The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order by Sean McFate Page B

others,the Middle Ages represents an alternative model to the Westphalian system, as demonstrated by Philip Cerny, Mark Duffield, Stephen Kobrin, Jörg Friedrichs, and others. 1 This book expands on this school of thought.
    Neomedievalism is important because it offers a conceptual lens for understanding the seemingly dissonant and chaotic world order emerging from the ashes of the Cold War that cannot be easily grasped past the conceptual blinders of state-centrism. Rather than rationalizing the paradox in conventional state-centric international relations theory, neomedievalism instead acknowledges the fundamental reorganization and redistribution of power in the system from state to nonstate actors. It embraces the fragmentation of sovereignty and seeks to reorient international relations ideas away from state-centrism and toward an unstructured system of overlapping authorities and allegiances to better comprehend world affairs.
    Neomedievalism is a metaphor loosely based on the world order of the European high Middle Ages, but it does not portend a literal return to the medieval period. Nor does it imply Eurocentrism, since the central features of this neomedievalism can easily be found in historical Asia, India, Africa, and elsewhere. The European Middle Ages is merely an illustrative example of this kind of world order, and the label
neomedievalism
does not connote European exceptionalism. If anything, neomedievalism is non-Eurocentric, since it moves away from the primacy of the state, arguably a European invention exported through colonialism. Neomedievalism does not insinuate worldwide atavism. States will not disappear, but they will matter less than they did a century ago. Nor does neomedievalism suggest chaos and anarchy; the global system will persist in a durable disorder that contains, rather than solves, problems.
Hedley Bull’s Test for Neomedievalism
    One of the greatest interpreters of neomedievalism was Hedley Bull, a seminal scholar of the so-called English School of international relations. Born in 1932, he was a professor at the Australian National University, the London School of Economics, and Oxford University, until his death from cancer in 1985. He addresses neomedievalism in his main work,
The Anarchical Society
, which explores alternative models to the Westphalian system, including what he calls “new medievalism.” For this, he imagines a future where “sovereign states might disappear,” replaced by “a system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalty.” 2
    A neomedieval system would seem to invite instability and even anarchy, but it is balanced and centered, according to Bull, by the dueling universal claims of empire and church, or their equivalents today. In such a world order, no single ruler or state is sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given territory andits contained population, akin to the modern state. Instead, several authorities—Holy Roman Emperor, pope, prince, city-state, monastic order, guild, and so forth—shared or competed for authority over vassals and resources in a single geographical area. According to Bull, a neomedieval world order could be said to exist “if modern states were to come to share their authority over their citizens, and their ability to command their loyalties, on the one hand with regional and world authorities, and on the other hand with sub-state or sub-national authorities, to such an extent that the concept of sovereignty ceased to be applicable, then a neo-mediaeval form of universal political order might be said to exist.” 3 Such a world order characterized by the multiplicity of authorities and allegiances “represents an alternative to the system of states.”
    Bull looked for evidence of neomedievalism in his day. He proposed five criteria to test for its existence: the technological unification of the world, the regional integration of states, the rise of transnational organizations, the disintegration of states,