Abstract
The ‘standard of civilisation’ has its roots in the culturally widespread trope of ‘civilised’ versus ‘barbarian’. It took its specific modern form in the 19th century, primarily as a European legal term. No specific set of criteria for the ‘standard of civilisation’ was ever codified, but the general practice was to define the standard by the contemporary forms of government prevailing in Europe. Its political role was to gate-keep membership of international society, and to justify colonialism. The term collapsed after 1945 when the right of self-determination opened membership to nearly all peoples. In the English School literature, the ‘standard of civilisation’ has been used to tell a variety of historical encounter stories, and to critique the School’s neglect of colonialism. Its contemporary relevance in the literature concerns debates about whether human rights, democracy, capitalism and possibly environmentalism are being used to construct a new ‘standard of civilisation’ operationalised through conditionality and other discriminatory practices. Another important link is between the colonial obligation to raise ‘less advanced’ peoples to the standard and the post-1945 obligation to provide aid and development to the ‘less developed’. The English School concept of the ‘standard of civilisation’ is thus both refreshingly frank politically and of durable relevance for thinking about international relations.
Introduction
The English School has a good claim to be the founding site for using ‘the standard of civilisation’ in the analysis of international relations. 2 But as with Watson’s concept of raison de système, the English School has not featured this term as much as it might. 3 I argue that the English School should raise the profile of the ‘standard of civilisation’ not just in its historical work, but also in its analysis of the post-colonial world. There is no problem about using the concept when looking at the pre-1945 international society, because ‘standard of civilisation’ was in common use at that time. Applying it to the post-1945 world might be thought embarrassing or inappropriate because of its strong association with colonial attitudes and practices. Yet what is clear is that practices very close in form and political purpose to those of Western-colonial international society remain common in contemporary world politics. These practices are no longer referred to using the term ‘standard of civilisation’, which along with ‘barbarian’ and ‘savage’ have largely dropped out of polite conversation. They generally come wrapped in more anodyne and bureaucratic terms such as ‘conditionality’, ‘good governance’ and ‘development’. My case here is that the English School should have the courage to stick with the original term. The reason is partly that a spade should be called a spade, but mainly that it is important to highlight the continuity of the practice and not to pretend that things have changed when they have not. ‘Standard of civilisation’ is a powerful analytical concept applicable well beyond the historical particularities of the last two centuries. It should not be hidden behind a veil of political correctness. The next section looks at the origin and meaning of the concept in the Western-colonial era, and the one after that at how it has been used by the English School in historical analysis. Section four examines analogous contemporary practice, and the final section argues for the ongoing relevance and utility of the concept to the analysis of international relations.
The Concept
The concept of the ‘standard of civilisation’ has deep roots in many societies beyond the West, from ancient Greece and China to the Islamic world. It rests on the differentiation between ‘civilised’ and ‘barbarian’ that was common to most civilisations. This differentiation could be done as a cultural ranking (in which case upward movement was possible by acquiring the relevant high culture) or as a racist one (in which case superiority/inferiority was biologically inscribed). The concept opened a status gap between ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ (‘barbarian’ or ‘savage’) and legitimised the claim by the former of higher political and legal, as well as cultural, standing over the latter. It is a typical construct of a stronger party over a weaker one. 4 I put ‘standard of civilisation’ in inverted commas to signify that it is almost always the construct of one party in a relationship, usually the dominant one, and not a statement about some essential condition. As Fidler sums up the essence of the idea, it means that: ‘to engage fully in international relations, your behaviour has to conform fully to expectations, policies, and rules established by the prevailing powers’. 5 During the 19th century, the ‘standard of civilisation’ thus supported a partly racist taxonomy of ‘savage, barbarian and civilised’ as a way of classifying the non-European world in relation to Europe, and gate-keeping on entry to European, and later Western, international society. 6 The expansion of international society was thus done on unequal terms in two ways: by the imperial absorption of much of the non-West into European empires, and by the phased admission of a few non-colonised states into international society once they were deemed ‘civilised’. Its use in Europe became prominent during the later 19th century at a time when an enormous power gap existed between Europe and the rest of the world, and European economic, colonial and settlement expansion had brought Europeans into close and highly unequal encounters with peoples ranging from small hunter-gatherer bands to classical agrarian empires with huge populations. ‘Scientific’ racism was also strong in Europe at that time, reinforcing a sense of European superiority. 7 The concept developed mainly in international law, and diplomatic and international legal practice. 8
