Beyond the Societal: the Actoral Multiplicity and Explaining World Politics

This article demonstrates that implications of Multiplicity, used to make the case for the societal condition of the international (Rosenberg, 2016), also explain the heterogeneous condition of world politics. The article argues that the logics of Multiplicity (difference, interaction, combination, co-existence, and dialectical change) drive world politics beyond the sovereign order. This is enabled not only by the emergence of non-state actors as entities different than the states, but also by their interactions with each other and with nation-states, the combinations they stimulate, their co-existence, and the dialectical changes in which they partake. Consequently, the article makes the case for actoral multiplicity that explains the relations among state and non-state actors, and the ways in which they co-create world politics. The article shows how the logics of Multiplicity shape world politics, and what are the implications of this process for the study of International Relations, including the Multiplicity programme.