‘Strange multiplicity’ as a moral-political value : Potential and costs of normativity in world politics

Introduction

Rosenberg’s (2016) International Relations and the prison of Political Science has triggered an enormous interest in the concept of ‘multiplicity’ by scholars of International Relations (IR). ¹ In this article, Rosenberg invites his readers to imagine IR scholars sitting around a campfire – realists, feminists, post-structuralists, what have you. It has become difficult for them, Rosenberg observes, to have a meaningful conversation. They are – seemingly – talking about very different things; they even seem to speak different languages. But this fragmentation is unnecessary, Rosenberg insists, for there is a lingua franca for IR theorists – the language of ‘societal multiplicity’. After all, he asserts, ‘human existence is not unitary but multiple. It is distributed across numerous interacting societies. This is the elemental fact about the human world that justifies the existence of IR as an academic discipline. No other discipline. . . subtends fundamentally on this fact of societal multiplicity’ (Rosenberg, 2016: 135).

Since the publication of Rosenberg’s article, the concept of multiplicity has been taken up by a number of scholars. While these scholars agree with Rosenberg on the importance of multiplicity for the discipline of IR, they have – often through a critical engagement with Rosenberg’s work – used the concept for a variety of purposes. Multiplicity, for instance, has been applied as a mechanism to understand UN intervention in South Sudan (Hageman, 2019), as a concept to investigate the relationship between international currency hierarchies and societal multiplicity in the global monetary system (Koddenbrock, 2020) or even as an analytical and heuristic lens through which an international politics of Czech architecture can be sketched (Tallis, 2019). ² Strikingly, most of these discussions share Rosenberg’s (2016) understanding of multiplicity as IR’s ‘deep ontology’ (p. 134). This focus on ‘ontology’, however, has left one important question unaddressed: What are the consequences, that is, the positive potential and the inevitable costs, of understanding multiplicity as a moral-political value in world politics? The question is important because, in contrast to the focus on multiplicity as the ontology (i.e. ‘an elemental fact’) of IR, it allows us to develop a more radically democratic idea of multiplicity as a value in world politics. ³

This article, then, shifts the focus from the ontological to the normative, from an account of societal multiplicity as an ‘elemental fact about the human world’, to the idea of multiplicity as a value that ought to be cherished and protected. Such a shift, in other words, allows us to think about multiplicity in normative rather than in exclusively ontological terms. To do so, I will bring Rosenberg’s conception of societal multiplicity into conversation with the radically democratic idea of James Tully’s ‘strange multiplicity’ and draw out the consequences of such a normative turn. ⁴ My argument is that while Rosenberg does not frame multiplicity as a value, Tully’s normative understanding of the concept harbours enormous potential to transform oppressive and dominating practices in world politics. However, I will also show that Tully’s general rejection of all forms of domination comes at a price that must not be underestimated. ⁵ And it is of crucial importance to get a clear picture of these consequences as we have to decide whether or not this price is, ultimately, worth paying.

With this paper, I aim to make a contribution to the burgeoning literature on multiplicity, which I see as a welcome contribution to the theory of IR. More importantly, though, I want to contribute to normative IR and International Political Theory. Few scholars in these fields have seriously engaged with radical democratic theory (notable exceptions are Kochi, 2019; Tambakaki, 2012; Wiener, 2014, 2018), which is, in my view, a lamentable blind spot. ⁶ Above all, then, this article seeks to demonstrate that Tully’s radically democratic idea of ‘strange multiplicity’ yields a vision of global justice – but it is a ‘rough justice’ that comes at a certain price – and a heavy one at that. ⁷

The paper proceeds in four steps: First, I will engage critically with both Rosenberg’s earlier work and International Relations in the prison of Political Science, which will be used as a springboard and a recurring reference point that helps us to shift the discussion around societal multiplicity to the normative level. Subsequently, I will turn to the work of James Tully, who has made the concept of ‘strange multiplicity’ the central idea of his particular vision of agonistic democracy. The main purpose of the second section, accordingly, is to sketch out the central elements of Tully’s political theory. This, in turn, sets the scene for the third part in which I will bring to the fore the consequences of a vision of world politics that elevates ‘strange multiplicity’ to a fundamental moral-political value. ⁸ The main argument of this section is that the constructive potential of democratic struggle can transform oppressive and dominating practices of world politics, but that, at the same time, this agonistic vision comes at a certain price that must not be underestimated, let alone ignored. In the concluding remarks, I will provide some thoughts (but no definitive answer) on whether or not the price of a normative conception of multiplicity in world politics is, ultimately, worth paying.

