The English School of international relations has been principally concerned with understanding the society of states, but some of its members have commented on its relationship with world society. Hedley Bull and Martin Wight noted that the architects of the modern society of states derived some of their political vocabulary from medieval conceptions of world society. Bull maintained that natural law images of a world society survived in the modern doctrine of universal human rights. Whether a world society was likely to develop in the first universal society of states was a question of great importance to Bull and John Vincent. The former referred to an emerging “cosmopolitan culture of modernity” that could underpin order between radically different societies in “the post-European age”; the latter believed a global culture that established the right of every human being to be free from starvation could perform that function. However, most members of the English School have denied that the modern society of states is likely to be dissolved in a world society. Indeed, Wight argued that from the Reformation, rival conceptions of world society have often had a divisive effect on international relations. Barry Buzan's most recent book is the first work by a member of the school to consider world society since Vincent's call for the more systematic investigation of the concept almost 15 years ago.

Buzan notes that the English School lost the initiative in analyzing world society to members of the Stanford School such as John Meyer and to such systems theorists as Niklas Luhmann. Its failure to theorize world society and its relationship with international society is the “biggest weakness in existing English School theory,” one that inhibits its “potential to improve how globalisation can be conceptualised” (p. 2). Buzan criticizes English School theorists, such as Hedley Bull, James Mayall, and Robert Jackson, for their “unwarranted pessimism” regarding the possible “transformation” of world politics, especially within regional subsystems (p. 212ff). How to understand the relationship “between the state and non-state worlds” is the “big political event” in an era moving beyond “a pure Westphalian mode of international relations, in which the key tension is among rival states” (p. 88). In the end, Buzan comes round to the classical English School view of the primacy of states. Given their “dominant command of the instruments of coercion,” they “will generally be the dominant actors … for some decades to come”; they will shape the lives of transnational actors and individuals to a greater extent than they will shape states (p. 259). Like Bull, Buzan believes that world society is ultimately dependent on order within the international society of states.

From International to World Society? is strong on conceptual analysis. There is a useful discussion of Bull's claim that world society involves “a degree of interaction linking all parts of the human community to one another” and “a sense of common interests and common values on the basis of which common rules and institutions may be built” (p. 37). Buzan argues that Bull did not disentangle these two elements prior to analyzing them carefully. Searching questions are asked about how to move the discussion forward by incorporating insights from constructivist analysis. However, the volume does more to reflect on future intellectual agendas than to break new theoretical ground.

The failure of Bull, Wight, and others to deal with the economic dimensions of world politics is noted (p. 20), but there is surprisingly little discussion—given the concern with globalization—of what English School theory can borrow from international political economy. The significance of capitalism for world society is recognized (p. 83), but the volume repeats the English School's famous neglect of Marx—arguably the first theorist of world society—and the Marxist tradition with its focus on inequalities of material resources and political power. Radical scholarship on, for example, the phenomena of “transnational class formation” and “disciplinary liberalism” deserved consideration.

Buzan rejects approaches to world society such as Vincent's, which allowed “their normative concerns with human rights to distort their theoretical reflections” (p. 11). Rightly he criticizes Vincent's claim that world society includes all groups whose claims are not heard by international society and who are, in consequence, “hostile to it” (p. 41). Such approaches fail to address the “social structural strand” of world society (p. 14). The question is whether highlighting the social structural sphere diverts attention from the dimension of world society captured by Bull's remarks about the “common interests and common values” on which “common rules and institutions might be built.” The universal human rights culture and global environment issues do not go unnoticed in this work, but more could have been said about their significance for world society. Buzan's approach largely neglects the literature on media representations of “distant suffering,” which has triggered discussions about the rights and wrongs of humanitarian intervention, responsibilities to civilian populations in war, and the future of international criminal law. Such matters are especially germane to his discussion of how a world society is more than a system of interaction but less than a community of “shared identity and we-feeling” (p. 121).

A lengthy conclusion offers “a portrait of contemporary interstate society” that is exceedingly well done and valuable for students, but there is little explicit discussion of world society or the “social structure of globalisation” in the last quarter of the book. In general, the analysis of the English School in this volume is too complex for the beginner. Whether there is enough in the way of a novel development of English School theory for the specialist remains to be seen. The volume does not succeed in providing a clear and systematic argument about how English School theory can improve the conceptualization of globalization by developing a more sophisticated account of world society.