A comparative analysis of a wide variety of ideas about world order which have emerged since the early part of the nineteenth century reveals that they are clustered around five basic positions. First, there is the legal school, advocating the internationalist, as opposed to the cosmopolitanist, form of domestic analogy. Second is the diplomatic school, critical of the ways in which and the extent to which the domestic analogy is employed by the legal school.

Both the legal and diplomatic schools support the idea that the sovereign states system should remain intact. They are concerned primarily with the problem of creating order in the external relations of sovereign states. And they both accept the principle that the official intercourse between states be conducted by diplomats, who act under instruction from the executive branches of their respective governments. The difference between the two schools is that while the legal school argues in favour of the legalistic use of the domestic analogy, the diplomatic school is opposed to it. The legal school advances the idea of ‘peace through law’ and, in its fullest form, advocates the creation of an international organization equipped with judicial, legislative and executive bodies for the management of international relations. By contrast, the diplomatic school prescribes the maintenance of international order through the operation of those practices, such as diplomacy, war and neutrality, which are claimed to be indigenous institutions of international society.