This chapter makes three main arguments. First, ideas and practices of diplomacy have a multi-millennial history – much longer than is generally thought. Second, this long history has been characterised by both continuity and change. As a result, diplomacy has been as much adaptive as resistant to change. And third, that diplomacy is not diminishing in importance. To assess these claims, the chapter first addresses the issue of defining diplomacy, before examining the evolution of diplomacy in terms that may be characterised broadly as pre-modern, modern and postmodern. Finally, the chapter evaluates the relationship between diplomacy and the study of international relations.

The concluding chapter sums up the existential crisis of the peripheral-patronage state and reasserts its methodological and practical importance, particularly in analyses that presume to derive intention from action and see this as evidence of internalization of, even consent to, norms of human rights and good governance. It then explores the possibility of significant international change, especially from the rise of states whose domestic authority skews more towards patronage than Weberian bureaucracy, and who style themselves as respecters of aid-recipient governments’ sovereignty rather than imposing rights-based conditionalities. China's potentially transformative role receives most attention. Ultimately, because allegedly rising powers may want different rules but are unlikely to advance a rule-free global order, peripheral-patronage states’ need to strategize is unlikely to undergo radical change. This is suggestive of a functionally differentiated hierarchy of states, albeit one whose proper functioning hinges on pretending that hierarchy does not exist.

This chapter begins Part III of the book which focuses on Anglo-Spanish relations during the Seven Years’ War and focuses particularly on the first two Spanish cases to come before the Court of Prize Appeal. This serves as a contextual chapter for Anglo- Spanish affairs and introduces the specific people and dynamics within the Spanish Court that were critical to negotiations over neutrality. It also introduces the cases of the San Juan Baptista and the Jesús, Maria, y José. The chapter highlights that the political and diplomatic contexts of Anglo-Spanish relations were markedly different from those of Anglo-Dutch relations and that preserving Spanish neutrality was, in many ways, much more fraught and complicated. This was due largely to internal Spanish political events (such as the death of King Ferdinand VI and the death of the British ambassador to Spain) and Anglo-Spanish maritime grievances that went beyond questions of prize-taking but spoke to the core of Spanish fears that British maritime hegemony would drastically alter the power of balance in the Americas and adversely affect neutral nations.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace was first published in 1919 and, since then, changed the economic discourse surrounding reparations and Carthaginian peace. This chapter specifies how three elements hinted at in the introduction of the Economic Consequences of the Peace – social classes, national sovereignty, and the international political system – can explain Keynes’ assessment of Carthaginian peace. The chapter analyses the optimality of reparations in the context of these three elements.

Chapter 2 traces the historical development of the law on the use of force from antiquity to the end of World War I.

UN Charter Art.33 points to means such as negotiation, mediation and arbitration to settle disputes and to avoid the risk of use of force. Judgments of the International Court of Justice are of great value also to further develop international law. However, courts are hardly ever employed to save peace by the judicial settlement of big disputes. Following the precedent of the Nuremberg tribunal, special tribunals have been set up to try war crimes. Even more important, an international criminal court has been established. Fact-finding (termed ‘enquiry’) has achieved a prominent role both to solve and to prevent conflicts. Thus, the safeguards system of the IAEA using inspectors, cameras and satellites and environmental sampling continuously verifies that no fissionable material is diverted away from peaceful uses. With much fake news around, impartial professional inspection, monitoring and reporting – for instance, about the use or possession of chemical weapons – has become more important. Diplomacy seeks to secure or create peaceful relations by agreement, precluding or removing the threat or use of force. Examples are given of successes of diplomacy to preserve peace as well as of failures and of talks going forever without result.

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.

The chapter continues the analysis of social structure in the transition from the CAPE to the modern era, but looking at the institutions that emerged within the transition period itself. It looks at the synergies and contradictions within the unfolding institutional structure of modernity, and contrasts this turbulence with the relative harmony in the institutional structure of the CAPE era. Each institution is analysed for how it works across the three domains: interhuman, transnational and interpolity/state.

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.

