The International Relations of the North-South Divide : Historical Inequality, Contemporary Disagreement and World Politics / Nicholas Lees.

Introduction : historical inequality and contemporary disagreement -- The concepts of north and south -- Theorizing the north-south divide in international relations -- A strategy for researching international disagreement -- Debating across the divide : a text analysis of the United Nations General Debate -- Geography and the north-south divide : how deep are the roots of international inequality? -- State history in the making of the north-south divide : divergence and reversals during the European colonial era -- The world economy and the north-south divide : structuralism revisited -- Diversity in discontent : exploring foreign policy variation across the global south using cluster analysis -- Conclusion : the enduring relevance of the north-south divide

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.