Reframing the Pluralist— Solidarist Debate

The pluralist—solidarist debate in English School theory — which concentrates on discerning the kind of international society in which we live — encourages overgeneralisations that either overstate international society’s presumed solidarity or vigorously defend instrumental commitments that underplay actual ethical advances. Building upon insights by Bellamy, Buzan and Hurrell, I attempt to extricate the debate from its current impasse by recasting pluralism and solidarism as ideal-typical assessments of agreements within particular issue areas. The argument is illustrated with reference to human security. Two reasons are behind this choice. Firstly, it allows me to pose more pluralist-friendly claims on a terrain that is presumably ceded to solidarists. Secondly, the contested nature of human security allows me to highlight the fluidity of the concepts, which reveals not necessarily solidarism’s cooperative potential or pluralism’s minimalist pledges, but rather fissures, uncertainties and dissonances that in the end are resolved by continual mediations between the two.