Shifting the focus

Rosenberg’s work on multiplicity does not, of course, emerge from a scholarly vacuum. In fact, it grows out of his previous scholarship on IR theory, which is best known for two – often interconnected – strands of critique: The first is his Marxist criticism of realism, which found an early expression in The Empire of Civil Society (Rosenberg, 1994) and remained one of his concerns ever since. One of Rosenberg’s key claims against realism is that it suffers from a remarkable blind spot: While it claims to foreground the ‘power-mongering’ behaviour of international actors, it relegates the private sphere – in which domination primarily takes place – to the non-political realm. The criticism, in other words, is that realism cannot explain the political dimensions of domination (Rosenberg, 1994: 141). The second is his attack on ‘the collapsing temple of globalisation theory’ (Rosenberg, 2000: chapter 5). Through a detailed engagement with the theories of Jan Aart Scholte, Rob Walker and Anthony Giddens, he seeks to demonstrate the internal incoherence of globalisation theory (Rosenberg, 2000). Yet, Rosenberg never restricted himself to the mere criticism of theoretical doctrines. Through his critical analyses, but also by harnessing Trotsky’s concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ (Rosenberg, 2010), he has long tried to shed light on what he calls ‘the international’ – which he consistently defines as ‘that dimension of social reality which arises specifically from the co-existence within it of more than one society’ (Rosenberg, 2006: 308, 2016: 136). ⁹ Also on a further important point Rosenberg’s argument has been remarkably consistent: Already in The Empire of Civil Society he asserts that ‘a full understanding of the international system requires us to look beyond the realm of the purely political’ and that we need ‘a social theory of anarchy’ (Rosenberg, 1994: 142), a claim that, as will be seen, is still very much present in his latest works. This, in a nutshell, is the background out of which Rosenberg’s idea of societal multiplicity’ has grown and that helps us to interpret it.

With IR in the prison of Political Science Rosenberg continues to explore the question of ‘the international’, but also – and boldly – asserts to have discovered the key to this question in the form of societal multiplicity. What is it, Rosenberg asks, that gives IR an identity as a distinct academic discipline? IR theorists, he asserts, have not done a good job in working out IR’s identity-creating ontology; whereas other disciplines have been successful in establishing a common ground for their discipline, that is, a specific core around which meaningful disciplinary discussions can be constructed, IR is often seen as lacking such a ‘grounding’. For Rosenberg, the reason for this phenomenon is clear: IR is locked inside the ‘prison of Political Science’. That is, IR has been relegated to a mere subfield of Political Science by scholars – including IR theorists – who have paid scant attention to the significance of ‘the international’. As a result, IR’s distinctive potential as an academic discipline remains largely invisible (Rosenberg, 2016: 134).

There is, however, no need to be pessimistic, Rosenberg says, for there is indeed a promising contender for IR’s ‘deep ontology’ ¹⁰ : societal multiplicity. For ‘no matter how much we twist and turn it in our hands’, Rosenberg (2016) insists,

the word ‘international’ always ends up presupposing the same basic circumstance, namely, that human existence is not unitary but multiple. It is distributed across numerous interacting societies. This is the elemental fact about the human world that justifies the existence of IR as an academic discipline. No other discipline. . . subtends fundamentally on this fact of societal multiplicity. (p. 135)

It is ‘societal multiplicity’, this ‘co-existence of a multiplicity of social entities’ (Rosenberg, 2016: 130), then, that gives IR its ontological grounding. Moreover, Rosenberg (2016: 135) clarifies, ‘when we refer to multiple societies, what we are actually invoking is not any given form of social existence, but rather the socially and politically fragmented character of human history itself’. Yet, this characterisation, as he rightly recognises, leads to an immediate problem: On the one hand, it is, as we have seen above, one of his long-term aims to expose the weaknesses of realism. In IR in the prison of Political Science, he continues this project by admonishing that, precisely by framing IR as a subdiscipline of Political Science, realism allocates a pivotal role to ‘politics’. On the other, Rosenberg’s own definition of multiplicity, seemingly brings him back to the centrality of politics. His proposed solution to this problem is to admit, in a first step, that ‘political multiplicity must indeed have a special importance for IR – without it, there would be no plurality of units’. In a second step, though, he insists that the significance of societal multiplicity is not restricted to politics and relations of power. Societal multiplicity ‘extends into the social, economic, cultural and developmental dimensions too; and its causal implications there. . . proliferate beyond any logic deriving from political multiplicity alone’ (Rosenberg, 2016: 136). For the purposes of this article, the role of politics – I will call it the ‘question of politics’ – is important and I will come back to it below.

In the core of the paper, Rosenberg draws out five ‘consequences’ of multiplicity: coexistence, difference, interaction, combination and dialectical change. By presenting ‘coexistence’ as ‘the most profound’ implication, which, after all, ‘generates the international itself as a dimension of the social world’ (Rosenberg, 2016: 136), Rosenberg reinforces the ontological thrust of his argument – there is something like ‘the international’ because there is multiplicity. As such, multiplicity also inscribes the fact of ‘difference’ within the ontology of ‘the international’ – there is something like ‘the international’ because there is difference. But multiplicity has a further consequence, namely ‘interaction’. Human societies have always interacted with each other, and it is precisely this element of interaction that generates both dangers and opportunities. Difference and interaction inevitably lead to tension and conflict between multiplicities but, simultaneously, provide the potential for ‘change’. It seems clear, though, that the change that is produced through the interaction of different multiplicities can never be linear; the account of change we are dealing with is necessarily ‘dialectical’ as it is generated and animated by the interaction of very different societies. Finally, the Janus-faced nature of the potential of interaction allows us, according to Rosenberg, to develop a more holistic picture of the international (what he calls ‘combination’): ‘the international dimension is not simply a matter of external relations: through interaction, multiplicity reaches into the inner constitution of societies themselves’ (Rosenberg, 2016: 139). There is, indeed, something extremely insightful in this interplay of difference and interaction, and its potential for ‘dialectical change’ that can reform both the international system and the internal state of societies; here, interestingly, Rosenberg leaves the purely theoretical realm and enters the terrain of practical world politics; and here, he points to one of the central consequences of the vision of agonistic politics that I will identify below. I will return to this point in the Conclusion.