In one sense, the ‘standard of civilisation’ represents a particular phase in the rise of the West. The expansion of European international society required changes of identity, starting with ‘Christendom’ in the emergence phase, then during the early 19th century switching to ‘Western culture’ in order to integrate the Americas and other European offshoots, and finally to the ‘standard of civilisation’ in the late 19th century. 9 In some ways, the shift from Christian to Western to ‘civilisation’ marked a shift from highly exclusive to less exclusive points of differentiation. 10 When international society was considered to be exclusively Christian, majority Muslim polities such as the Ottoman Empire were axiomatically outside its ambit. However, the shift to an idea of ‘civilisation’ based on the ‘modern’ capacities of a polity meant that, in theory, international society could be universal. This is one reason why the Ottomans, the Egyptians, the Japanese and others embraced modernising projects during the long 19th century – the implementation of legal, administrative and fiscal reforms held out the promise, in theory if rather less so in practice, of a pathway towards equality of status within international society. This pathway was open even during the 19th century, when the power and status gaps between core and periphery were at their maximum. As Donnelly argues, international society can be seen as open (because, although European in origin, others can join if they meet specific terms and conditions), or it can be seen as imperial (seeming to offer pluralism while in fact requiring extensive Westernisation). 11 O’Hagan takes a similar view, noting the complacency of pluralists such as Jackson who think that the global covenant on coexistence among states largely takes care of this by providing a Western framework for dialogue across cultures. 12 She contrasts this with the ideas of critics such as Keal and Keene who focus on the coerced unequal character of international society in which non-Western cultures were devalued and forced into Western moulds. 13 Keene highlights colonialism and imperialism pre-1945 as emblematic of divided sovereignty in which the core develops a Westphalian principle of sovereign equality and tolerance within itself, but practises divided sovereignty and the ‘standard of civilisation’ against the periphery. He argues that ‘we need to appreciate the importance of the idea of civilisation not merely as a standard for regulating the entry of new states in international society, but also for validating an entirely different set of legal rules and political institutions in its own right’. 14
Another element underpinning the ‘standard of civilisation’ was the increasing dominance of positive over natural law in Western thinking and practice during the 19th century. Natural law made all humans equal under the sight of god, offering some kind of basis for civil inter-cultural encounters. Positive law linked the ‘civil arrangements’ of states to their standing in international society. In this way, positive international law was explicitly the law of ‘civilised’ European states, 15 paving the way for the divided sovereignty noted by Keene. For example, the 19th century codification of the laws of war distinguished between insiders and outsiders of international society, with the former subject to rules that determined the scope of legitimate violence, not least that it should be discriminate and proportional, and the latter considered to be outside such rules. 16 The effect of this stratification was to privilege Western states and peoples, and to downgrade the rest of the world. 17 As a consequence, non-European polities that had previously been acknowledged as sovereign were now viewed, at best, as potential candidates for admission into a European-dominated international society. There is, therefore, a close link between the turn to positive law and the expansion of Western power through the ‘standard of civilisation’. 18
Although the ‘standard of civilisation’ became one of the key concepts underpinning the 19th century European colonial international society, it never acquired a clear set of criteria. The underlying idea of the standard was the measure provided by the governing practices of the leading-edge powers in the West. This covered such things as law, property rights, individual rights, religious rights, diplomatic practice, and the capacity to create and deploy modern technology and infrastructure. In effect, the ‘standard of civilisation’ was about modernity. The problem was that all of these components of modernity were themselves undergoing rapid change within Europe as the multiple revolutions of modernity (industrial, social, political, economic) continued to unfold and expand. Progress was (and remains) a central theme of modernity, and during the 19th century four ‘ideologies of progress’ – liberalism, socialism, nationalism and ‘scientific’ racism – came to dominate the ideational landscape of international society. These evolving ideologies were, along with industrialism, closely linked to the ‘standard of civilisation’, helping to define ‘barbarian’ and ‘savage’ outsiders. 19 The standard could thus not be pinned down. Then as now it set a moving target for those trying to acquire it. China, for example, has mastered the Westphalian rules of international society and a good part of industrial modernity, only to find that the West has moved the goalposts towards more liberal norms. 20 Another way of looking at the standard is in terms of the degree of readiness for self-government that was inscribed in the mandate system of the League of Nations. In a globalised international political economy like that which has existed since the 19th century, readiness for self-government is necessarily a relative idea. As the international system and society become ever more dense, interdependent and intense, the capacity for self-government necessary to cope with that rises inexorably, meaning the standard of the ‘standard’ continues to become more demanding. So long as modernity continues to evolve, so the criteria for meeting the ‘standard of civilisation’ will change, probably becoming increasingly demanding.
For the past two centuries, the ‘standard of civilisation’ has been largely defined by the differentiations opened up by modernity. It is not, I think, a primary institution of international society itself, but rather a closely associated feature of such institutions that feature hierarchy, most obviously imperialism/colonialism, and development. It stands in some tension with the institution of sovereign equality, but, as Simpson shows, a very similar tension between sovereign equality and the ‘legalised hegemony’ of the great powers has been a feature of international society since 1815. 21
Usage in English School Historical Analysis
The main use of the ‘standard of civilisation’ in the English School literature has been in relation to the various ‘encounters’ between expanding European international society and those polities that were able to resist colonisation and therefore needed somehow to adapt to a European-dominated international order: China, Japan, the Ottoman Empire/Egypt, Russia, Siam. Colonies were simply absorbed into the sovereignty of their metropoles, meaning that the question of membership in international society did not arise for them in the same way. Colonies were differentiated across the scale of the ‘standard of civilisation’ from settlers to ‘savages’, and the politics of this were mainly internal to their respective empires. This explains the curious neglect of India in the English School literature.
