Dissertation, ex post facto - Conclusion

Concluding: The Society of States where Politics meets Law

This examination has been divided into three parts and has come to three main conclusions about the relationship between obligation, international law and international society. While these three conclusions may be listed as distinct claims, they profusely interpenetrate and necessarily imply one another. The first section of this paper has demonstrated, both analytically and historically, that the international legal system, while centred on consent, necessarily rests on the acceptance of the extra-consensual norms of pacta sunt servanda and the legality of custom. The implication of this is that states themselves are inevitably constituted as international legal persons with a sense of international legal obligation and whose cognitive framework is provided by international law.

The second section of the paper has argued that the norm of pacta sunt servanda is constitutive of international society. Normal international action amongst members of international society is defined in accordance with pacta sunt servanda, as well as with other norms such as sovereignty and its corollary of non-intervention. It is significant that for actions in defiance of these constitutive norms an apology is generally proffered, showing that recognition of these norms as constitutive of international society is virtually unanimous.

The argument that international law serves as a common cognitive structure, or language, between states, because its validity is accepted through the internalisation of pacta sunt servanda and the legality of custom, was developed in the second and third sections of the paper. By virtue of this, it has been argued, that shared meanings amongst the members of international society can be established and international action can be interpreted. Because all states are constituted as legal, as well as political, subjects, through the ‘language’ of international law they are able to consciously recognise certain common interests in the basic goals of international order, and develop the norms and institutions that constitute contemporary international politics as an international society.

The third part of this paper has engaged critically with the role of international law in Hedley Bull’s notion of international society. It has not done so to uncover the faults of his account of international law; on the contrary, I have attempted to reinterpret the idea of international society in a more self-consciously constructivist fashion, to adapt it to the present international political context. My attempt to render the ideas behind it more applicable to the present must be understood as a restatement of the value and usefulness of Bull’s notion of international society and an attempt to adapt it to the current condition of international politics. In accordance with Hurrell’s claim that “Bull’s work on international society continues to provide a rich source of insights which are not fully encapsulated in the dominant strands of international relations theory” (2000, 66), I have attempted to develop Bull’s insight into the role of international law as an institution of international society by relaxing his unstated rationalist assumptions about the relationship between politics and law.

The recognition that international law constitutes international society by operating as a universal language through which states interpret international actions has emerged from the questioning of the anti-thetical relationship presumed to exist between international politics and law. As was argued in the final section of this paper, by expanding the perception of international law beyond the legal positivist and realist paradigms, one is able to see international law and politics as complementary practices. From this perspective, contemporary international relations is revealed as a society-specific politics articulated and interpreted through the common language of international law