ABSTRACT
Thirty-five years is a long time in world politics, especially given increased saturation in global-level interconnections. Is the European Union (EU) still reconcilable with the Westphalian system, or does it comprise a sort of vanguard neo-medieval order? In The Anarchical Society, Hedley Bull supplied five criteria against which movement towards neo-medievalism could be measured. With regard to a marked integration of states, Bull's example of the EU. In Bull's time, it was still the European Economic Community (EEC) is instructive. Bull's third concern centered upon the extent to which the EU could be generalized, or initiated outside the region. While acknowledging that groups such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the Organization of American States (OAS) had been 'affected' by the EU example, he maintained that none of them showed even the modest degree of advancement then extant in Europe.
