Drone warfare is one of the most important trends in twenty-first-century conflict. This chapter surveys the history of drones – nonpiloted aircraft – and describes their basic features and how they differ from piloted aircraft and missiles. It assesses the advantages and disadvantages of using drones. The advantages include circumvention of some operational crew limitations; longer flight times; plausible deniability; and avoidance of friendly casualties. Whether drone strikes are effective, especially against terrorist and militant groups, is also considered. The chapter next works through the interwoven question of whether (certain types of) drone strikes are legal and/or ethical. It then turns to the political dimensions of how they are authorized, especially their implications for the separation of powers.The chapter then turns to the spread of drones to state and nonstate actors, and the frontiers in the future development of drone technology. The chapter applies many of these concepts to a quantitative study of whether drone strikes reduce terrorism, and a case study of US drone strikes on targets on Pakistani territory in the 2000s and 2010s.

Climate change governance is becoming more polycentric. From the global to the municipal level, an unprecedented number of actors are addressing climate change. But will polycentric governance generate significant emissions reductions? What brings disperse action together to build cumulative outcomes capable of limiting climate change to well below two degrees of warming? How will actors in different institutions and jurisdictions be able to learn from one another and thereby generate significant governance synergies? These important questions relate directly to the vexed question of policy evaluation, an underappreciated, but potentially highly consequential element of polycentric climate governance. In spite of substantial growth of evaluation activity and theorization, its role in assessing and possibly improving climate governance has been insufficiently explored. This chapter introduces the book, which tackles this challenge head-on by developing new, cutting edge theory and then conducting an empirical test in the context of the European Union, Germany and the United Kingdom.

This chapter describes the relationships between domestic political institutions and war. Moving beyond older debates comparing democracies and autocracies, it presents a conceptual structure for differentiating among different types of autocracies. Autocracies vary as either being personalist or non-personalist, and also as being led by either military officers or civilians. Personalist regimes are less constrained by domestic audience costs, and military leaders are more likely to embrace the effectiveness and legitimacy of using force. The likely onset and outcome of conflicts vary across autocracy types. The chapter explores other ideas linking domestic politics and war, including the diversionary theory of war, coup-proofing (when autocrats take steps to reduce their risk of being overthrown in a military coup d’état), and the marketplace of ideas (when foreign policy issues can be freely debated in government and society). The chapter applies many of these ideas to a quantitative study on what kinds of political systems are more likely to win their interstate wars, and a case study of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Polycentric governance and evaluation literatures remain disconnected, as they have emerged from separate scholarly communities. This high level of fragmentation significantly impedes necessary theoretical development in order to leverage the synergies that emerge from a combination of the two perspectives. This chapter begins this work, by first assessing polycentric governance as an emerging theory, and then distilling three core, foundational ideas from it, namely that governance centers can and do self-organize, that context matters for governance and that there are interactions between governance centers. Drawing on thinking on monitoring in polycentric governance literatures, the chapter then reveals how these three foundational ideas connect to thinking in policy evaluation literatures, which had also addressed evaluation actors, context as well as, to a lesser degree, how evaluation may be a carrier of insights between different governance centers. The exploration of these ideas demonstrates that evaluation has great theoretical potential to enable polycentric climate governance by potentially linking the efforts of state and non-state organizations.

This introductory chapter presents some fundamental concepts that lay the foundation for the rest of the book. It seeks to accomplish three goals. First, it discusses the nature of war, and in particular Clausewitz’s dictum that war is politics by other means. It is stressed that the book employs a very broad concept of war, including conflicts between states, civil wars, terrorism, some forms of interpersonal violence, and others. Second, it considers the possibility that the practice and frequency of war have changed over time. It observes how some modes of warfare have changed and some have not. It also suggests that it may be premature to celebrate the end of war, or even the significant decline of war. Third, it describes the scientific approach to understanding war and peace, highlighting the importance of asking general questions, developing theoretical answers to those questions, and testing those answers with empirical data. It also defines concepts such as hypotheses, independent variables, and dependent variables, and describes different kinds of data that can be used to test war-related hypotheses.

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.

Policy evaluation has great potential to enhance polycentric climate governance, but that potential has not yet been fully realized. This concluding chapter draws together the key contributions of the book, which not only emerge from significant theoretical development, but also from a novel empirical analysis that is the first to investigate policy evaluation in the polycentric setting of the EU, as well as in Germany and in the United Kingdom. Future research should further explore causal drivers of the emergence of policy evaluation in polycentric governance systems, and unpack the actual use of knowledge in policy-making, a difficult, but necessary area of inquiry going forward. Additional aspects of polycentric governance theory, such as the role of evaluation in building trust and generating linkages between different actors, should also be explored. The collective research and climate governance endeavor will continue—this book has offered some new directions in which the journey may advance.

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of state-funded evaluations collected for this research. State-funded evaluations are by definition not self-organized, and they comprise the lion’s share of the 618 climate policy evaluations unearthed between 1997 and 2014 at the EU level, in Germany and in the United Kingdom. The chapter presents an analysis conducted with a novel coding scheme and demonstrates the growth of state-funded evaluations in number over time, as well as the fact that most evaluation remain within their own governance center in terms of funding, evaluating and the policy on which they focus. There is a strong focus on certain types of climate policy, notably renewables, cross-sectoral and energy efficiency. However, legal requirements for evaluation are not the main drivers. State-funded evaluations show a cursory treatment of context, and limited realized potential for driving interaction across governance-centers.

This chapter explores terrorism, terrorist groups, and potential solutions to terrorism. It discusses conceptual and legal definitions of terrorism. It then provides historical context, describing terrorist waves driven by ideologies such as anarchism, anti-colonialism, New Left perspectives, and various religions. The chapter looks at who becomes a terrorist, taking account of theories of grievance, radicalization, recruitment by terrorist groups, lone wolf terrorism, and foreign fighter recruitment. It considers relationships between regime type and terrorism, examining why democracies, anocracies, and autocracies respectively might be more or less likely to attract terrorist violence, and exploring issues such as media coverage, grievance, and repression. Terrorist tactics and how these might diffuse across groups are discussed, as are terrorist group cooperation and state sponsorship of terrorism. The chapter also looks at the challenges of crafting effective counterterrorism policy, with a focus on deradicalization. It then applies many of these concepts to a quantitative study on whether targeting terrorist group leaders helps stop terrorism, and a case study of al-Qaeda.

This chapter opens with some basic description of and historical background on nuclear weapons. It then develops the basics of nuclear deterrence theory, working through concepts such as mutual assured destruction, first strike capability, second strike capability, first strike instability, the stability–instability paradox, and the nuclear triad. It then works through the causes of nuclear proliferation – the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries – including the logistical details of starting a nuclear weapons program. Relatedly, it examines the tools the international community possesses to slow the spread of nuclear weapons, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, extended deterrence, and economic sanctions, before working through both sides of the debate on whether the spread of nuclear weapons is stabilizing or dangerous. It then asks if nuclear weapons are useful tools of interstate coercion, before examining the conceptual foundations and history of nuclear arms control. The chapter applies many of its concepts to a quantitative study of whether extended deterrence makes allies more likely to start wars, and a case study of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.