What drives Islamists’ democratic commitments? Does modernization turn them into committed democrats? Or do institutions rein in their authoritarian tendencies through political socialization and democratic habituation? This chapter critically reviews three theories that define the scholarly debate surrounding these questions while providing a historical and political context to all three cases. It first explores the history of modernization in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia and discusses the role of socioeconomic factors on the democratization of Islamist parties. Then it discusses the impact of institutions on party behavior and ideology, specifically the inclusion–moderation thesis to test its claims against the evidence we now have with the rise of Islamist parties to power. This survey reveals the limits of the institutional and ideational effects of inclusion. The final section turns to the strategic calculations of Islamist actors to discuss the role played by external factors, including regional and international developments. The central claim of the chapter is that existing accounts offer only a partial explanation failing to address diversity of perspectives and internal conflicts within Islamist parties.

Chapter 9 asks how we can critically evaluate competition in this kind of society, particularly from within its own terms of reference - that is, as an ‘immanent critique’. The premise that domesticated competition is a work of human artifice implies that it is something we have some control over and can shape. I argue that the pervasive image of the rule-governed game, and ideas such as ‘the level playing field’, encode the basic cultural resources from which any criticism must be constructed. Moreover, competition works best within certain bounded spheres of practice - e.g. business, democracy, science - and its worst distortions are often a result of competition transgressing these boundaries, as when money interferes with politics. I argue that maintaining such separation and balances of power among distinct institutional spheres, arenas of competition, is critical for liberal society.

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.

Italy was a political community, one that was held together and divided not just by leagues and alliances, but by networks of agreements linking stronger powers to weaker ones. Lesser stateshad significant roles to play as participants in their own right and as the objects of competition and contention among the major players. Accepting the protection of a stronger power could be seen as defending, not compromising, libertà. Citizens of republics who exalted their own libertà as a quasi-sacred value never questioned their right to make other communities, for whom libertà could be just as potent a concept, subject to them. This complex system was radically changed by the Italian Wars (1494-1559). The ultramontane powers who wanted to establish themselves in Italy could play by different rules, but sometimes had to at least appear to adapt to the principles governing relations between states, as Italians understood them, and the importance attached to the concept of libertà.

Language revitalization efforts are often linked to broader efforts to restore traditional values and community health – to disrupt existing dynamics and move towards better ones. This process often creates tensions between different stakeholders, as shown in the case of myaamia. Because the language had gone out of use entirely, it could not be transmitted from older generations to youth through cultural practices, but depended on learning from written materials. Revitalization may entail engaging in social practices that are different from an ‘ideal’ community dynamic, but conflicting opinions show that people are invested in their community’s future. In myaamia, alliances were fostered with other communities, and it was important to balance the needs, expertise and goals of different groups, acknowledging (and celebrating) the different backgrounds of the range of speakers and researchers who contributed to creating language resources. The capsule describes the case of Makushi, Guyana, addressing how power can be mediated between multiple stakeholders (with different levels of involvement and resources) when no acknowledged language authority exists.

Modern international relations theory purports to be universally applicable, but was inspired largely by the interstate politics of the West. From antiquity to the late nineteenth century, the international system of East Asia differed from those of the West on the four variables that international relations theory deems to be most important in shaping interstate politics: the balance of power, the regime types of most states, the role of trade, and the prevailing international norms. We therefore test international relations theory's claim to universality against the history of East Asia "before the West." We assess the extent to which the predictions of international relations theory fit the interstate politics of East Asia, focusing on cooperation under hegemony, the enforcement of order, international norms, trade relations, changes in the balance of power, changes in polarity, and state formation. We find several shortcomings that suggest profitable new avenues for improving international relations theory.

After the second victory against Napoleon, Allied deliberations about peace and security were inevitably juxtaposed with the threat of ‘terror’. The threat of new revolutions and the rise of new despots like Napoleon loomed over the Allies, leading to the concept of ‘balance of power’ being used in a normative context: notions of peace, tranquillity and harmony were not only principles of politics, but expressions of a collective sentiment that bonded the European community of statesmen together. The ‘balance of power’ was also a hierarchical principle, as it served to reorder the map of Europe and of the world beyond it, and smaller nations were at the mercy of the four powers and their decision-making. More a guiding principle than a concrete set of policies, the ‘balance of power’ represented a collective desire for peace and security in Europe, but the statesmen had to implement and order that balance and peace on a daily basis, in a time of distress and transformation.