| The English School has made positive contributions to the enrichment and development of IR theory. Its unique research traditions offer IR scholars rich sources to explore and to exploit.By writing this dissertation, the author intends to illustrate the English School's academic status in the field of IR and its research traditions. Three questions are raised and answered in this dissertation. First, is the English School a school of IR theory by itself? Second, what are the core concepts and questions of the English School? Third, how about the development tendency of the English School?This dissertation is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, I put the English School in the context of the four "great debates" of IR theory to explicate the first question. I point out the change of its status, namely, "not acknowledged-marginalized-newly tapped", hi the second chapter, I track back the evolutionary process of the English School's conception of international society and explore three core concepts, "international system", "international society", and "world society", discussing their ontological status in the English School. In the third chapter, I clarify two values of international society-order and justice, and explore how the two values combine to hang international soceity together. In the fourth chapter, I take the maintaining of international society as the research motif, and try to expound the importance of international laws, international norms, and systems of conflict management and resolution (including diplomacy, balance of power and war). In the fifth chapter, I analyze how Barry Buzan, a new-generation scholar of the English School, reshapes English School with the concept of world society and point out the core of English School theory and its inspirations for China's IR theory.In a word, the central idea of the author is that a maturing English School has and will continue to exert positive impacts on the development of IR theory in general.
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