Of Spiders and Bees 181At the opposite end of the spectrum is the bottom- up, or emergent, strat-
egy of order. Here, rules are seen as products of human free will. Th e precise
kind of order could be highly variable, depending on prevailing po liti cal,
social, military, and economic conditions. Order might be imposed by a
single imperial power— though one should probably withhold the label “in-
ternational law” from such a system (such as the imperial Chinese one). Or it
might be arrived at by general consensus or, perhaps, in the style of a parlia-
ment, by a majority vote, or alternatively by multilateral treaty making. In
the present period, the strategy of order from below took two principal forms:
networks of bilateral treaties and the customary practices of states. So long
as there is widespread (or at least relatively widespread) participation in the
making of the rules, this strategy of world order could be described, broadly,
as participatory or demo cratic in character, in contrast to the authoritarian
nature of the top- down, or rationalist, strategy.
Th ere is an alternate way of characterizing the contrast between these
extreme ends of the international- law spectrum. At the one end, the sole
governing law is the law of nature. At the other end, the sole governing law
is the law of nations (i.e., the voluntary law of nations), as evidenced by state
practice. Between the two extremes is a smooth continuum, with literally
every possible proportionate blending (or gradation) in between. In the lan-
guage of Baconian zoology (and oversimplifying a bit), we could say that the
natural- law extremity is the realm of the spiders, and the positive- law ex-
tremity the realm of the ants— with everything in between belonging to the
bees.
One fi nal preliminary observation is in order regarding this international-
law spectrum: that fl oating over it, like a roving ghost, is the question of the
natural sociability of humankind. Th at critical proposition could be ac-
cepted or rejected at any and every point along the entire spectrum, but with
readily foreseeable consequences. Consider the extreme natural-law point,
for an illustration. Th ere we fi nd Hobbes, who rejected natural sociability,
but also Pufendorf, who accepted it. Th at made for a very large diff erence in
the content of natural law that they advocated, while still leaving both of
them in the naturalist camp.
Consider also the extreme voluntary- law point. Someone who accepted
the natural- sociability thesis would expect international society to be broadly
harmonious, with law emerging by some kind of consensus procedure and