Conflict and the separateness of peoples: investigating the relationship between multiplicity, inequality and war

ABSTRACT

The discipline-defining claim that anarchy leads inevitably to security-competition and war between states is unsustainable. This article investigates whether the concept of multiplicity can offer a reintegrated account of insecurity in world politics. As highlighted by rational choice approaches, substantive conflicts of interest are a necessary condition for organized violence to be a permanent possibility within, across and between societies. A materialist argument is presented that the most enduring incompatible interests arise from clashes over the rules of economic appropriation and redistribution, and the appropriate boundaries between social groups. Historically, unevenness and the possibility for exploitation have created structural pressures towards simultaneous social stratification and the institutionalization of inter-societal warfare. Because of the central importance of social boundaries for structural inequalities, multiplicity has profound implications for both patterns of organized violence and the fundamental issue in the study of politics: who gets what, when and how.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiplicity
• conflict
• inequality
• historical sociology
• rational choice

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Milja Kurki, Justin Rosenberg and the participants in the 2018 European International Studies Association workshop ‘Beyond “Campfire IR”: Multiplicity as a New Common Ground for IR Theory’ for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Responsibility for all errors remains mine alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Nicholas Lees http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9879-7609

Notes

1 This differs from the security dilemma, which arises from uncertainty about whether a state has revisionist motivations or might develop revisionist motivations in the future. This situation arises because of confidence about the motivations of a state that is unable to commit itself to respecting the status quo in future.

2 Without such conflicts of interest, armed political actors could negotiate movement to the equilibrium of mutual disarmament. Indeed, a world of security competition might not emerge in the first place. Note, according to the conventional rational choice account, war requires one or more of the following conditions in addition to a clash of interests: uncertainty over the relative threat advantage of actors; inability to make credible commitments; indivisible goods under dispute (Fearon, 1995).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Lees

Nicholas Lees is a Lecturer in International Politics at the Department of Politics, University of Liverpool. His research utilizes both critical theory and quantitative methods to examine the dimensions of structural inequality and the causes of organized violence in world politics.