Chapter 6 focusses on the different forms of cross-ideological alliances between Islamist and leftist movements that were made to oppose the authoritarian regime. Far from romanticising those experiences into the clichéd concept of good opponents all coming together to fight the authoritarian regime, the chapter demonstrates instead how building cross-ideological alliances provoked ruptures and crystallised dissension within the constellations of actors themselves. It also shows how specific organisations and actors, mobilised on several scenes, came to play different roles in those alliances. The chapter goes on to demonstrate how each constellation of actors also maintained its own spaces of sociability and its own networks. Long-distance activism entailed other forms of activities that were turned towards group members in order to maintain activist groups despite their members’ new political lives in exile. Both Islamists and leftists worked to preserve their communities and to ensure the continuity of activism, albeit in different ways.

This chapter show how throughout millennia, philanthropy has served as a catalyst for change and as a vehicle for community transformation. While COVID-19 has forced philanthropists worldwide to take immediate action and mobilise billions of dollars to save lives, African philanthropy and the culture of ‘giving’ are not new phenomena but are ingrained in the fabric of African societies. Before the arrival of colonialism, aid agencies and development partners, grassroots philanthropists and associations mobilised resources to address development issues. Within this context, the chapter focuses on the role of multi-sector partnerships in Africa and how they arose out of the crisis of the pandemic to drive the efficiency of vital collaborations between the African Union (AU), local governments, and the private sector. It shows how these partnerships helped the continent curb the pandemic and prevented the massive spread of infections. This chapter highlights the uniqueness and significance of these partnerships at the local and continental levels and identifies some of the core values underpinning them. The chapter also explores the importance and the impact of the AU’s strategic leadership and multi-sectoral partnerships in advancing the continent’s health and economic agenda while deconstructing some of the inherent challenges that were faced when trying to scale these alliances in Africa.

This chapter examines collective self-defence treaty arrangements. It engages with a diverse range of examples of the collective self-defence treaties (or treaties that contain collective self-defence aspects) that have emerged since 1945 to draw out common themes as to the nature, process, and role of such arrangements, as well as to establish notable variations. The aim is to contribute an overall picture of collective self-defence today specifically in the context of treaty relationships. The chapter argues that such relationships inevitably impose only weak obligations on their parties to defend each other and also can cause notable issues related to overlapping memberships, bureaucracy, and antagonism amongst members (amongst other difficulties). Equally, these arrangements – of which there are now hundreds – are concluded for good reason(s). They provide a range of benefits, especially in terms of their deterrent effect.

The EV charging network is a critical technology and industry to ensure the EV transition. How extensive is the network, who is developing it, and who is financing it?

The ferocious US-China trade war, initiated by the United States, suggests that cooperation with China is under threat. Despite the consensus that foreign perceptions of China generally differ from those of other countries, no study tests this notion. We require a bilateral perspective that departs from the common approach, which examines trade preferences unilaterally without considering trading partner behavior and identity. Our survey experiments show that citizens generally strongly support reciprocal trade policy principles advanced by the WTO. At the same time, variations across countries prevail. Support for reciprocity in response to a free-trade initiative is significantly greater for traditional allies than for political adversaries like China. However, compared to Russia, protectionist attitudes towards China appear less severe. Overall, trade and foreign policy issues are more strongly intertwined than often assumed. As the growing anti-globalization sentiment is rooted in the identity of the other country, the threat to trade cooperation is more fundamental than existing studies suggest.

Chapter 5 puts the reconfiguration of Pacific Asia into global perspective in four respects. First, in contrast to the divergences that characterized the modern era, in this century there has been a multi-dimensional convergence between developed and developing countries. 2008 marked the first time since the nineteenth century that the production of the developing world was greater than that of the developed world. Second, the unipolar world order of the post-Cold War has shifted to a multinodal world order. Without a defining global power, the multinodal order has a “certainty vacuum” rather than a power vacuum, and it is best filled by partnerships rather than by alliances. Third, Pacific Asia has become a global powerhouse. In 2020 its GDP equaled that of the US and the EU combined, and it is integrated by global value chains. Fourth, China reaches beyond its region. Despite the headwinds of Covid-19, trade bottlenecks, and global tensions, China and Pacific Asia have arrived. If a bipolar configuration develops, it is likely to differ from the Cold War camps by being closer to a developed/developing country split, with less unity of leadership on either side.

International alliances are the most important security institutions in international relations. This chapter examines different types of alliances, including security pacts, nonaggression agreements, and consultation pacts. It then connects alliances to more established ideas about balance of power dynamics. The next part of the discussion centers on the question, why do we observe states complying with alliance agreements, under conditions of international anarchy? Some possible answers are: some international alliance treaties increase coalition fighting power; states and leaders risk paying international and domestic audience costs if they violate the terms of an alliance agreement; and states only sign alliance treaties they mean to comply with, which means they are deliberate in how they design alliance treaties. Other concepts and debates under discussion include balancing, hands-tying, bandwagoning, free-riding, military bases, and power projection. Many of these concepts are applied to a quantitative study on whether the presence of an alliance agreement makes a state more likely to intervene on behalf of another state, and a case study of World War I.