I will now shift the analytical focus in two ways: we might call them a ‘shift towards practice’ and a ‘shift towards normativity’. To start with the former, I want to bring discussions around multiplicity to a more ‘practical’ level. What I mean by that is that I am interested in how the societal multiplicity that serves as an ontology for Rosenberg’s vision of IR plays out on a more practical political level, beyond the abstract deliberations that are concerned with grounding IR as an academic discipline. What, I ask, are the concrete consequences of understanding multiplicity as a moral-political value of global politics? This shift, it should be emphasised, is not a turn away from theory but a shift towards a different form of theory; towards a form of ‘practical theory’ that chimes with Tully’s (2008a) understanding of the purpose of political theory: ‘Here we “bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” to ensure that the work of philosophy starts from “the rough ground” of civic struggles with and over words’ (p. 29). This, however, also brings me to a more serious critique, one that I have already alluded to above: the ‘question of politics’. Rosenberg, as seen, is sceptical of attempts to de-politicise IR. Simultaneously, though, he warns against reducing an IR of multiplicity to politics – there is more to IR (and multiplicity), he insists, than merely politics. Yet, although Rosenberg (2016) seems to propose a viable position between politicisation and de-politicisation, his account remains underdeveloped, especially when he insists that ‘it is multiplicity, not politics, that provides the deepest code of the international as a feature of human existence’ (p. 136). What is the relationship between politics and multiplicity here? If it is ‘multiplicity, not politics’ which is the decisive feature, does that mean that multiplicity and politics are detached from each other? What, ultimately, is Rosenberg’s idea of politics? It is precisely on this important ‘question of politics’ that Tully has a lot to say. It is his broadly republican understanding of politics – of politics as non-domination – that allows us to develop a more convincing answer to ‘the question of politics’ because it uncovers the vital link between political action and multiplicity.

The second shift of focus is a shift from the idea of multiplicity as an ontology (an ‘elemental fact’ of world politics) to the idea of multiplicity as a moral and political value. And here the central question I am interested in is: What are the consequences, that is, the positive potential and the necessary costs, of understanding multiplicity as a moral-political value in world politics? This second shift is, in truth, a radicalised version of the first one because it takes the radical step of understanding multiplicity as something valuable, as something worth cherishing and protecting – in short, as a normative value in world politics. This is something that Rosenberg does not do. But let me avoid misunderstandings: The point here is not that Rosenberg is oblivious of the normative dimensions of world politics. ¹¹ It is, rather, that by presenting multiplicity as the elemental fact that constructs ‘the international’ and gives IR its grounding as a discipline, Rosenberg never takes the radical step of understanding multiplicity as a normative value. It is on this second notion of multiplicity – of multiplicity as a moral-political value – and its consequences that I would like to focus.

What I hope to have achieved through this engagement with Rosenberg’s work is an opening up of the question of multiplicity in world politics, which, first, shifts the focus away from the purely theoretical realm towards practice and, second, from the purely ontological realm towards normativity. In the next section, I will continue this path by engaging with the work of a thinker who engages directly with the ‘strange multiplicity’ that characterises our social, moral, and political existence – James Tully.

(James Tully’s) strange multiplicity

Before I turn to Tully more directly, I should explain why I want to bring this particular thinker into conversation with Rosenberg. To do so, I will briefly sketch out the tradition of thought to which Tully belongs. ¹² This is the radically democratic tradition of agonism, which draws on the ancient Greek concept of the ‘agon’, which translates as ‘struggle’, ‘contest’, ‘competition’ or ‘conflict’ (Kalyvas, 2016). It is a radical tradition because its central assumption is not only that human relations are characterised and shaped by confrontation and struggle but that these struggles and confrontations are of vital importance in (and for) social and political life (Schaap, 2007). What this means more concretely becomes clear when we take a brief look at Hampshire’s (2001) book with the telling title Justice is Conflict. In this (somewhat underappreciated) classic of agonistic thought, Hampshire (2001) argues that Western political thought has always – and wrongly – treated harmony as its prime value and sought to impose ‘harmony under the governance of reason’ (p. 22). The problem with this focus on harmony is that it neglects the fact that ‘neither in a social order, nor in the experience of an individual, is a state of conflict the sign of a vice, or a defect, or malfunctioning’ (Hampshire, 2001: 33). By contrast, a view that understands justice as conflict, Hampshire (2001) asserts, allows us to see that struggle and conflict are, in fact, expressions of plurality, diversity and difference; as a consequence, they are ‘both unavoidable and desirable’ (p. 37).

