More than a catchphrase: rethinking Adam Watson’s raison de système in international society

Adam Watson is one of the classical figures of the English School (ES). Scholarly appreciation of his contributions, however, has almost exclusively focused on his comparative work on historical regional ‘systems of states,’ the role of ‘hierarchy’ within an anarchical society, and the ‘evolution’/‘expansion’ of international society. The concept of ‘raison de système,’ for its part, although widely acknowledged as one of Watson’s main conceptual contributions, has received comparatively little attention from fellow members of the ES. In this context, this article reassesses the relevance of raison de système in Watson’s overall thinking by rooting it in a number of earlier intellectual influences emanating from the collaborative efforts of the British Committee. Watson’s raison de système, therefore, must be understood as a richer concept giving substance to how all classical ES thinkers collectively came to conceive of international society, thus giving this theoretical tradition its distinctiveness in the larger spectrum of international thought.