The key English School work on the standard of civilisation is Gong. 22 Gong argues that the expansion of European international society raised a host of issues about how to manage interaction between polities of unequal capacity. Both diplomacy and commerce required certain standards of effective government, particularly the ability to meet ‘reciprocal obligations’ in law. 23 Gong explores the nature and operation of the ‘standard of civilisation’ in some depth. He notes the clash of civilisations explicit in the expansion, and how the ‘standard of civilisation’ created a pressure for conformity with Western values and practices which posed a demanding cultural challenge to the non-West, much of which had to go against its own cultural grain in order to gain entry. This left an ongoing legacy of problems for the legitimacy of international law, still seen by some as reflecting Western imperial values. 24 He notes how the European need for access (trade, proselytising, travel) was what drove the functional aspects of the ‘standard of civilisation’ (to protect life, liberty and property) and therefore the demand for extraterritoriality and unequal relations where the locals could not or would not provide these. 25
Holsti charts the shift in criteria for recognition from the strict rules of the ‘standard of civilisation’ during the 19th century through to the almost anything goes attitude during the post-1945 decolonisation. 26 Western-colonial international society during the 19th century was very much a two-tier affair, with the Western core moving towards sovereign equality for interstate relations within it, but outsiders being subject to the entry criteria of the Western-defined ‘standard of civilisation’. This involved conditionality on such issues as law, property rights, human rights and good governance. Colonised peoples were notionally under tutelage on such things. Non-colonised peoples such as in China, Japan and the Ottoman Empire were not given full recognition until they could meet the standard. Their unequal status was inscribed in the humiliating extraterritorial rights demanded by Westerners in treaties with them. Although a handful of non-Western countries made it into international society, this system of divided sovereignty largely stayed in place until the breakdown of imperialism/colonialism as an institution of international society after the Second World War. As Bain argues, this was a system in which a ‘superior’ West decided on the readiness for self-government of less developed peoples: ‘self-determination implied granting powers of self-government and autonomy in proportion to the capacity of a people to make good use of them’. 27
The classical English School’s version of the encounter, and the whole ‘standard of civilisation’ question, is therefore mainly confined to a small number of cases. The early decolonisation of the Americas created few problems because the new settler states were offshoots of European culture and therefore easy to accept as ‘civilised’, if not at first entirely equal. Four cases attracted the most attention – Russia, the Ottoman Empire, China and Japan – although some others (Siam, Iran) get passing mention. Other encounter and entry stories are still being written. 28 Russia was half European anyway and had made it into European international society by the early 18th century. 29 The Ottoman Empire served as Europe’s alien Other for many centuries, but was also in close interaction with the European balance of power during much of that time. 30 This meant that the Ottoman encounter story has a different quality from the later ones involving European expansion. For the Ottoman Empire, the question was about joining (or not) Europe’s international society, not the later Western-global version of it. It has inspired an ongoing debate about how to understand the difference between just being part of the European international system and meeting enough of the ‘standard of civilisation’ to become a member of its international society. There is still no consensus about when (or if) the Ottoman Empire became part of European international society, 31 and this whole debate gives useful depth to the current discussions about the EU and Turkey.
Japan provides the model case for a rapid and successful adaptation by a non-Western power to the ‘standard of civilisation’, and its acceptance into international society by 1899, and shortly thereafter as a great power. 32 But there are interesting twists to this story, such as Japan’s failure in 1919 at Versailles to get Western recognition of racial equality. 33 China’s struggle with the ‘standard of civilisation’ was much more protracted and is indeed, like Turkey’s, still ongoing. 34 There are, in a sense, two rounds, one classical and one modern, to China’s encounter story. In the classical round, as with the Ottoman Empire, there is a debate about when China gained entry, possibly not until during the Second World War with the final removal of extraterritoriality. 35 In the modern round, there is the story of communist China’s encounter. Zhang tells this story in detail, seeing communist China as alienated from international society (both excluded and self-excluding), but increasingly becoming more integrated with it in terms of sovereignty, non-intervention, diplomacy (rising participation in IGOs and the global economy), international law and suchlike. 36 As noted above, China has successfully adapted to Westphalian international society, yet remains alienated from the human rights and democracy elements that have come more to the fore in Western practice since the end of the Cold War.