More recently, thinkers such as Bonnie Honig, Chantal Mouffe, William Connolly or, indeed, James Tully have developed their particular accounts of agonism. To be sure, their respective visions of agonism differ in many respects and it would be misleading to speak of a unified ‘agonistic theory’. ¹³ Nonetheless, as Wenman (2013: 28–58) demonstrates, agonistic thought rests on a number of shared elements. The first, and most salient, feature of agonistic thought is that conflict is not necessarily a vice, and harmony not necessarily a virtue of ethical and political life; rather, certain forms of struggle, competition and conflict – ‘the agon’ – are morally, socially, and politically desirable phenomena. There are two reasons for this: The first is that for agonists human plurality and diversity are not just (as it is for liberals) ‘facts’ of political life; they are precious values. But agonists are under no illusions here; they are well aware that diversity and plurality inevitably create conflict and struggle. Conflict, then, is an expression of the agonistic core value of human plurality. Secondly, the agon is also more than simply a by-product of human plurality; struggle is in and of itself a productive force in political life. ‘It is not simply that inevitable differences in identities, lifestyles and moralities might lead to conflict’, Edyvane (2008) writes, ‘it is rather that identities, lifestyles and moralities are in the first place formed through conflict’ (p. 329). In the agonistic outlook, therefore, politics is – and should be – about ‘unruly’ practices; administration, law, and the imposition of order, on the other hand, can ‘displace’ politics and act as a straitjacket for progressive political action (Honig, 1993). The final element of the agonistic conception of politics is ‘tragedy’. The concept of tragedy is employed here to challenge rationalistic ideas of inevitable progress, which often underlie liberal thought, and to express the idea ‘of a world without hope of final redemption from suffering and strife’ (Wenman, 2013: 33). Thus, against the rationalistic idea that, at some point, the progressive development of humanity will overcome conflict, agonists argue that this is unrealistic wishful thinking at best and a dangerous illusion at worst. The world, agonists insist, is a place of never-ending struggle and conflict. These three agonistic elements are, in fact, closely intertwined: Plurality inevitably generates struggles and conflict (the agon), which, as long as plurality and multiplicity exist, are never-ending and perpetual features of the human condition. Behind this construct, however, is an even more fundamental idea: namely, the broadly republican understanding of politics as non-domination and the idea of politics as a means to achieve non-domination. ¹⁴ It is, thus, domination that agonists try to avoid (or overcome). And it is precisely the triumvirate of plurality, agonistic struggles and tragedy that leads, in the eyes of agonists, to non-domination: plurality creates perpetual struggles that are an indicator of freedom; attempts to impose ‘harmony under the governance of reason’, on the other hand, are for agonists nothing else than attempts to create domination and unfreedom.

We can see, therefore, that it is a common characteristic of all agonistic thinkers that they understand human plurality not merely as a ‘fact’ but as a normative value. However, among leading contemporary agonists, only two draw explicitly on the concept of ‘multiplicity’ – Connolly and Tully. Connolly (1995), who derives his account of multiplicity from Gilles Deleuze, uses the concept to defend the idea of ‘a pluralist ethos’ and to reject the ‘the degree of cultural homogeneity that nationalists, collectivists, and communitarians invoke whenever they encounter the Deleuzian language of multiplicity’ (p. 96). Yet, for all his considerable insights on pluralism, Connolly also establishes a somewhat abstract ideal of democratic politics that seems far removed from the concrete struggles and conflicts of real-world politics (for similar criticisms, see Wenman, 2013: 132; McNay, 2014: 178–192). Thus, for the purpose of this article, which, as will be recalled, is to shift the focus from abstract to practical theory, Connolly’s agonism is of limited value. Tully, on the other hand, does not only use the concept of ‘strange multiplicity’, he also brings it down, as it were, to the ‘rough ground’ of politics. This is why an engagement with Tully’s work provides a more fruitful basis for analysing the consequences of a normative conception of multiplicity in world politics.

In 1995, Tully published Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, a sweeping and penetrating survey of the history of ‘modern constitutionalism’. The book’s core thesis is that modern constitutionalism is hostile towards the plurality, differences and, indeed, the ‘strange multiplicity’ that characterises today’s world; this is especially true for the millions of Indigenous peoples around the world that suffer from an ‘imperial yoke, galling the necks of the culturally diverse citizenry’ (Tully, 1995: 5). Immediately, then, we can see the central concern that runs through Tully’s work like a red-thread: (Western) imperialism poses a threat to ‘strange multiplicity’. Is, however, this ‘strange multiplicity’ an ontological fact (as in Rosenberg) or is it also a moral-political value? While the ‘ontological dimension’ of Tully’s (2008a, 2008b) argument is clear (it is the existence of ‘strange multiplicity’ that renders our contemporary world one of diversity and plurality), we can uncover its ‘normative dimension’ most easily when we turn to Public Philosophy in a New Key. These two volumes are, in many respects, an extension of Strange Multiplicity insofar as Tully (2008a), after the publication of the latter, had ‘come to see that this approach can be improved and applied to a broader range of contemporary struggles: over diverse forms of recognition, social, justice, the environment and imperialism’ (p. 4). The point that Tully brings home, in Public Philosophy even more clearly than in Strange Multiplicity, is that multiplicity provides the necessary background (human) condition for the contestations and struggles that have the potential to break up an ossified imperial order. To put it slightly differently, an imperial order, for Tully, is one of assimilation, domination and, ultimately, dehumanisation. And it is one of Tully’s most salient strengths that he lays bare the ever-present possibility and, indeed, the pervasiveness of imperial practices in our (post)modern age. While a critique of ‘constitutional democracy’ is the main focus of his analytical gaze in Strange Multiplicity, he extends his analysis in Public Philosophy to the imperial tendencies of ‘global constitutionalism’, the homogenising forces of globalisation, the (potentially) dehumanising effects of technological development, and the degradation of the environment caused by anthropocentric neoliberalism. These various forms of imperialism pose a threat to the value of ‘strange multiplicity’, which constitutes the normative condition that allows us to lead lives as free (i.e. non-dominated) beings. Multiplicity, in short, is the enabling condition to resist domination.

But if our ‘strange multiplicity’ is the normative condition for creating relations of non-domination, it is clear that this potential has to be actualised. At this point, another strength of Tully’s work emerges. For Tully (2008b), the antidote to alter dominating and excluding practices of governance is ‘struggles of and for democracy in an extensive sense’ (p. 51). What he means by that is that his ‘public philosophy’ is built around ‘the democratic freedom to disagree and enter into agonistic negotiations over the prevailing constitutional arrangements (or some subset of them) and the dominant theory of justice that justifies them’ (Tully, 2008b: 110).

