ABSTRACT
Within the modern geopolitical imagination there is a logical tension between the normative claim of an essential equality of statehood between all states implicit in state sovereignty and international law, on the one hand, and the historical reality of dramatic inequality in power between them, on the other. This has been resolved intellectually and practically by seeing the normative claim of sovereign equality as an initial situation akin to a condition of nature, with inequality and the resulting hierarchy of states as the result of an inevitable process of competition between states once ‘social life’ has begun. After reviewing the classic argument for why a hierarchy of states is a ‘normal’ condition in world politics, this chapter identifies the main axioms upon which this position relies, the historical–geographical conditions under which it made sense, and the difficulties facing it under contemporary political–economic conditions.