More work has recently been done to bring out what the encounter looked like from the other side. Onuma looks at the imposition of Western international law during the later 19th century, fulfilling its earlier false pretensions to universalism. 37 Kayaoglu explores the rise and fall of the extraterritorial jurisdiction established by Western states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East in the 19th century, but also demonstrates how the practice helped to consolidate a conception of sovereignty in Europe that continues to hold sway in the 21st century. 38 Roberson shows how Egyptian elites adapted to the financial ‘standard of civilisation’ set by Britain, and Englehart how the Thai elite played to British cultural norms in order to gain recognition as ‘civilised’. 39 Neumann explores how the cultural memory of being subordinated within a suzerain system affected Russia’s encounter with European international society. 40 He sets up the interesting argument that all such encounters have been with polities coming from hegemonic/suzerain systems having to come to terms with the anarchic qualities of European/Western international society. Zarakol surveys the ongoing impact of the encounter experiences on Turkey, Japan and Russia. 41 Reus-Smit sees a recurrent theme in which domestic struggles for individual rights link into anti-imperial struggles and the pursuit of sovereign equality within international society. 42 The humiliations of having to conform to alien standards, and the condescending and often racist attitudes of the Europeans towards those who tried, were important components of the third world’s revolt against the West. 43
The Second World War, with its catalogue of barbaric behaviour by Westerners to each other, delegitimised rule by ‘superior’ over ‘inferior’ on grounds of the ‘standard of civilisation’. It opened the way to mass decolonisation on the basis of a transcendental right of self-determination that trumped all arguments about unreadiness for self-government in the modern world. 44 This in turn set up the problem of failed states and humanitarian intervention which brought the return of a modicum of conditionality to recognition of sovereignty, and more so to rights of entry into various international clubs, after 1989. As Wight tellingly observes, the ‘standard of civilisation’ underpinned two contrasting logics about how a powerful, better developed core should relate to a weaker, less developed periphery. In realist logic this difference allowed conquest, exploitation and even extermination of ‘barbarians’. But in rationalist logic it pointed to a paternalistic obligation of the ‘civilised’ to tutor the ‘barbarians’ up to the ‘standard of civilisation’, giving them only the partial rights of a ward along the way. 45
Contemporary Practice: The ‘Standard of Civilisation’ by Other Names
Decolonisation therefore put an end to the ‘standard of civilisation’ as a term of polite public discourse. With the right of independence and sovereign equality becoming almost unconditional, 46 questions of membership in, and conditions of entry to, international society largely disappeared. In the English School literature the focus then turned to the consequences of this rapid move to universal membership, the problems it raised for the cohesion of international society, and what, if anything, might be done about them. Decolonisation tripled the membership of international society and brought into it many post-colonial states that were both politically weak as states and economically poor and underdeveloped. It also weakened the cultural foundations of international society by diluting the previously dominant European cultural cohesion. Now all the world’s cultures both great and small were inside, and this moved Wight’s question about the relationship between cultural cohesion and international society to centre stage. As Riemer and Stivachtis argue, ‘the logic of anarchy, operating in the international system, has brought states into international society, once in, the logic of culture has determined their degree of integration into international society’. 47 On this logic, if culture was diverse, then international society could be only weakly integrated. On top of all this was the Cold War, which along with decolonisation defined the post-1945 era, and which meant that the great powers were at loggerheads, weakening international society still further. 48
But although the term ‘standard of civilisation’ fell out of use after 1945, the practice continued in various ways. Stivachtis sees its successors in human rights, international law and a general standard of modernity, and provides a detailed study of EU conditionalities in this light. 49 Fidler argues that ‘the rejection of the “standard of civilization” as a driving force of international law [has] been more apparent than real’. 50 In similar vein, Zarakol argues that the revolutions of modernity set the terms for the social hierarchy between the West and outsiders that has defined aspects of the modern international agenda from the ‘standard of civilisation’ in the 19th century to the differentiations of ‘development’ and ‘good governance’ today. 51 The substance of the ‘standard of civilisation’ thus very much remains. It is often still about membership, though now more commonly in terms of ‘conditionality’, and membership of specific clubs and organisations. Since all are now inside international society generally, the ‘standard of civilisation’ game is now played mainly between inner (still mainly Western) and outer circles, about who is allowed to join which clubs. International society may have become universal, but in the process it has become both more layered and more regionally differentiated. It still contains status hierarchies mainly defined in terms of Western standards of modernity, and, as in the colonial era, these standards continue to change as the frontiers of modernity, both technological and behavioural, evolve. 52 Like the classical ‘standard of civilisation’, the new one works to differentiate the more ‘civilised’ from the less so, and on that basis to gate-keep on access to the private goods of international society’s inner circles. This section looks at various contemporary practices of conditionality and discrimination that constitute the new ‘standard of civilisation’ in modern form: human rights, democracy, capitalism, environment and development.
Human Rights
Several English School writers have noted that the ‘standard of civilisation’ has morphed into the politer terminology of human rights and conditionality, albeit now within a universal international society rather than constituted through relations between insiders and outsiders. 53 In effect, they argue that the conditionality of Western demands for human rights is the successor to the ‘standard of civilisation’. The term ‘human rights’ has become a catch-all for a wide variety of things ranging from basic survival needs, such as food, clean water and shelter, through social entitlements necessary to self-realisation, such as education and health care, to individual freedoms to speak, practise religion and not be subjected to excessive coercion by the state. Some aspects of this package are quite widely agreed, such as the right to food and the basic principle of human equality. But others are hotly contested, especially those involving the rights of citizens against the state.
The standard of human rights kicked in after 1945 in the context of a quite major change in some of the primary institutions that define international society. The pre-1945 package of colonialism, human inequality/racism, the ‘standard of civilisation’ and divided sovereignty collapsed. It was replaced by a package of universal sovereign equality, self-determination and human equality/anti-racism. Accompanying self-determination was a strengthened liberal notion of universal human rights, which gave practical form to human equality and anti-racism. 54 The new norm of human equality was embedded in the charter of the United Nations and most visibly expressed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR made individual human beings ‘right holders on their own behalf’. 55 Human rights were also embodied in many UN conventions and committees, as they were in a number of regional bodies. All in all, the shift from Western-colonial to Western global international society after the Second World War involved substantial changes to the institutional structure of international society.
Within the English School, the doctrine of human rights has been promoted by the solidarist wing. 56 Pluralists, following Bull, have deep reservations about the pursuit of human rights on the basis of cosmopolitan principles. Bull worried that such a pursuit was fundamentally compromising to the claim by states of sovereignty, which he saw as the foundation of such international order as existed and was likely to be possible.
Carried to its logical extreme, the doctrine of human rights and duties under international law is subversive of the whole principle that mankind should be organised as a society of sovereign states. For, if the rights of each man can be asserted on the world political stage over and against the claims of his state, and his duties proclaimed irrespective of his position as a servant or a citizen of that state, then the position of the state as a body sovereign over its citizens, and entitled to command their obedience, has been subject to challenge, and the structure of the society of sovereign states has been placed in jeopardy.