And it is in the same section – one that deserves to be quoted at length – where Tully (2008b) elegantly lays out the very essence of his agonism:

The major contribution of agonistic democrats has been to stress the manifest reality of partisanship, dissent, disagreement, contestation and adversarial reasoning in the history and present of democratic societies and the positive role it plays in exposing and overcoming structures of inequality and injustice, fostering a critical democratic ethos, and, eo ipso, creating autonomous citizens with bonds of solidarity across real differences. . . By exchanging pros and cons in dialogues with partners who see the constitutional arrangement of a shared political association differently and who can give reasons for their views, citizens are empowered to free themselves from their partial and limited views to some extent (often assumed to be universal), reflect critically together on them, and negotiate the modification of the relations of meaning and power that bear them: that is, to think and act differently. (pp. 110–111)

In Tully’s public and critical philosophy, then, the communicative-strategic agon becomes the major tool to break up sedimented structures and transform unjust practices. That is, justice can only be found in, and achieved through, (agonistic) conflict – justice, in short, is conflict. Thus, we are also in a position to understand why Tully insists on the desirability of never-ending struggle and contestation: for Tully (2008a) the Platonic idea of a perfectly harmonic order, or the Kantian dream of perpetual peace, are not only utopian pipe-dreams but, ultimately, imperial nightmares that can only be achieved by eradicating all forms of resistance and opposition (p. 152).

To conclude this section, let me briefly summarise the relevance of Tully’s thought for the purposes of this article. Most obviously, Tully demonstrates that and how the phenomenon of ‘strange multiplicity’ transcends the ontological realm and takes on a distinctive normative connotation as the enabling condition for creating relations of non-domination. Tully, thus, allows us to frame ‘strange multiplicity’ as a moral-political value. Moreover, he works out how this potential can (and must) be actualised through democratic action, resistance and contestation. His position here is particularly intriguing as he combines, as it were, sober realism with unflagging optimism: while it is true, he maintains, that we live in ‘dark times’ of ‘disempowerment and disenchantment’, the democratic agon can transform deeply unjust neoliberal order(s) and dominating practices of globalisation (Tully, 2008b: 308). In so doing, Tully provides a better answer to what I have called ‘the question of politics’ than Rosenberg: political action (understood as the democratic agon) holds the key to non-domination. Political action here can take a variety of forms: Public protest against what Volk (2019) calls the ‘transnational constellation’; the creation of institutional spaces like the World Social Forum within which rights can be created and recreated (Lang, 2017); the repurposing of international organisations as instantiations of (global) constituent power (Oates, 2020); the creation of so-called ‘open mini-publics’ to exercise the people’s democratic right of self-government (Landemore, 2020); or active resistance to an increasingly global surveillance regime, which can be as mundane as refusing to provide an email account, deleting one’s data or minimising digital interaction (Véliz, 2021). All these practices can be seen as concrete manifestations of the communicative-strategic agon over the ‘contested uses of the descriptive and the normative concepts by which the problematic practice and its forms of subjectivity are characterised and disputed’ (Tully, 2008a: 26). ¹⁵

In sum, Tully’s ‘public philosophy’, which emphasises the centrality of praxis and is marked by a ‘critical ethos’ should, I think, serve as a source of inspiration for those who are interested in, and concerned about, the oppressive practices, hegemonic norms and imperial order(s) that continue to shape world politics in important ways. And this, of course, is especially true for those IR scholars who seek to analyse the practical implications of the idea of multiplicity and diversity in world politics.

The consequences of normative multiplicity

Having shown why and how James Tully’s vision of agonistic politics allows us to understand ‘strange multiplicity’ as a moral-political value of world politics, I will now turn to a logical follow-up question: What are the consequences of such an understanding? My aim is to show that since Tully’s agonism is based on a general rejection of all forms of domination, its scope is remarkably broad. However, it is precisely this general rejection of domination that incurs some costs and renders his political vision controversial. It is, then, of vital importance to get a clearer picture of both the potential and the costs as we, ultimately, have to decide if the price for such a radical vision is worth paying.

I want to start by expounding more clearly the potential of Tully’s thought for world politics. What Tully’s (2008c) agonism brings to the theory and practice of world politics is a ‘critical ethos’. The decisive characteristic of this critical ethos is that it is at once destructive (i.e. critical) and constructive. As noted, Tully’s public philosophy is often expressed as a critique of imperialism and practices of domination. There is, thus, undoubtedly an anti-colonial thread that runs through Tully’s work, and it is certainly not by accident that Gandhi appears time and again as an almost idealised figure in his work. Tully’s work can, therefore, be seen as a response to the problem of Eurocentrism that has haunted IR in theory and practice for too long, a spectre that, in many respects, continues to undermine the prospects for what Matin (2013) calls ‘a politics of solidarity in difference’ (p. 371). ¹⁶ Importantly, though, Tully’s work goes beyond this immediate concern with Eurocentrism and imperialism. His thought is, in fact, a critical interrogation of all manifestations of domination – of male domination over females, of the domination of the coloniser over the colonised, of human domination over the environment or of certain forms of technological domination. What accounts for Tully’s radicalism – and what sets him apart from, say, postcolonial scholars or feminists who tend to focus on specific vulnerable groups – is that he gives us a clear answer as to as to why practices of domination in general are so problematic: because they undermine and threaten the moral-political value of ‘strange multiplicity’. This, in turn, leads directly to the constructive dimension of Tully’s critical ethos: Rather than merely criticising practices of domination, he develops concrete ideas of how to transform and overcome them. And, as we have seen, it is, again, the idea of ‘strange multiplicity’ – of ‘strange multiplicity’ as the precondition for the unfolding of the agon – that plays a key role in overcoming these practices of domination. It is, in other words, a vision of democratic participation of engaged citizens, a vision of inclusive confrontation, a vision of non-violent agonistic struggles and conflicts that Tully (2008c) develops as an antidote to the pervasive practices of domination and, ultimately, allow us ‘to think and act differently’. And this vision of an agonistic politics for the global realm is, ultimately, dependent on the existence of the ‘strange multiplicity’ that forms the heart of Tully’s thought.

