Observing international relations: Niklas Luhmann and world politics

Observing International Relations draws upon the modern systems theory of society, as developed by Niklas Luhmann, to provide new perspectives on central aspects of contemporary world society.

Introduction / Mathias Albert -- On the modern systems theory of society and IR. Contacts and disjunctures between different kinds of theorizing / Mathias Albert -- Politics, modern systems theory and the critical purpose of international relations theory / Thomas Diez -- "Corpus mysticum": Niklas Luhmann's evocation of world society /Stefan Rossbach -- The "English school" and world society / Chris Brown -- Sociological institutionalism and the empirical study of world society / George M. Thomas -- World society from the bottom up / Lothar Brock -- World society, systems theory and the classical sociology of modernity / Dietrich Jung -- Systems and sovereignty -- a systems theoretical look at the transformation of sovereignty / Anders Esmark -- "World opinion" and the turn to post-sovereign international governance / Hans-Martin Jaeger -- Society's war: the evolution of a self-referential military system / Gorm Harste -- Organizations in/and world society: a theoretical prolegomenon / Mathias Albert and Lena Hilkermeier -- Governance in a world society: the perspective of systems theory / Dieter Kerwer -- Constructivism and international relations: an analysis of Luhmann's conceptualization of power / Stefano Guzzini -- Concluding remarks / Mathias Albert

Observing International Relations draws upon the modern systems theory of society, developed by Niklas Luhmann, to provide new perspectives on central aspects of contemporary world society and to generate theoretically informed insights on the possibilities and limits of regulation in global governance. The authors develop a Luhmannian theory of world society by contrasting it with competing notions of international society, critically discussing the use of modern systems theory in international relations theory and assessing its treatment of central concepts within international relations, such as power, sovereignty, governance and war.