Description
As Richard Little shows, the English School (ES) is based on ontological pluralism. According to Martin Wight, the international system is associated with realism, international society with Grotianism, and world society with revolutionism. Each of these traditions points to a different worldview that is incompatible with the other two. Some positivistically-oriented scholars (Martha Finnemore, Dale Copeland) have indicated that due to a lack of clarity, it is problematic to emphasize what the ES is trying to explain.
In this paper, I want to present that ontological pluralism is coherent with the neoevolutionist philosophy of social sciences. If the fundamental mechanism is the interconnection between the three traditions (as Buzan shows), then the traditions represent the next steps in organizing international reality. Moreover, the scholarship within the ES supports this proposition. There are plenty of papers discussing how the international system can evolve into the international society, as well as how the world society can be an effect of the processes within the international society.
Neoevolutionism fulfills the expectations of both positivistically- and hermeneutically-oriented scholars. The proposal not only provides an explanatory mechanism in the ES but also avoids determinism and naturalism.