However, there is a certain optimism in Tully’s thought – what Wenman (2013: 44) rightly calls ‘Tully’s desire to overcome the tragic’ – that downplays some of the inevitable consequences of his agonism. Inevitably, there is a ‘price’ to be paid for this radical political vision that rejects domination in general and I will work them out in the remainder of this section.

The first point I want to make is that Tully’s idea of citizenship, which sustains his vision of politics, is very demanding. To understand why, let us turn to Tully’s idea of ‘reciprocal elucidation’, which, as he emphasises time and again, serves as the method of his idea of political theory. For Tully (2008a), ‘reciprocal elucidation’ arises from a process of intersubjective activity between participants who are engaged in disputations over the meaning and the practical application of the descriptive and normative concepts that shape our lives (p. 26). Obviously, this idea of an intersubjective process through which reciprocal elucidation becomes possible depends on participants who are willing (and able) to engage in this process. It depends, in other words, on active, engaged, and courageous citizens. Importantly, though, Tully (2008b) even goes a step further. On his account, citizenship is not a status that is granted by modern institutions but a ‘negotiated practice’ in which one achieves citizenship through participation (p. 248). This conception of ‘citizenship through participation’ has two important consequences: First, if citizenship is not, as it is traditionally understood, a status given by the institutions of the modern constitutional state but a ‘negotiated practice’, then the very concept of citizenship is detached from the nation state. And this, of course, is precisely the idea that underlies Tully’s (2014) On Global Citizenship – global citizenship, far from being an oxymoron, is something we can achieve through participation in intersubjective processes of reciprocal elucidation, through ‘cooperative citizenship practices of non-violent agonistics. . ., and [through] alternative practices of social, economic and ecological self-government’ (p. 99). Yet, and secondly, we only have to pay attention to whom Tully (2008b) singles out as the ‘exemplary citizen’ (p. 309) to get a flavour of how immensely demanding his idea of (global) citizenship indeed is. Throughout his work, Tully (2008b) portrays Gandhi as this ‘exemplary citizen’, as someone whose idea of Satyagraha encapsulates the practices of citizenship that he sees as essential for becoming an ‘exemplary citizen’ (pp. 308–309). Now, I do not think that Tully expects us to all become ‘Gandhis’; Gandhi, rather, serves as an ideal type in Tully’s narrative, a role model that we can (and should) emulate but that we (or at least most of us) will never reach. Even so, however, Tully’s idea of citizenship remains extremely demanding. It requires, above all, the courage to engage in the process of reciprocal elucidation and the communicative-strategic agon. The person who does not possess this virtue simply does not qualify as a citizen (on Tully’s account). This, of course, is by no means something that devalues Tully’s conception of citizenship. It must be understood, though, that this idea of (global) citizenship does not come for free. It requires time, effort and, above all, courage. And it might, indeed, be an expression of Tully’s optimism to assume that many people are willing to pay this price or possess the virtue of courage.

The second consequence of Tully’s vision of politics is that the agon is not – and, indeed, cannot be – a ‘fair-weather concept’. What do I mean by that? As noted, Tully’s (2008a) focus is on the marginalised and the dominated; his is a political vision that seeks to make an ‘interlocutory intervention on the side of the oppressed’ (p. 17). This focus does not necessarily mean, of course, that the purported victim always has a legitimate claim. It might well turn out that they do not. The point for Tully, rather, is that their voice must be heard and that their claims must become a part of the agon. This, no doubt, is an element of inclusion with which many critical IR scholars would sympathise. Yet it seems clear that inclusivity, diversity and multiplicity, if taken seriously, must, by definition, also include voices with which we do not agree. For if the agon is to unfold its liberating and transformative effects, there must be a real clash of opinions and differing views. To avoid misunderstandings, though, let me emphasise that Tully’s agonism is by no means relativistic, let alone nihilistic. There is, in fact, a very strong normative current that runs through his vision of agonism and finds its clearest expression in the idea of ‘strange multiplicity’ as a fundamental moral-political value. As a consequence, there are, and I will return to this point below, indeed voices and opinions that must be excluded from the democratic agon. For now, however, it must be noted that any vision of agonistic politics requires the inclusion of a wide range of voices and opinions into the democratic contest to, ultimately, allow the free-play of the agon. Drawing the lines too narrowly, by contrast, suffocates the agon. What, then, does this mean more concretely for world politics? It means that opinions and viewpoints that might seem unpalatable must be given a voice in the agon. To give an obvious example, take the recent surge in right- and left-wing populism (see Müller, 2016; Norris and Inglehart, 2019 and, most comprehensively, Kaltwasser et al., 2020). Even if it is true that populists in power are not more belligerent or less willing to engage globally than non-populists (Destradi and Plagemann, 2019), there are good reasons to be concerned about this global phenomenon. But a vision of world politics based on inclusivity and diversity cannot – neither in theory nor in practice – simply exclude these voices from the democratic contest. For doing so would not only be hypocritical or a sign of cosmopolitan arrogance that needs to be avoided for strategic purposes, as Zürn (2018: 14) recently remarked; rather it would undermine the very idea and the transformative potential of the democratic agon. It would, quite simply, take the agon out of agonism. In order to be consistent, therefore, the situation must be the same here as with the victim of domination: There is absolutely no reason to ultimately accept the populist standpoint, but there is every reason to engage with their views and confront them in the democratic agon. Still, some might find this hard to accept. They might say that probably the price of agonism is, indeed, too high. Fair enough. But to those scholars I now offer a reminder that inclusivity, multiplicity, and diversity are at the heart of the agonistic vision of politics – and, surely, these are no fair-weather concepts either.