57
This position did not change much in his later, seemingly more solidarist, work. Both Mayall and Jackson also oppose the solidarist project of transforming international society from a practical into a purposive or ‘enterprise’ association. And both oppose the practice of the strong trying to impose any new ‘standard of civilisation’ on the weak. 58
The reason why human rights have become a new ‘standard of civilisation’ is that it can easily be used as a criterion not only for conditionality regarding membership, but also for suspending the right of non-intervention that states enjoy as a corollary of sovereignty. Such usage circumvents the decolonisation deal of sovereignty and sovereign equality for all, by declaring some states, or at least their governments, either or both of not fit for membership or not fit for recognition and the right of non-intervention. As always, who does such declaring is a crucial issue. An authorised collective body such as the UN Security Council might, with difficulty, legitimately override the right of non-intervention in a case of gross human rights violations. But for some self-declared liberal standard-bearers, such as the mooted ‘League of Democracies’, 59 to do so would be vastly more controversial. Because the doctrine of human rights sets benchmarks against which all can be assessed, it naturally generates a performance hierarchy among states. That tendency is endlessly reproduced as the standards of human rights themselves evolve. So as the human rights issue becomes more influential within international society, it probably cannot avoid resurrecting something like the ‘standard of civilisation’.
Democracy
Like human rights, and quite closely associated with it, democracy is an emergent but still hotly contested institution of international society. It is the counterpoint to the demise of dynasticism in the sense that both represent primary institutions that define the legitimate form of government within the state members of ‘civilised’ international society. But democracy has not yet acquired the general legitimacy that dynasticism once had as the norm for government, nor has it been as widely successful as nationalism in the role of legitimising politics. Democracy promotion has nevertheless achieved some legitimacy within international society, and this is reflected in the practices and policies of a lot of IGOs. 60 As well as conditionalities for state membership and/or access based on democratic values, many INGOs have achieved limited official standing within IGOs and increasingly play significant roles in the promotion of solidarist values, from environmentalism through human rights to restraints on war. 61 Mayall argues that even though democracy is far from universal, democratic values such as human rights, representative government and the rule of law have become influential, perhaps even the standard of legitimacy, in international society. 62 Navari backs this up with a detailed assessment of how far democracy has come as a new ‘standard of civilisation’. She argues that it is not yet a right under international law, but that it has acquired a clear definition in terms of regular multiparty elections with reasonably free and fair voting procedures, and that, where it exists, it enjoys some rights of protection. 63 Nevertheless, democracy promotion is still essentially a Western and especially an American project, and the hierarchy it creates favours the West. 64
After the Second World War, democracy consolidated as a primary institution within Western international society. Democracy promotion was part of US Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union, 65 albeit accompanied by a good deal of hypocritical, if pragmatic, support for anti-Soviet dictatorships. Disagreements over policies and alignments meant that being a democracy never earned India much favour from the US during the Cold War. There was a burst of enthusiasm after 1989, when democracy seemed to defeat its last great rival and become the dominant form of government within international society. 66 This led to a largely American debate about whether to exploit the tide of history to pursue democracy promotion more aggressively by creating a League, or Concert, of Democracies to act towards that end, and to circumvent the paralysis of the UN Security Council. Although this idea did not become the organising principle for US foreign policy, it has certainly played a role in such things as the US cultivating a coalition of Asian democracies as part of its hedging strategy against the rise of China. As can be seen from China’s paranoid crackdown on its own civil society in response to the Arab Spring, democracy has enough clout as an international norm to make authoritarian regimes feel existentially challenged.
Part of the impetus to promote democracy comes from the fact that it is seen as a necessary condition for both human rights and peace. 67 Among its promoters there is consequently a tendency to revive ‘standard of civilisation’ thinking by equating democracy with ‘civilisation’ and non-democracy with ‘barbarity’. 68 This kind of promotionalism, as with human rights, raised tensions not only with non-intervention, but also with the problem that the social conditions necessary to sustain democracy and human rights as a ‘standard of civilisation’ simply do not exist in many parts of the world. 69
Capitalism
Linked to democracy, though not all that much discussed in the English School literature (which remains weak on economic matters), is capitalism. 70 The hegemony of the Washington consensus, and the somewhat imperious manner in which it was promoted up to 2008, is easily seen as a new ‘standard of civilisation’. Fidler, Gong, Bowden and Seabrooke, and Bowden all see the ongoing inequality in the world economy as perpetuating the ‘standard of civilisation’ logic or, as Fidler puts it, ‘the standard of liberal, globalized civilization’. 71 Capitalism has a much more controversial link with human rights, with a major ideological division over whether the capitalist form of political economy does more to promote or to deny human rights. In the emerging world order, even the link between capitalism and democracy is becoming weaker. There is now a variety of authoritarian capitalist states that look stable enough to be part of the world order for at least some decades to come. 72 Here the interesting question is whether their shared capitalism will promote this criterion for ‘civilisation’ or whether their political differences will reproduce ‘civilisational’ hierarchies between democracies and authoritarians.
