The Anglosphere, according to James Bennett (The Anglosphere Challenge)^[1]

  Core Anglosphere

  Middle Anglosphere (states where English is one of several official languages, but not necessarily widely spoken by the native population)

  Outer sphere (English-using states of other civilisations)

  Periphery (states where English is widely used but is not an official governmental language)

The Anglosphere is the Anglo-American sphere of influence, with a core group of nations that today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in different sources vary, the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with anglophone, though the nations that are commonly included in the core group are Common Law-based nations derived from once being part of the British Empire.

The five core countries of the Anglosphere are usually taken to be Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries enjoy close cultural and diplomatic links with one another and are aligned under military and security programmes.

Definitions and variable geometry

The Anglosphere is the Anglo-American sphere of influence.^[2][a] The term was first coined by the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his book The Diamond Age, published in 1995. John Lloyd adopted the term in 2000 and defined it as including English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and the British West Indies.^[3] James C. Bennett defines anglosphere as "the English-speaking Common Law-based nations of the world".^[4] The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the Anglosphere as "the countries of the world in which the English language and cultural values predominate".^[5][b] However the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with anglophone.^[6]

Core Anglosphere

The definition is usually taken to include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States^[7] in a grouping of developed countries called the core Anglosphere. This term can also less frequently encompass Ireland, Malta and the Commonwealth Caribbean countries.^[8][3]

The five core countries in the Anglosphere are developed countries that maintain close cultural and diplomatic links with one another. They are aligned under such military and security programmes as:^{[9][3][10][11]}

• ABCANZ Armies
• Air and Space Interoperability Council (air forces)
• AUSCANNZUKUS (navies)
• Border Five
• Combined Communications Electronics Board (communications electronics)
• Five Eyes (intelligence)
• Five Nations Passport Group
• Migration 5
• The Technical Cooperation Program (technology and science)
• The UKUSA Agreement (signals intelligence).

Public opinion research has found that people in the five core Anglosphere countries consistently rank each other's countries as their country's most important allies in the world.^{[citation needed]} Relations have traditionally been warm between Anglosphere countries, with bilateral partnerships such as those between Australia and New Zealand, the United States and Canada and the United States and the United Kingdom (the Special Relationship) constituting the most successful partnerships in the world.^[12][13][14]

In terms of political systems, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have Charles III as head of state, form part of the Commonwealth of Nations and use the Westminster parliamentary system of government. Most of the core countries have first-past-the-post electoral systems, though Australia and New Zealand have reformed their systems and there are other systems used in some elections in the UK. As a consequence, most core Anglosphere countries have politics dominated by two major parties.

Below is a table comparing the five core countries of the Anglosphere (data for 2021/2022):

Culture and economics

Due to their historic links, the Anglosphere countries share many cultural traits that still persist today. Most countries in the Anglosphere follow the rule of law through common law rather than civil law, and favour democracy with legislative chambers above other political systems.^[25] Private property is protected by law or constitution.^[26]

Market freedom is high in the five core Anglosphere countries, as all five share the Anglo-Saxon economic model – a capitalist model that emerged in the 1970s based on the Chicago school of economics with origins from the 18th century United Kingdom.^[27] The shared sense of globalisation led cities such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Toronto to have considerable impacts on the financial markets and the global economy.^[28] Global popular culture has been highly influenced by the United States and the United Kingdom.^[26]

Proponents and critics

Proponents of the Anglosphere concept typically come from the political right (such as Andrew Roberts of the UK Conservative Party), and critics from the centre-left (for example Michael Ignatieff of the Liberal Party of Canada).