This leads to a third, and final, point: political agonism is necessarily exclusive. To understand why, we must return to the argument that agonism cannot draw the line of what it regards as acceptable practices and opinions too narrowly, lest it suffocates the democratic agon. I have also said, however, that agonism is not relativistic or nihilistic, and that certain normative values lie at the heart of Tully’s agonism. Tully, in fact, is explicit about the necessity to place certain norms beyond the realm of ‘reasonable disagreement’. Even the agonistic contestation of norms, he says, has to take place against a ‘relatively stable background of customary agreements. . . that are not questioned in any given critical discussion’ (Tully, 1995: 40). In particular, he identifies the norm of reciprocity as such an agreement: ‘The first and perhaps only universalizable principle of democratic deliberation is audi alteram partem, “always listen to the other side”, for there is always something to be learned from the other side’ (Tully, 2002: 218). Respect for intercultural dialogue and democratic deliberation also features prominently in Tully’s Public Philosophy, in which he criticises the relentless forces of globalisation as the latest form of Western imperialism. In addition, it is not difficult to identify the normative values around which Tully’s political vision is constructed – diversity, inclusivity and ultimately, of course, the value of ‘strange multiplicity’. This normative current means that Tully cannot advocate a theory of infinite inclusion – there must be certain voices, individuals or groups that must be excluded from the democratic agon as they threaten even the most fundamental norms that lie at the heart of his agonistic vision of politics. The problem that emerges at this point is, of course, not unfamiliar: Popper (2012), for instance, famously identified the ‘paradox of tolerance’ when he said that ‘in order to live in a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance’ (p. 581). To be sure, agonists tend to be critical of the concept of tolerance (Brown, 2008). Moreover, as we have seen, it is precisely because the agon is not a fair-weather concept that agonists cannot simply ban differing voices from the realm of democratic contestation. But it is certainly true that those who seek to destroy the fundamental values that lie at the heart of agonism – including the value of ‘strange multiplicity’ – must be excluded. For there is, as Mouffe (2005) (another prominent agonist) puts it ‘no inclusion without exclusion’ (p. 78). To give a concrete example again: Between 2014 and 2017 the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) gained prominence not only for its military victories in Iraq and Syria but also for its spectacular acts of violence – including beheadings and other forms of executions – against alleged infidels and apostates. Even when compared to Al-Quaeda, ISIS made very few concrete demands and stated explicitly that they don’t kill human beings for what they have done but for what they are (i.e. infidels). To suggest that an agonistic confrontation is possible with such a group, or that the views of ISIS fighters fall under Tully’s (2005) category of ‘reasonable disagreement’ (pp. 129, 196, 306–309), would, quite simply, be absurd (and neither Tully nor any other agonist ever made this claim). These voices must be excluded.

The question, then, is whether or not Tully’s vision of agonism allows for such an exclusion. Stears and Honig (2011), in a response to Tully’s Global Citizenship, deny this and argue that Tully

fails to prepare us for the sorts of confrontation in which those seeking mutual dialogue, freedom, and justice find themselves facing violence, resistance, and rejection. Tully’s theory and his examples cast little light on the nature of such opponents, on the particular strategies that have to be deployed. . . in order occasionally to overcome rather than to convert or transform those rivals. (pp. 202–203)

This point is well taken. Let us be a bit more precise, though. For we must not overlook that Tully’s vision of agonistic politics, in fact, does allow for the exclusion of certain enemies – indeed, the necessity of exclusion is built into the very architecture of Tully’s agonism. What Tully ‘fails to prepare us for’, however, is how to respond more concretely to the violence, resistance and rejection of those that must be excluded. And behind this diagnosis lurks, of course, the old question of the legitimacy of political violence. For the problem here is that it is not clear if the exclusion that is built into Tully’s vision of agonism allows for violent exclusion. And this, indeed, is a difficult problem. For there are only two options here: Either Tully wants to defend a version of pacifism and categorically rule out any exercise of violence. In this case, he will surely find it difficult to explain how to exclude those who must, according to the very logic of his agonism, be excluded. Or Tully allows for the exercise of violence in certain situations. If so, however, the question is, quite simply, why we find almost nothing about the legitimacy of violence in Tully’s work. This, to be sure, is not the place to resolve the problem of the legitimacy of violence in Tully’s work. What I want to suggest, however, is that the very existence of this problem occludes an issue that lies at the very heart of agonism: the problem of inclusion and exclusion. For if it is true that there is no inclusion without exclusion, then agonists are faced with the inescapable burden of judgement of where to draw the line. The dilemma is obvious enough: drawing the line too narrowly risks suffocating the democratic agon; refusing to draw the line at all amounts to a politics of relativism or nihilism. In both cases, the agon is under threat. Now, to seriously engage with the question of the legitimacy of violence also brings the question of where to draw the line between in- and exclusion into sharper relief. It forces us to ponder the consequences of proposed responses – violent and non-violent – to domination, violence and oppression and, thus, to exercise judgement on whom to include and whom to exclude from the democratic agon. And this is, indeed, the heavy price that we have to pay for a normative conception of multiplicity in world politics: a never-ending responsibility to exercise judgement on the question of where to draw the line between inclusion and exclusion, between endorsing the free play of the agon and protecting ‘strange multiplicity’ from those who seek to destroy it. We must, in Rawls (2005) words, bear the ‘burdens of judgment’ (pp. 54–57).