Environment
Whether or not environmental stewardship will become a new ‘standard of civilisation’ criterion is as yet unclear, though the potential is clearly there. The topic has begun to attract some English School writing. 73 It is unclear how much normative leverage the idea has acquired, but this could change quickly if some crisis created a more unified opinion about priorities. It rose to consciousness later than human rights, and has been more a pragmatic response to observed problems than a fundamental and long-standing question of political philosophy. Since the 1970s, it too has acquired a host of international conferences, conventions, treaties and protocols, and some standing in international law. And as with human rights there is both much diplomatic engagement by non-state actors, and a big question about how much of this is just rhetorical posturing and how much substantive commitment. As with the right to food, even if there is agreement about the problem, there is a large scope for legitimate disagreement about what should be done. 74 And since, even more so than the right to food, environmental stewardship has potentially enormous implications for how the global economy is run, these disagreements have been deep. There is also still disagreement about whether or not the problem exists, though this could change in the face of a suitably grave and obvious crisis such as global warming and sea-level rise. Under those conditions it is not difficult to imagine a new ‘standard of civilisation’ discourse emerging in which those who were taking serious measures to address the problem would begin to see those who were still contributing to it as ‘barbarians’.
Development
Somewhat differently positioned, but nonetheless part of the contemporary ‘standard of civilisation’, is the issue of development. Unlike the four issues just discussed, development is not so much a new issue as a direct extension of one that has been debated since colonial days. The colonial ‘standard of civilisation’ left as its legacy to the post-colonial world the discourse of aid and development. 75 The colonial obligation of the metropolitan powers to bring the natives up to a European ‘standard of civilisation’ morphed into an obligation on the part of the rich world to assist in the development of the ‘third world’ or ‘less developed countries’. Indeed, it is an interesting thought that, in English School terms, development, understood as the right to acquire modernity, might well have become the successor primary institution to imperialism/colonialism. It appears as a goal in countless diplomatic documents and IGO constitutions and charters. It draws legitimacy from both a sense of obligation by the former colonial powers (aka ‘developed states’) and a sense of entitlement by the post-colonial states. It also draws legitimacy from its synergies with the welfare and basic needs end of the human rights and human security discourses with their emphasis on rights to adequate nutrition, clean water, shelter, education and suchlike, all of which are associated with better developed societies. 76 Whether this right to development is about resource transfers from rich to poor, or about the necessity for the ‘underdeveloped’ to undergo their own revolutions of modernity, is of course hotly contested.
Bain offers the most detailed discussion of the obligation of states and their citizens to outsiders in the specific case of trusteeship: the idea that dominion over others is only justified if it is used to protect and improve those whose right of self-rule is suspended. 77 In contemporary form, such a discourse represents both a basic continuity with older strands of thought (based on the superiority of the West) and a reworking of this assumption (without the overt racism that marked earlier strands of thought). 78 Bain notes the troubled background to this in the unequal, often racist, doctrines of 19th century empire that put an obligation on more advanced races to bring those lagging behind up to the ‘standard of civilisation’. On this basis the Europeans considered the Turks unfit to be imperial rulers. 79 After the First World War and the break-up of empires, Bain argues that trusteeship became a short-lived institution of Western international society. Along with colonialism, within which it might be seen as an evolution of practice, it was largely swept away by the tide of decolonization after the Second World War, in which formal inequality among peoples was delegitimised, and the right to self-determination trumped all considerations of capacity for self-government under modern conditions. 80 Bain sees a substantial ghost of trusteeship haunting contemporary international society in its attempts to deal with failed and failing states, and in its deployment of conditionality, human rights and good governance as entry criteria into various international clubs. 81
As in the case of its classical predecessor, the new ‘standard of civilisation’ is closely tied to a progressive agenda of international relations – or, in English School terms, solidarism. Yet as Clark warns, solidarists set standards that tend to narrow the range of rightful membership by stiffening the criteria for entry, whether to various clubs or to international society as a whole. 82 That was the point of the classical ‘standard of civilisation’ and remains the point of contemporary proposals ranging from conditionality to a ‘League of Democracies’. Clark sees this as having been a growing problem since the First and Second World Wars, and it is clear from the discussion of human rights, democracy and potentially environmental stewardship (less so capitalism) that such dynamics remain powerfully in play. 83 So while the phrase ‘standard of civilisation’ fell out of fashion after 1945, much of the practice in terms of both status hierarchies, based on Western criteria of development and modernity, and membership gate-keeping largely by Western states carried on, albeit mainly inside a universal international society rather than in the inside/outside framing of a colonial one.
Outlook
Since the 1990s there has been something of an explicit re-emergence if not of the term ‘standard of civilisation’, at least of the ‘civilised’ versus ‘barbarian’ trope that underpins it. Bowden shows how the discourses around failed states and terrorism have revived the ‘standard of civilisation’ and notes that: ‘Like the classical standard, the current measure of civilisation revolves around the capacity of Non-western states to govern and conduct themselves in such a manner that they can engage with the West on its terms, whether that be through trade or war.’ 84 While this remains true for now, it is an interesting question for how long the ‘standard of civilisation’ will stay tied to a largely West/non-West framing, as it has been for more than two centuries. Both the classical and the new versions of the ‘standard of civilisation’ are products of modernity, and especially of the uneven and combined way in which modernity impacted on international society. On this basis, one might expect that as the revolutions of modernity spread, the era of Western domination is coming to an end, and a period defined by a more globally even distribution of power and development is emerging – Zarkaria’s ‘rise of the rest’. 85 In such a world one civilisation is unlikely to be able to set the standard for the rest because power will have become more diffused, making it impossible for a small subset of states to dominate the rest. As ‘development’ becomes more widespread, there might therefore be less scope for discrimination and hierarchy based on a ‘standard of civilisation’ defined by modernity. As noted, however, modernity itself has proved capable of generating different pathways (liberalism, fascism, socialism, communism). It is clear that major states such as China, Russia and India are still seeking to pursue modernity in their own culturally distinctive fashion. There may thus well be contending standards of modernity between liberals and others, or perhaps a looser global standard with degrees of regional differentiation and pluralist tolerance.