Historians of appeasement make different assumptions about Britain’s ability to influence events through the threat or use of military force or economic sanctions. Attempts at measuring power are examined critically and key factors identified, including the armed forces, the arms industry, the wider economy and public willingness to support foreign policy. The strength of the Royal Navy is discussed in relation to the size of other navies and to Britain’s commitments, and Churchill’s comment that the Chamberlain government did not neglect the navy is noted. In contrast, Churchill described the loss of Britain’s lead over Germany in air power as a disaster. Britain and Germany’s air power are compared in the context of technical developments. Britain’s limited capability to support France on land is explained, with particular reference to tanks, which Churchill had pioneered. Historians’ debates about the adequacy of Britain’s arms industry are discussed in relation to problems encountered by Germany in rearmament. It is argued that the principal reason why Britain lagged behind Germany was Chamberlain’s unwillingness to accept Churchill’s advice to divert industry from civil trade and industry to producing munitions. The possibilities of collective security through the League of Nations or Churchill’s concept of a grand alliance are explored and the importance of intelligence in influencing perceptions of power emphasized.

This chapter develops and tests hypotheses about possible influences that lie outside national borders. There are many good reasons to expect that domestic factors are not the sole determinants. We lay out a theoretical framework that systematically catalogues most of the possible international hypotheses: exogenous shocks and endogenous networks such as those linking neighbors, allies, and colonizers and colonies. We then test selected hypotheses about exogenous shocks and contagion – the spread of democracy outcomes from country to country through various international networks. Surprisingly, contagion at first appears to be real but so small that it could be ignored when studying domestic influences. However, for some kinds of contagion our analysis implies that the long-run effects grow quite large and must be taken into account if we want to understand how democracies develop and decline. This paradox leads us to conclude that international influences are a hidden dimension of democratization.

In Jordan, social order has historically emerged as a result of the regime’s laws, policies and institutions, but also as a result of practices established and modified from above and below. This chapter lays the ground for the book’s subsequent examination of how the Public Security Directorate intervenes into citizens’ lives and how citizens have recourse to the police, by tracing the emergence of several hegemonic projects in the Kingdom. These projects are largely grounded in the nature of patron–client alliances forged since the establishment of the modern state between the Hashemites and the East Bank Transjordanian population on the one hand, and Western liberal democracies on the other. Whilst uneven and increasingly amalgamated, these alliances have supported the dissemination of a tribal order, which for several decades enjoyed a large degree of hegemonic consent. and more recently a ‘neoliberal-civic’ order, which is facing an appreciable counter-hegemonic pushback from below and paradoxically fostering an increased reliance on kinship networks.

Chapter 5 illuminates systematically – in a European, transatlantic and global context – not only the prehistory of the July crisis of 1914 but also the decisive longer-term changes in the international system and ground-rules and assumptions of international politics that led to the outbreak of the Great War. Challenging long-standing interpretations as well as the recently influential notion that European leaders acted like “sleepwalkers”, it underscores that what really proved decisive were two crucial developments: on one level, the final demise of the European concert as a key mechanism for peaceful conflict-resolution and the emergence of two antagonistic alliance blocs; and, on a more fundamental level, processes that led those who made the key decisions in and before 1914 to “unlearn” what was required, not merely to defuse continual crises at the eleventh hour but actually to manage the core systemic challenges of the age of imperialism and preserve peace more effectively. It thus seeks to show in a new way why by 1914 the escalation of a general conflict, which then widened into the First World War, had become all but unavoidable.

We set out an array of initial conditions for both sides of a conflict that form their levels of public support. These initial conditions result in selection effects; most wars whose initial conditions are not favorable to public support never occur and are nonevents. Miscalculations occur, and some wars whose opposition was underestimated are almost immediately unpopular. Leaders can attempt to persuade the public and shift the cost and benefit perceptions. But the selection effect is strong and as a result, support for a conflict, at least initially, is generally high. We also identified a set of factors that might vary as the war is fought. Changes in strategy, alliances (on either side), and news from the battlefield can alter the expectation of costs and the values assigned to the aims of the conflict. The war’s aims can change as well. Each of these wartime factors can shape opinion by shifting costs (ETC) and value (RP) higher or lower. We can thus identify the factors that influence individuals and consequently the aggregate shape of society’s value of a conflict ex ante within and across conflicts and that predict its impact on support given a war’s estimated costs.

Chapter 3 theorizes border settlement as a bargaining process. Information and commitment problems as the most common obstacles to concluding border delimitation negotiations. Information exchange is facilitated by numerous mechanisms; commitment problems are driven by the value of the territory. Two broad categories of border territory are identified.Territory that contains a power endowment, defined as characteristics of the border capable of affecting state power, and territory that does not. The presence of these power endowments may trigger a commitment problem, making border settlement less likely. We identify alternative explanations for failed border settlement based on information problems.We also integrate expectations from theories of conflict management, with a focus on bilateral negotiations, third party mediation and legal methods. Bilateral negotiations help surmount the challenge of incomplete information, but cannot easily allay the fears underlying commitment problems. Third parties help with either challenge but, when addressing commitment problems, legal methods are more effective than mediation.