCs, and the international community has come to be referred as “global governance”. This is not global government, but governance, the attempt to govern and perform the functions a government would provide, without the formal structure of a government.

The structure of this contemporary system, the extent to which IOs and NGOs matter, and which relations are of most significance, is a question of contention for students of IR. In my reading, which I think is reasonable if inevitably contentious, the contemporary system of today is a mixed highly complex system. The modern nation-states claim sovereign independence, territorial and political, and deny it to other units. Yet, as Vattel once pointed out, some states are giants and others dwarfs. So there is also a strata of “great powers”, who in legal principle are equals, but by all practical purposes are not. Ideally, these great powers have the role of using........

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