Proponents

As early as 1897, Albert Venn Dicey proposed an Anglo-Saxon "intercitizenship" during an address to the Fellows of All Souls at Oxford.^[29]

The American businessman James C. Bennett,^[30] a proponent of the idea that there is something special about the cultural and legal (common law) traditions of English-speaking nations, writes in his 2004 book The Anglosphere Challenge:

The Anglosphere, as a network civilization without a corresponding political form, has necessarily imprecise boundaries. Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the United States and the United Kingdom. English-speaking Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and English-speaking South Africa (who constitute a very small minority in that country) are also significant populations. The English-speaking Caribbean, English-speaking Oceania and the English-speaking educated populations in Africa and India constitute other important nodes.^[9]

Bennett argues that there are two challenges confronting his concept of the Anglosphere. The first is finding ways to cope with rapid technological advancement and the second is the geopolitical challenges created by what he assumes will be an increasing gap between anglophone prosperity and economic struggles elsewhere.^[31]

British historian Andrew Roberts claims that the Anglosphere has been central in the First World War, Second World War and Cold War. He goes on to contend that anglophone unity is necessary for the defeat of Islamism.^[32]

According to a 2003 profile in The Guardian, historian Robert Conquest favoured a British withdrawal from the European Union in favour of creating "a much looser association of English-speaking nations, known as the 'Anglosphere'".^[33][34]

CANZUK

Favourability ratings tend to be overwhelmingly positive between countries within a subset of the core Anglosphere known as CANZUK (consisting of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom),^{[according to whom?]} whose members form part of the Commonwealth of Nations and retain Charles III as head of state. In the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) as a result of a referendum held in 2016, there has been mounting political and popular support for a loose free travel and common market area to be formed among the CANZUK countries.^[35][36][37]

Criticisms

In 2000, Michael Ignatieff wrote in an exchange with Robert Conquest, published by the New York Review of Books, that the term neglects the evolution of fundamental legal and cultural differences between the US and the UK, and the ways in which UK and European norms drew closer together during Britain's membership in the EU through regulatory harmonisation. Of Conquest's view of the Anglosphere, Ignatieff writes: "He seems to believe that Britain should either withdraw from Europe or refuse all further measures of cooperation, which would jeopardize Europe's real achievements. He wants Britain to throw in its lot with a union of English-speaking peoples, and I believe this to be a romantic illusion".^[38]

In 2016, Nick Cohen wrote in an article titled "It's a Eurosceptic fantasy that the 'Anglosphere' wants Brexit" for The Spectator's Coffee House blog: "'Anglosphere' is just the right's PC replacement for what we used to call in blunter times 'the white Commonwealth'."^[39][40] He repeated this criticism in another article for The Guardian in 2018.^[41] Similar criticism was presented by other critics such as Canadian academic Srđan Vučetić.^[42][43]

In 2018, amidst the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, two British professors of public policy Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce published a critical scholarly monograph titled Shadows of Empire: The Anglosphere in British Politics (ISBN 978-1509516612). In one of a series of accompanying opinion pieces, they questioned:^[44]

The tragedy of the different national orientations that have emerged in British politics after empire—whether pro-European, Anglo-American, Anglospheric or some combination of these—is that none of them has yet been the compelling, coherent and popular answer to the country's most important question: How should Britain find its way in the wider, modern world?

They stated in another article:^[45]

Meanwhile, the other core English-speaking countries to which the Anglosphere refers, show no serious inclination to join the UK in forging new political and economic alliances. They will, most likely, continue to work within existing regional and international institutions and remain indifferent to – or simply perplexed by – calls for some kind of formalised Anglosphere alliance.

Opinion polls

A 2020 poll by YouGov revealed that all four of the other core Anglosphere countries were among the top 10 most positively viewed countries by Americans, with Australia and Canada ranking behind only the United States itself in the poll.^[46] Another 2020 poll by YouGov showed that New Zealand, Canada and Australia were the most positively viewed countries by the British.^[47]

A 2018 poll by the Lowy Institute similarly indicated that New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom were the three most positively viewed countries by Australians.^[48] Their 2020 version of the poll again put Canada and the United Kingdom at the top, but New Zealand was not included as an option.^[49] A 2020 poll by the Macdonald–Laurier Institute suggested that Australia was the most positively viewed country by Canadians.^[50] Australia and the U.S. were ranked as having the most favorable view of Canada's influence to the outside world, according to a 2012 GlobeScan survey of 22 countries.^[51] In a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, a plurality of Canadians and Australians named the United States as their country's closest ally.^[52]