But the ‘standard of civilisation’ as a practice of international relations, whatever rhetorical form it takes, is unlikely to disappear. Its survival across the transition from colonial to global international society is evidence of both robustness and utility. More speculative pop-culture evidence for this can be found in the ‘galactic civilisation’ branch of intelligent science fiction writing. Even so liberal a version of this as Star Trek contained a strong ‘standard of civilisation’ criterion in the form of whether a culture had developed faster-than-light (FTL) travel or not. As Neumann perceptively argued, the FTL standard determined whether the Federation would either initiate diplomatic contact or subject the newly discovered culture to anthropological observation, and the non-interference rule of the ‘prime directive’. 86 Iain M. Bank’s series of Culture novels also feature a specific eight-level ranking of civilisations. Although Banks never set out the scheme in full, the Culture was a ‘level eight civ’, and therefore one of the ‘high level involved’ who were allowed to play a managerial role in the anarchic affairs of the galaxy – i.e. to interfere in the fate and development of lower level civilisations (as in The Player of Games): no ‘prime directive’ here! In this scheme contemporary earth counted as a ‘level three civ’ (The State of the Art). The classification of ‘civs’ seemed to rest mainly on the level of technology attained, particularly weapons technology, multiples of FTL obtained (does it take you a few days, or a few months or many years to get from one side of the galaxy to another?) and machine intelligence. Both of these schemes are quite obvious extensions of the differentials created by modernity. They presuppose that societies at different levels of development coexist within an inter-civilisational system/society. These imaginary schemes of course depend on FTL travel being possible, and on the galaxy being populated by a variety of sentient species that have either developed differently from each other or are at different levels of development. But if those two conditions are met, then it is difficult to imagine how an inter-civilisational society could operate without some form of ‘standard of civilisation’, whether imposed by one, or by an oligarchy like Banks’s ‘high level involved’, or negotiated pluralist fashion among many, as in Star Trek.
The ‘standard of civilisation’ is therefore a durable concept whether one likes it or not. In my view, it should be used and valued in the analysis of international relations more than is currently the case. It is refreshingly frank and analytically penetrating, and well aimed at exposing the hypocrisies of liberal and other types of normative universalism. It is well worth keeping in play in IR generally. The English School should seize its advantage and deploy the concept in its developing analysis of the tension between hierarchic practice and a legitimising principle of sovereign equality. 87
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
1.
This article is based on a talk given at the October 2013 Millennium conference. It draws on Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), and Barry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
2.
Gerritt W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
3.
Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992), 14.
4.
This is not always true. The Romans acknowledged the high civilisation of Greece even though they had conquered the Greeks.
5.
David Fidler, ‘A Kinder, Gentler System of Capitulations? International Law, Structural Adjustment Policies, and the Standard of Liberal, Globalized Civilization’, Texas International Law Journal 35, no. 3 (2000): 389.
6.
W.R. Louis, ‘The Era of the Mandates System and the Non-European World’, in The Expansion of International Society, eds Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 201–13; Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009), Kindle edn locs. 755–848.
7.
John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory 1760–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
8.
Benedict Kingsbury, ‘Sovereignty and Inequality’, in Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics, eds Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 72–7; Fidler, ‘A Kinder, Gentler System of Capitulations?’; Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, locs. 1633–1787.
9.
Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 4–6; Adam Watson, ‘New States in the Americas’, in The Expansion of International Society, eds Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 127–41; Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 35–50.
10.
Andrew Phillips, ‘Saving Civilization from Empire’, European Journal of International Relations 18, no. 1 (2012): 13–14.
11.
Jack Donnelly, ‘Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?’, International Affairs 74, no. 1 (1998): 1–11.
12.
Jacinta O’Hagan, ‘The Question of Culture’, in International Society and Its Critics, ed. Andrew Bellamy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 209–28; Robert H. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
13.
Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
14.
Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society, 117.
15.
Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 73–5, 99–116; Turan Kayaoglu, Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
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Casper Sylvest, ‘International Law in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, British Yearbook of International Law 75 (2005): 9–70; Lacy Pejcinovic, War in International Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013).
17.
C.H. Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies: 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 2, 156, 236–7.
18.
Kayaoglu, Legal Imperialism.
19.
Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’; Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society; Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Shogo Suzuki, Civilisation and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society (London: Routledge, 2009); Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics.
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Rosemary Foot, ‘Chinese Strategies in a US-Hegemonic Global Order: Accommodating and Hedging’, International Affairs 82, no. 1 (2006): 77–94.
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Gerry Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
22.
Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’. See also Bowden, The Empire of Civilization.
23.
Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 64–93.
24.
Ibid., 7–21.
25.
Ibid., 24–53.
