Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:08:04.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The English School and postcolonial state agency: social roles and order management in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

Robert Yates Open the ORCID record for Robert Yates [Opens in a new window]
Robert Yates*
Affiliation:
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, 11 Priory Road, Clifton, BristolBS8 2BQ, UK
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper contributes to recent revisions to the English School (ES) which have sought to redress its Eurocentrism. It argues that, despite providing necessary accounts of non-Western international societies and the agency of non-European polities in the expansion of global international society, there remains a gap in capturing the agency of postcolonial states in contributing to order negotiation and management in contemporary international order. It proposes a social role negotiation framework to address the gap, which it situates within a holistic conceptual framework that supplements an ES understanding of international order between states with a world-system perspective on how states are embedded within global capitalism, and a neo-Gramscian focus on social forces as the key agents contesting and shaping states' foreign policy orientation. It highlights two major types of postcolonial state agency within international order: contesting and limiting great powers' legitimate exercise of power; and establishing responsibilities towards building and managing order vis-a-vis great powers. The paper illustrates the utility of the social roles framework with the example of ASEAN in Southeast Asian and Asia-Pacific order.

Keywords

English SchoolEurocentrismgreat powerspostcolonialsocial roles
Type
Research Article
Information
International Theory , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 68 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alagappa, Muthiah. 2003. “The Study of International Order: An Analytical Framework.” In Asian Security Order: Institutional and Normative Features, edited by Alagappa, M., 33–69. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ang, Cheng-Guan. 2010. Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ang, Cheng-Guan. 2013. Singapore, ASEAN Diplomacy and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1991. Singapore: NUS.Google Scholar
Anievas, Alexander, and Nişancıoğlu, Kerem. 2015. How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism. London: Pluto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anwar, Dewi Fortuna. 1994. Indonesia in ASEAN: Foreign Policy and Regionalism. Singapore: ISEAS.Google Scholar
Arrighi, Giovanni, and Silver, Beverley. 1999. Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
ASEAN. 1995. The ASEAN Regional Forum: A Concept Paper. Accessed September 1, 2017. http://aseanregionalforum.asean.org/files/library/Terms%20of%20References%20and%20Concept%20Papers/Concept%20Paper%20of%20ARF.pdf.Google Scholar
Astrov, Alexander. 2011. The Great Power (mis)Management. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Ba, Alice. 2009. [Re]Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beeson, Mark. 2016. “Can ASEAN Cope with China?” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35(1):5–28.Google Scholar
Benton, Lauren A. 2002. Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bower, Adam. 2017. Norms Without Great Powers: International Law and Changing Social Standards in World Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bukovansky, Mlada, Clark, Ian, Eckersley, Robyn, Price, Richard, Reus-Smit, Christian, and Wheeler, Nicholas J.. 2012. Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1984a. “A Universal International Society.” In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam, 117–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1984b. “The Revolt Against the West.” In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam, 217–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1995. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam. 1984a. The Expansion of International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam. 1984b. “Introduction.” In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam, 1–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry. 2004. From International to World Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Gonzalez-Pelaez, Ana. 2009. International Society and the Middle-East: English School Theory at the Regional Level. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Zhang, Yongjin. 2014. Contesting International Society in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carroll, Toby, Gonzalez-Vicente, Ruben, and Jarvis, Darryl S. L.. 2019. “Capital, Conflict and Convergence: A Political Understanding of Neoliberalism and its Relationship to Capitalist Transformation.” Globalizations 16(6):778–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Joseph Y. S. 1999. “China's ASEAN Policy in the 1990s: Pushing for Regional Multipolarity.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 21(2):176–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Ian. 2011. Hegemony in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cui, Shunji, and Buzan, Barry. 2016. “Great Power Management in International Society.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 9(2):181–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1993. “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines.” International Studies Quarterly 37(3):297–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliot, David W. P. 2012. Changing Worlds: Vietnam's Transition from Cold War to Globalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emmers, Ralf. 2003. Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF. New York: Routledge Curzon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Charlotte. 2017. Against International Relations Norms: Postcolonial Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Andre G., Denemark, Robert A., and Gills, Barry K.. 2015. Reorienting the 19th Century. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujio, Hara. 2010. “The Malayan Communist Party and the Indonesian Communist Party: Features of Co-operation.” Journal of Chinese Overseas 6, 216–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gainsborough, Martin J. 2010. Vietnam: Rethinking the State. Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Go, Julian, and Lawson, George. 2017. Global Historical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goh, Evelyn. 2008. “Hierarchy and the Role of the United States in the East Asian Security Order.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 8:353–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goh, Evelyn. 2013. The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy & Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamashita, Takeshi. 2002. “Tribute and Treaties: East Asian Treaty Ports Networks in the Era of Negotiation, 1834–1894.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 1:59–87.Google Scholar
