ABSTRACT
The essays in this collection collectively emphasise the relationship between territory, identity and function in international relations. As was stated in the introduction, Hedley Bull’s notion of international society is, ultimately, about authority rather than control; authority becomes a resource which various people and groups of people can use in achieving their aims. This means that the sovereign territorial state is primarily a focus for loyalties, a way of organising politics, and is not simply reducible to its effectiveness in controlling things. If states are simply more constrained, then international society is still operative; if states are having to actually compete with other entities for loyalty and legitimacy, then things are moving in a different direction and there would be a change of world order.