Conclusion

What are the consequences, that is, the positive potential and the necessary costs, of understanding multiplicity as a moral-political value in world politics? In addressing this question, this article has pushed the boundaries of the burgeoning literature on societal multiplicity in contemporary IR scholarship. Through my engagement with James Tully’s political theory, I have sought to confirm Bell’s (2014) assertion that ‘Tully’s body of work constitutes one of the most innovative interventions in the current debates over global justice’ (p. 181). Yet, while Bell (2014) thinks that Tully’s main contribution to global justice lies in his awareness of ‘the depredations and power structures of the current imperial order’ (p. 182), this article claims that Tully’s criticism of domination is even more radical. Tully, in fact, pillories all forms of domination as they threaten the moral-political value of multiplicity. Thus, he offers a radically inclusive vision of global politics, which, at the same time, incurs considerable (and inevitable) costs. The price to be paid for Tully’s agonism is that it relies on a demanding conception of citizenship, forces us to engage with voices and opinions we might find repugnant, and perpetuates the responsibility to exercise judgement on the question of where to draw the line between inclusion and exclusion. In short, then, Tully does offer an innovative vision of global justice – but it is a vision of rough justice.

This agonistic take on multiplicity, then, takes us away from the concerns of Rosenberg and other theorists on societal multiplicity in IR. It does so because it is not content with the idea of the ‘multiplicity project [as] an ongoing conceptual undertaking’ (Koddenbrock, 2020: 519). Recall that the agonistic outlook is less interested in conceptual clarification for IR theory and focuses on the consequences of multiplicity for real-world politics. This, admittedly, comes at the price of downplaying some of the more fine-grained conceptual distinctions that we find in the multiplicity literature. Most importantly, I have not paid much attention to Rosenberg’s distinction between (quantitative) multiplicity and (qualitative) diversity; and it is true that I have equated multiplicity with diversity. My justification for this is that such a distinction is not helpful when we turn to the practical and normative question that I seek to address. Even on Rosenberg’s account, such a differentiation is somewhat artificial: After all, he stresses that ‘difference is. . . a necessary consequence of multiplicity’; if this is so, then the differentiation between multiplicity and diversity is significant only in theory because, ultimately, ‘the quantitative multiplicity of societies is also a qualitative one’ (Rosenberg, 2016: 137). ¹⁷

The agonistic take, however, also leads us back to Rosenberg: While Tully himself is not always explicit about the inevitable costs that come with an agonistic vision of politics, it is, interestingly enough, Rosenberg who draws a soberer picture of the consequences of multiplicity. To see how, let us return to the section in which he outlines the five ‘consequences’ of multiplicity: coexistence, difference, interaction, combination and dialectical change. It is, he argues, the complex interplay of difference and interaction between multiplicities that holds the potential for both ‘conflict’ and ‘dialectical change’: that is, the potential for conflict between different multiplicities and the potential to reform both the international system. For Rosenberg (2016), the potential for conflict and the potential for change go hand in hand, which is why ‘multiplicity is a source both of dangers and of opportunities’ (p. 137). ¹⁸ Here, in fact, Rosenberg demonstrates a sensitivity to the tragic realities of political life that is muted by Tully’s optimism. It is also striking, though, that this is precisely the point at which Rosenberg leaves the purely theoretical realm and enters the terrain of practical world politics: the consequences that Rosenberg identifies are, after all, practical consequences. Yet, as soon as we enter this practical terrain, the question of whether we should understand multiplicity in purely ontological or, like Tully, in normative terms becomes theoretically and practically significant: For in comparison with a purely ontological understanding of multiplicity, a normative conception of multiplicity potentiates both the potential and the costs of multiplicity and its consequences in world politics. And it is precisely this potential and these costs that I have tried to bring to the fore in this article.

So, is the price for a normative conception of multiplicity in world politics worth paying; should we sit around the ‘campfire’ and talk about multiplicity in normative terms? My (perhaps disappointing) answer has to remain agnostic. What seems clear, however, is that if we expect politics to be ‘vouchsafe’ (a term I borrow from Bonnie Honig), if we expect to arrive at a vision of world politics that harbours the potential for change without the danger of conflict, if we expect inclusion without exclusion, if we dream of a ‘politics’ that relieves us of the burden of judgement, we are, in truth, dreaming of the ‘displacement of politics’ (Honig, 1993). And, no doubt, there is a price to be paid for such an anti-political vision too: not only that we end up in disappointment, but that we, precisely by trying to make politics ‘vouchsafe’, create the conditions of domination we seek to avert.