Why has China’s growing economic leverage over Japan failed to translate into consistent political influence? This chapter develops a theoretical framework to explain the limited effectiveness of economic statecraft in contemporary Japan–China relations. While existing literature emphasizes economic interdependence as a source of influence, it argues that successful coercion requires three critical conditions to align simultaneously: acute economic vulnerability, cohesive domestic lobbying, and political flexibility. Through structured comparison of three cases (the 2012–2013 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, the 2022–2023 semiconductor export controls, and the 2023 Fukushima water release), this chapter demonstrates that Chinese economic coercion consistently failed due to the absence of one or more of these conditions. By disaggregating the mechanisms through which economic pressure translates (or fails to translate) into policy change, this framework advances understanding of why economic statecraft often falters against developed democracies with robust institutions and dense alliance networks, even when asymmetric dependence exists.

The current Dissent phase is characterized by four drivers: nationalism, economic statecraft, negative power, and the absence of social purpose. With the rise of negative power and unprecedented diversity among meaningful actors who disagree over global rules and norms, the exercise of power in world politics has never been more important or more frustrating for so many kinds of actors. International entropy is on the rise. Domestic politics are increasingly salient in a changing world. Sudden and dramatic national growth induces massive social and political dislocations. A world in transition is a deeply uncertain one for both structural and motivational reasons. Emergent systems encounter unpredictable and often destabilizing power shifts among the system’s most powerful actors. They also experience changing state motivations associated with relative power positions in flux. Just as we expect people who go from rags to riches or vice versa to change their personal ambitions, rising and declining powers can be expected to expand or contract their national goals.

Chapter 2 develops a theory explaining when states pursue arms control agreements and why they choose different levels of monitoring provisions. It argues that domestic political volatility in adversary states creates uncertainty about their incentives for cooperation, making formal agreements more likely through two distinct pathways. The "hedging" pathway occurs when states become uncertain about previously cooperative opponents and pursue low monitoring agreements rather than relying on informal coordination. The "risking" pathway emerges when states become uncertain about previously competitive opponents and pursue high monitoring treaties to cautiously seek cooperation benefits. The theory is built on a game theoretic model that analyzes how states select monitoring provisions based on their beliefs about adversary types and implementation challenges. The chapter identifies two key sources of domestic volatility that drive uncertainty: leadership/elite turnover and public pressure on governments. The theory generates testable hypotheses about when states will pursue agreements and what monitoring levels they will select, conditional on their baseline beliefs about adversary intentions. This framework provides new insights into the relationship between domestic politics, uncertainty, and international security cooperation.

To demonstrate the generalizability of the theory beyond US–Soviet nuclear arms control, Chapter 5 examines three cases: the 1999 Lahore Declaration between India and Pakistan, the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel, and negotiations between the United States and Iran in 2009–2015. The India–Pakistan case reveals how political shifts can motivate states to hedge previously informal cooperation with low monitoring agreements. The Egypt–Israel and US–Iran cases demonstrate how uncertainty following leadership transitions and public demonstrations can lead highly adversarial states to take a risk on cooperation, but using agreements with intrusive verification measures. While other factors, including third-party mediation, relative power, and crises, also contributed to these outcomes, the evidence indicates that domestic political volatility had distinct effects on agreement timing and design. The findings challenge alternative explanations based on incremental trust-building and socialization. As the cases span different regions, time periods, and types of military competition, they validate the broader applicability of the book’s theoretical framework linking domestic political volatility and uncertainty to arms control agreement design.

This chapter summarizes the main lessons for diplomacy that we derive from our study. These eight lessons are: 1. A major factor separates the crises that escalate to war from those that do not; in the latter, a strong leader reins in any hard-liners who advocate going to war. 2. Individuals make a difference. 3. Contingency plays a more important role than system structure in determining whether or not a crisis escalates to war. 4. Someone must stand for peace. 5. The secret to preventing war structurally is to find a functional equivalent to war. 6. Norms and rules are important for avoiding war – and, therefore, maintaining peace. 7. War can be avoided; it is not inevitable. 8. The realist concepts of the national interest and balance of power do not always accurately describe the behavior of states.

Iceland and the United Kingdom experienced a series of crises that follow a similar pattern. Iceland extended its maritime limits – to preserve more fish for Icelandic vessels and conserve fish stocks. Britain resisted the extension. Both sides escalated their behavior (e.g., issuing threats and coercively harassing each another’s vessels), and Britain ultimately conceded. This chapter covers the 1971–1973 Cod War. It follows the above pattern, but with a somewhat unique twist. In the 1971–1973 episode, domestic politics within both democratic states encourage escalation. Iceland, moreover, threatens to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to evict United States (US) forces from the Keflavik air base. Because of these threats, as well as escalating coercion, NATO mediates, and NATO and the US pressure Britain to concede. Ultimately, this crisis does not escalate to a major-state war because the disputed issue (i.e., maritime limits) lacks sufficient salience and past, similar episodes demonstrate that a nonwar solution exists.

