«Scelte terribili». Il dibattito tra pluralismo e solidarismo nella Scuola Inglese di relazioni internazionali

The pluralist-solidarist debate in English School theory focuses on discerning the kind of international society in which we live. This article critically analyses the debate in order to highlight the overgeneralizations that have been built by several scholars during the last decades. From the end of the Cold War, both pluralism and solidarism trivialised the enduring tension between order and justice in world politics, which is described in the seminal works of Hedley Bull. Pluralists maintained the primacy of states, the rule of non-intervention, and the unchanging structure of the Westphalian system, while solidarists affirmed the role of human rights, the case of intervention, and the advent of world society. This article refutes the procedural or teleological purposes that these two normative wings of English School describe as mutually incompatible. Building upon insights by Bull, I argue that the pluralist elements and solidarist ones survive inextricably tied also in contemporary international society.