The International Relations of the North-South Divide: Historical Inequality, Contemporary Disagreement and World Politics - Paperback

by Nicholas Lees (Author)

Available open access digitally under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

This book examines the significance of both historical and contemporary inequality in shaping diplomatic disagreements in international relations.

The author demonstrates that the North-South divide has endured into the 21st century by drawing on three decades of data measuring the foreign policy positions of states on divisive global issues, including new text-based measures of international priorities within the United Nations General Assembly. This divide reflects the dissatisfaction of many states of the Global South with the post-Cold War international order, owing to historical legacies of unequal development.

Wide-ranging and rigorous, this new empirical investigation demonstrates the ongoing relevance of material inequality for international politics and the multilateral system.

Author Biography

Nicholas Lees is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Liverpool.