Hameiri, Shahar, and Jones, Lee. 2016. “Rising Powers and State Transformation: The Case of China.” European Journal of International Relations 22:72–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hewison, Kevin, and Rodan, Garry. 2012. “Southeast Asia: The Left and the Rise of Bourgeois Opposition.” In Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Politics, edited by Robison, Richard, 25–39. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hobson, John M. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, John M. 2012. The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jabri, Vivienne. 2013. The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming Politics/Governing Others in Late Modernity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jackson, Robert H. 2000. The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jessop, Bob. 2008. State Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, Alastair I., and Ross, Robert S.. 1999. Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, Branwen G. 2006. Decolonizing International Relations. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Jones, Lee. 2016. “Explaining the Failure of the ASEAN Economic Community: The Primacy of Domestic Political Economy.” The Pacific Review 29(5):647–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Matthew. 2005. “A ‘Segregated’ Asia?: Race, the Bandung Conference, and Pan-Asianist Fears in American Thought and Policy, 1954–1955.” Diplomatic History 29(5):841–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahin, Audrey, and Kahin, George. 1997. Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Keal, Paul. 2003. European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keene, Edward. 2002. Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keene, Edward. 2014. “The Standard of ‘Civilisation’, the Expansion Thesis and the 19th-Century International Social Space.” Millennium 42(3):651–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leifer, Michael. 1989. ASEAN and the Security of Southeast Asia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Loke, Beverley. 2016. “Unpacking the Politics of Great Power Responsibility: Nationalist and Maoist China in International Order-Building.” European Journal of International Relations 22(4):847–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matin, Kamran. 2013. “Redeeming the Universal: Postcolonialism and the Inner Life of Eurocentrism.” European Journal of International Relations 19(2):353–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macmillan, John. 2013. “Intervention and the Ordering of the Modern World.” Review of International Studies 39(5):1039–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, Vu Tung. 2005. “The Paris Agreement and Vietnam-ASEAN Relations in the 1970s.” In The Third Indochina War, edited by Westad, Arne, and Quinn-Judge, Sophie, 12–32. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
O'Hagan, Jacinta. 2005. “The Question of Culture.” In International Society and its Critics, edited by Bellamy, Alex J., 209–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Panke, Diana. 2012. “Small States in Multilateral Negotiations. What Have We Learned?” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 25(3):387–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pella, John A. 2015. Africa and the Expansion of International Society: Surrendering the Savannah. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Peng, Dajin. 2002. “Invisible Linkages: A Regional Perspective of East Asian Political Economy.” International Studies Quarterly 46:423–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Andrew. 2017. “International Systems.” In The Globalization of International Society, edited by Dunne, Tim, and Reus-Smit, Christian, 43–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quayle, Linda. 2013. Southeast Asia and the English School of International Relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian, and Dunne, Tim. 2017. “Introduction.” In The Globalization of International Society, edited by Dunne, Tim, and Reus-Smit, Christian, 3–17. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robison, Richard. 1986. Indonesia: The Rise of Capital. Sydney: Unwin.Google Scholar
Robison, Richard, and Hadiz, Vedi R.. 2004. Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scarfi, Juan Pablo. 2017. The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schouenborg, Laust. 2017. International Institutions in World History: Divorcing International Relations Theory from the State and Stage Models. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Seth, Sanjay. 2011. “Postcolonial Theory and the Critique of International Relations.” Millennium 40(1):167–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seth, Sanjay. 2013. “Introduction.” In Postcolonial Theory and International Relations: A Critical introduction, edited by Seth, S., 1–12. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shilliam, Robbie. 2011. International Relations and Non-Western Thought. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Silver, Beverley. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Bradley. 2008. Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spandler, Kilian. 2019. Regional Organizations in International Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stubbs, Richard. 1999. “War and Economic Development: Export-Oriented Industrialization in East and Southeast Asia.” Comparative Politics 31(3):337–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suzuki, Shogo. 2009. Civilization and Empire: China and Japan's Encounter with European International Society. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suzuki, Shogo, Quirk, Joel, and Zhang, Yongjin. 2014. International Orders in the Early Modern World: Before the Rise of the West. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Teichman, Judith. 2012. Social Forces and States: Poverty and Distributional Outcomes in South Korea, Chile and Mexico. Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sue. 2011. “The Western Powers and the Development of Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia: The International Dimension, 1945–67.” Global Change, Peace and Security 23(1):75–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Towns, Ann E. 2017. “Gender, Power and International Society.” In The Globalization of International Society, edited by Dunne, Tim, and Reus-Smit, Christian, 380–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vincent, Raymond J. 1986. Human Rights and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Adam. 1984. “European International Society and its Expansion.” In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam, 13–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Adam. 1992. The Evolution of International Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Nicholas J. 2000. Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yates, Robert. 2017. “ASEAN as the ‘Regional Conductor’: Understanding ASEAN's Role in Asia-Pacific Order.” The Pacific Review 30(4):443–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yates, Robert. 2019. Understanding ASEAN's Role in Asia-Pacific Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zarakol, Ayse. 2011. After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar