*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered directly to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

How do we understand the emerging world order under the twin shocks of war in Europe and an American president determined to put “America First”? A forum on the English School approach, organized under the aegis of the Institute for International Economic Affairs in Athens on 27 May 2025 (IIER 2025) considered the question in terms of changes in the primary institutions of international society, including the balance of power, diplomacy, the regulation of war, great power management and the market. A summary of the findings follows, with an introduction on how the English School theorizes change in international society. 

The ‘New Institutionalism’: How to Discern Change and Continuity in International Order

Relations between states traditionally are conceptualised as taking place within an international society, or a society of states. If states are members of a club, they need to participate in upholding a few common institutions, such as diplomacy, the balance of power, international law, management by the great powers, and war (Bull 1977). In the more recent literature, such institutions are often called primary institutions, distinguishing them from secondary institutions which are formalised versions of primary institutions (Buzan 2004), generally found in international organisations (Knudsen and Navari 2019). As a paradigmatic example, the primary institution of great power management is formalised as a secondary institution within the UN Security Council, especially the veto right of the P5. International society has often been seen as a rather static, historically established institutional settlement, dominated by the Western (especially European) powers.  States from the rest of the world, if they wanted to join, had to conform to the "standard of civilization" defined by European insiders (Gong 1984). However, the more this process has been studied, the more the moving aspect of the standard has come to be emphasised, and the more the evolution of the rules and institutions of international society has been studied, the more mutual recognition, renegotiation and change have been emphasised.  Similarly, the interplay between primary and secondary institutions is significant for understanding change and continuity in international society, and in international order more broadly (Friedner Parrat 2024).

Primary institutions, conceptualised as practices and their discursive legitimation – that is, how statespeople and influential observers justify them – remain stable when those agents reproduce the same practices and discursive legitimations, and change when they are practiced and legitimised differently. This brings the agents of international society to the centre-stage. The international society tradition is neither a structural theory, nor a theory in which agents are free to act as they wish. Instead, the situated agents induce change by questioning the premises they have been handed, or by manoeuvring creatively within the space that they have (Navari 2020). Secondary institutions can make things remain much as they were when the secondary institution was formalised – but also contribute to pushing rules in a certain direction before locking them in. International organisations function as arenas where primary institutions are negotiated and reproduced in an ongoing fashion, and where secondary institutions are sedimented (Friedner Parrat 2017). As such, they function as stabilisers of international order, but they also register changes within the order.

Applied to the twin shocks of war in Europe and a US president withdrawing from alliances and pursuing a narrow concept of national interest, the approach draws attention to the upending of the balance of power; to the emergence of Europe as a military power; to new practices of diplomacy, to challenges to the embedded norms on the use of forceand to the erosion of the liberal trading order in the global economy.

Martin Wight (1979), Hedley Bull (1977) and James Mayall (2000) have regarded the balance of power as one of the fundamental institutions of international society. For Hedley Bull (p. 106), the balance of power was fundamental for maintaining order in international society, to prevent the dominance of any single state or outright empire. According to the ‘nested hierarchy’ of international institutions, advanced by Barry Buzan (2004, 184), the balance of power is a “master institution” with anti-hegemonism, alliances, guarantees, neutrality, war and great power management viewed as its derivative ones. In theoretical terms, we should expect that today’s great powers will seek to manage their relations by preserving the general balance of power, avoiding and controlling crises, limiting the impact of war, unilaterally exercising local preponderance, and seeking to identify and maintain spheres of influence, interest, and responsibility. In any case, the balance of power is an essential institution of international society and one which other primary institutions depend on, such as international law. According to Emerich de Vattel, a balance of power reflects “a state of affairs such that no one power is in a position where it is preponderant and can lay down the law to others” (cited in J.B. Scott, 1916, 40). However, since the end of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has sought to establish a global hegemony or primacy and therefore, Washington DC has been uninterested in pursuing a balance of power policy. The U.S. has sought to achieve primacy and establish a hegemonic international order “with no more than the ordinary degree of disregard for norms of sovereignty, equality and independence” (Bull 1977, 208), but, if necessary, by resorting to occasional and often reluctant use of force and the threat of force (p. 209).

Despite his sporadic rhetoric, President Trump has not differed from his predecessors. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he was surrounded by people who were proponents of either a balance of power policy or a concert of powers approach. However, following his election, President Trump has chosen to work with people with a neoconservative agenda, who seek to promote U.S. global hegemony and/or ensure U.S. primacy. Moreover, it seems that President Trump is also prepared to promote U.S. dominance by a habitual use of military force or the threat of force, as well as by using economic means, such as sanctions and tariffs. In so doing, he has recently demonstrated a “habitual disregard of the universal norms of interstate behavior that confer rights of sovereignty, equality and independence upon other states” (Bull 1977, 207).

Bull makes a distinction between a “simple” balance of power, which is made up of two powers, from a “complex” one consisting of three or more (Bull 1977, 97). He also distinguishes between a balance of power that is “fortuitous” and one that is “contrived” (p.100). A fortuitous balance of power is one that arises without any conscious effort on the part of either of the parties to bring it into being. A contrived balance of power is one that owes its existence at least partly to the conscious policies of one or both sides. As a result of the U.S. efforts to maintain its global hegemony and primacy, China and Russia, and with the possible inclusion of India, will pursue an anti-hegemonic balance of power. This will be a complex balance of power that will be contrived by Russia, China and perhaps India, and to which the U.S. must react. If we consider the balance of power as a master institution, then we should expect that it will impact its derivative institutions, such as alliances (i.e., NATO, CSTO, and SCO), war and great power management. Moreover, the pursuance of balance of power will have an impact – both positive and negative - on the institutions of diplomacy and international law, and as an extension to secondary institutions, such as the United Nations and/or sub-global or regional international organizations. The effects on the institution of diplomacy follow.

Pariah........

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