A new and systematic view of how global international society (GIS) came into being and acquired its current structure and dynamics. Buzan and Schouenborg integrate states, intergovernmental and international non-governmental organisations, and the diffusion of norms, into a single theoretical framework for the study of GIS.

Explains how environmentalism became a fundamental norm in international relations and explores the impact of the greening of international society.

Presents a challenge to international relations scholars to think globally, understanding the field's development in the Global South alongside the traditionally dominant Western approach.

Barry Buzan offers an extensive and long overdue critique and reappraisal of the English school approach to International Relations. Starting on the neglected concept of world society and bringing together the international society tradition and the Wendtian mode of constructivism, Buzan offers a new theoretical framework that can be used to address globalisation as a complex political interplay among state and non-state actors. This approach forces English school theory to confront neglected questions about both its basic concepts and assumptions, and about the constitution of society in terms of what values are shared, how and why they are shared, and by whom. Buzan highlights the idea of primary institutions as the central contribution of English school theory and shows how this both differentiates English school theory from realism and neoliberal institutionalism, and how it can be used to generate distinctive comparative and historical accounts of international society.

Chronicling the emergence of an international society in the 1920s, Daniel Gorman describes how the shock of the First World War gave rise to a broad array of overlapping initiatives in international cooperation. Though national rivalries continued to plague world politics, ordinary citizens and state officials found common causes in politics, religion, culture and sport with peers beyond their borders. The League of Nations, the turn to a less centralized British Empire, the beginning of an international ecumenical movement, international sporting events and audacious plans for the abolition of war all signaled internationalism's growth. State actors played an important role in these developments and were aided by international voluntary organizations, church groups and international networks of academics, athletes, women, pacifists and humanitarian activists. These international networks became the forerunners of international NGOs and global governance.

This book asks whether a regional international society exists in East Asia and why its existence matters to both regional and global orders.

This volume reconsiders the process of globalization, drawing on a wealth of new perspectives to understand better this momentous historical development.