The world is an international system but only a weak international society

Evidence

An international system exists, Hedley Bull argued, “when two or more states have sufficient contact between them, and have sufficient impact on one another’s decisions, to cause them to behave—at least in some measure—as parts of a whole.” An international society, however, exists only when states in an international system have “common interests and common values,” “conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules,” “share in the working of common institutions,” and have “a common culture or civilization.” Like its Sumerian, Greek, Hellenistic, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic predecessors, the European international system of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries was also an international society. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the European international system expanded to encompass virtually all societies in other civilizations. Some European institutions and practices were also exported to these countries. Yet these societies still lack the common culture that underlay European international society. In terms of British international relations theory, the world is thus a well-developed international system but at best only a very primitive international society. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 150

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes an international system from an international society via the added requirement of shared culture and values.