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Kalevi J. Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 128–30.
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William Bain, Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (Oxford University Press, 2003), 92.
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29.
Adam Watson, ‘New States in the Americas’, 61–74; Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 100–6; Iver Neumann, ‘Entry into International Society Reconceptualised: The Case of Russia’, Review of International Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 463–84.
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Iver Neumann and Jennifer Welsh, ‘The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society’, Review of International Studies 17, no. 4 (1991): 327–348; A. Nuri Yurdusev, ‘The Middle East Encounter with the Expansion of European International Society’, in International Society and the Middle East: English School Theory at the Regional Level, eds Barry Buzan and Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 70–91.
31.
Ibid.; Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 106–19.
32.
Hidemi Suganami, ‘Japan’s Entry into International Society’, in The Expansion of International Society, eds Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 61–74, 185–99; Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 164–200.
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Ian Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 83–106.
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Zhang Xiaoming, ‘A Rising China and the Normative Changes in International Society’, East Asia 28 (2011): 235–46.
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Ibid.; Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 136–63; Yongjin Zhang, ‘China’s Entry into International Society: Beyond the Standard of “Civilization”’, Review of International Studies 17, no. 1 (1991): 3–16; Yongjin Zhang, ‘System, Empire, and State in Chinese International Relations’, Review of International Studies 27, Special Issue (2001): 43–63.
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Onuma Yasuaki, ‘When Was the Law of International Society Born? An Inquiry of the History of International Law from an Intercivilizational Perspective’, Journal of the History of International Law 2 (2000): 1–66.
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Kayaoglu, Legal Imperialism.
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Barbara A. Roberson, ‘Law, Power and the Expansion of International Society’, in Theorising International Society: English School Methods, ed. Cornelia Navari (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 189–208; Neil A. Englehart, ‘Representing Civilization: Solidarism, Ornamentalism, and Siam’s Entry into International Society’, European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 3 (2010): 417–39.
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Neumann, ‘Entry into International Society Reconceptualised’.
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Ayşe Zarakol, After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
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Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Struggles for Individual Rights and the Expansion of the International System’, International Organization 65, no. 2 (2011): 207–42.
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Hedley Bull, Justice in International Relations, Hagey Lectures (Ontario: University of Waterloo, 1984).
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Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, 134–5.
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Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (Leicester: Leicester University Press/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1991), edited by Brian Porter and Gabriele Wight.
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Watson, The Evolution of International Society, 296.
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Andrea K. Riemer and Yannis A. Stivachtis, eds, Understanding EU’s Mediterranean Enlargement: The English School and the Expansion of Regional International Societies (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002), 27.
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Hedley Bull, ‘The Great Irresponsibles? The United States, the Soviet Union and World Order’, International Journal 35, no. 3 (1980): 437–47.
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Yannis A. Stivachtis, ‘Civilization and International Society: The Case of European Union Expansion’, Contemporary Politics 14, no. 1 (2008): 72–4.
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Fidler, ‘A Kinder, Gentler System of Capitulations?’, 289.
51.
Zarakol, After Defeat, 38–56.
52.
There is also the problem that modernity took not just liberal form, but also fascist and communist totalitarian ones. The standard of modernity has become increasingly liberal, but the other forms still resonate and underpin some of the contestation about human rights.
53.
Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’, 90–3; Gerrit W. Gong, ‘Standards of Civilization Today’, in Globalization and Civilization, ed. Mehdi Mozaffari (New York: Routledge, 2002), 77–96; Donnelly, ‘Human Rights’; Jackson, The Global Covenant, 287–93; Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society, 122–3, 147–8; Stivachtis, ‘Civilization and International Society’; Bowden, The Empire of Civilization.
54.
Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society, 131–51.
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James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and Its Limits (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 33.
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57.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), 152.
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Mayall, World Politics, 21; Jackson, The Global Covenant, 105.
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John G. Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law: US National Security in the 21st Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Project on National Security, 2006); Ian Clark, The Vulnerable in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Anna Geis, ‘The “Concert of Democracies”: Why Some States Are More Equal Than Others’, International Politics 50, no. 2 (2013): 257–77.
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61.
Ann Marie Clark, ‘Non-Governmental Organizations and Their Influence on International Society’, Journal of International Affairs 48, no. 2 (1995): 507–25; Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society, 189–93.
62.
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64.
Stivachtis, ‘Democracy’, 103; Clark, ‘Democracy in International Society’, 564–5.
65.
Stivachtis, ‘Democracy’, 107–8.
66.
Thomas M. Franck, ‘The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance’, American Journal of International Law 86, no. 1 (1992): 46–91.
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68.
Stivachtis, ‘Democracy’, 111.
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70.
Stivachtis, ‘Civilization and International Society’, 87.
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Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez, Human Rights and World Trade (London: Routledge, 2005).
75.
Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns, 250; Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, locs. 1000–1084, 2173–2220.
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Clark, The Vulnerable in International Society.
77.
Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, 1–26.
78.
Zarakol, After Defeat.
79.
Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, 95.
80.
Ibid., 92, 78–107.
81.
Ibid., 155–63.
82.
Clark, Legitimacy in International Society, 26–8.
83.
Ibid., 109–29, 173–89.
84.
Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, loc. 2589.
85.
Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest (London: Penguin, 2009). See also Buzan and Lawson, ‘Capitalism and the Emergent World Order’; Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation.
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