Comparing core Anglosphere

Comparing core Anglosphere

Country	Australia[53]	Canada[54]	New Zealand[55]	United Kingdom[56]	United States[57]
Flag
Coat of arms
Population	25,522,169 (as of 2019[update])[58]	37,971,020 (as of 2020[update])[59]	5,124,850 (as of July 2021[update])[60]	67,026,292 (as of 2021[update])[61]	332,718,707[24]
Area	7,741,220 km2[18]	9,984,670 km2[15]	268,838 km2[19]	243,610 km2[26]	9,833,520
Population density	3.3/km2	3.9/km2	18.3/km2	270.7/km2	33.8/km2
Exclusive Economic Zone[62]	8,505,348 km2	5,559,077 km2	4,420,565 km2	6,805,586 km2	11,351,000 km2
Capital city	Canberra	Ottawa	Wellington	London	Washington, D.C.
Largest urban areas (2021) [15][18][19][26]	Sydney: 5.312 million Melbourne: 5.061 million Brisbane: 2.439 million Perth 2.067 million Adelaide: 1.345 million Gold Coast: 679,127[63]	Toronto: 6.255 million Montreal: 4.247 million Vancouver: 2.606 million Calgary: 1.581 million Edmonton: 1.491 million Ottawa: 1.408 million	Auckland: 1.630 million Wellington: 417,000	London: 9.426 million Greater Manchester: 2.750 million Birmingham: 2.626 million Leeds: 1.902 million Glasgow: 1.681 million Southampton–Portsmouth: 936,000	New York City: 18.937 million Los Angeles: 12.534 million Chicago: 8.937 million Houston: 6.707 million Dallas: 6.574 million Washington, DC: 5.490 million
Form of government	Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy[18]	Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy[15]	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy[19]	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy[26]	Federal presidential constitutional republic
Head of State	King Charles III (Governor-General David Hurley)	King Charles III (Governor General Mary Simon)	King Charles III (Governor-General Cindy Kiro)	King Charles III	President Joe Biden
Head of government	Prime Minister Anthony Albanese	Prime Minister Justin Trudeau	Prime Minister Chris Hipkins	Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
Governing party (international affiliation)	Labor Party (PA)	Liberal Party (LI)	Labour Party (PA)	Conservative Party (IDU)	Democratic Party
Largest opposition party (international affiliation)	Liberal Party (IDU)	Conservative Party (IDU)	National Party (IDU)	Labour Party (PA)	Republican Party (IDU)
Official languages	None (de facto Australian English)	Canadian English Canadian French	Māori New Zealand Sign Language (de facto New Zealand English[c])	None (de facto British English)	None (de facto American English)
Main religions	46.1% Irreligious 43.9% Christian 3.2% Muslim 2.7% Hindu 2.4% Buddhist 0.8% Sikh 0.4% Jewish 0.9% Other (As of 2021)[d]	53.3% Christian 34.6% Irreligious 4.9% Muslim 2.3% Hindu 2.1% Sikh 1.0% Buddhist 0.9% Jewish 0.9% Other (As of 2021)[e]	55.3% Irreligious 37.3% Christian 2.7% Hindu 1.3% Muslim 1.1% Buddhist 0.9% Sikh 0.1% Jewish 1.3% Other (As of 2018)[f]	46.2% Christian 43.2% Irreligious 6.5% Muslim 1.7% Hindu 0.9% Sikh 0.5% Jewish 0.5% Buddhist 0.5% Other (As of 2021)[66]	63.0% Christian[67] 29.3% Irreligious[68] 1.4% Jewish 0.8% Muslim 0.8% Buddhist 0.5% Hindu 0.1% Sikh 3.4% Other (As of 2020)[g]
Currency	Australian dollar	Canadian dollar	New Zealand dollar	Pound sterling	United States dollar