The Argument of The Anarchical Society

There are two notable discrepancies in The Anarchical Society: Bull claims that he does not canvass any solution to the problems that humankind faces, yet this is precisely what he does; and contrary to what the book’s subtitle, A Study of Order in World Politics, signifies in his own conceptual vocabulary, and to how he thinks the ‘world political system’ should be studied, the book remains almost exclusively a much more narrowly-focused study of international order in the contemporary global ‘international system’. This chapter first analyses the key moves of the book’s argument step by step. It then investigates in detail the underlying sources of the two discrepancies in Bull’s argument to obtain a deeper understanding of his thought structures. A brief concluding section outlines what could fruitfully be done by others to make further contributions to a study of order, and other related goals, in contemporary world politics.