The Eastern Crisis is a nonwar case that occurs during the heyday of the Concert of Europe. Nevertheless, the major powers avoided war with one another not because of the Concert’s deliberations, but rather because of domestic politics within France. King Louis-Philippe reined in his hard-line prime minster, Thiers, thereby removing the threat of war. This indicates that domestic politics is more important than system structure, at least in this case. One major lesson we can derive from this case is that “someone must stand for peace” – that is, one way for actors to avoid war is for a strong leader to rein in domestic hard-liners.

This chapter synthesizes information about the key variables in our framework across all of the cases in our study. We begin with the cases that escalate to war. Here, the patterns among our variables suggest six prominent (nonexclusive) “paths to war”: the hard-liner path, the territorial path, the alliance path, the rivalry path, the bargaining failure path, and the democratic path. The cases that do not escalate to war reinforce the importance of these paths. Actors often avoid war by blocking one or more paths to war. Reining in hard-liners blocks the hard-liner path to war; alliances sometimes restrain actors, rather than emboldening them, thereby blocking the alliance path to war; and norms often provide a way for states to settle the disputed issue at hand. Finally, we discuss the relative importance of system structure. Prior to 1945, domestic politics – particularly, controlling hard-liners – was a more important factor than system structure in the decisions through which actors avoided war. After 1945, however, nuclear weapons reduce the probability of war among the superpowers, often by creating more accommodationists.

The Crimean War is an “unnecessary” war. The Concert of Europe crafted the Vienna Note. Because it satisfied all the principal concerns and interests of the major states – and all the representatives of the major states accepted and endorsed it – the Vienna Note should have resolved the crisis. Hard-liners in England, however, undercut the Concert’s proposal and undermined Aberdeen, the accommodationist prime minister. The prospect of British and French support, in turn, emboldened the Ottoman Empire, leading it to declare war on a much more powerful Russia. The Crimean War case is the obverse of the Eastern Crisis (1839–1841) case – in that Aberdeen, unlike King Louis-Philippe, failed to rein in his two main domestic hard-liners. This provides further evidence that domestic politics is a more important factor than system structure in the escalation dynamics of interstate crises.

Chapter 2 sets the theoretical framework for the book, which provides tools to operationalize the regime complex mechanisms of effectiveness. The chapter operationalizes the regime complex’s mechanisms of effectiveness as the utility modifier mechanism, social learning mechanism, and capacity-building mechanism to break down the major impacts of the regime complex on barriers to renewable energy development on the ground in EMDEs. This study advances novel theorizing on regime complex effectiveness by combining approaches from private governance and regime theory to conceptualize mechanisms of impact. The theoretical framework thus provides tools to guide the examination of the interaction between regime complexes and domestic political actors, and more specifically, shows how the regime complex impacts financial, regulatory, and technical barriers to renewable energy development as analyzed in the comparative case studies in Indonesia and the Philippines (Chapters 4–6).

Chapter 6 transitions to the case of the Philippines to provide a comparative analysis of regime complex effectiveness. The chapter begins with a political economy analysis of the domestic actors and interests involved in the energy sector in the Philippines, then delves into the history of geothermal development with an analysis of the impacts of the clean energy regime complex actors on barriers to geothermal development over time. The major findings of this chapter indicate that early domestic political support for geothermal development under the Marcos and Ramos regimes was a response to the exogenous shocks of energy crises. This response to exogenous shocks opened pathways of change that were key in catalyzing geothermal development in the country that later placed the Philippines as the world’s second largest producer for several decades. In the Philippines, an embrace of the energy transition enabled the positive impact of the clean energy regime complex on geothermal development. In Indonesia, domestic political resistance to the energy transition limited regime complex effectiveness.

The book concludes in Chapter 8 with a summary of the major theoretical and empirical findings on the clean energy regime complex’s emergence and effectiveness across Indonesia and the Philippines, and a discussion of the theory’s broader generalizability, further research opportunities, and policy implications and recommendations for fostering energy transitions in a world of complex governance.

Chapter 7 provides a comparative analysis of regime complex effectiveness across cases to better perceive the conditions for impact and how intervening variables such as energy crises or domestic political interests mediate effectiveness. Through the three mechanisms – utility modifier, social learning, capacity building – the regime complex has had a notably different impact in moving renewable energy development in Indonesia and the Philippines. This chapter examines and explains the variable outcomes in geothermal development between the Philippines and Indonesia by illuminating the key role of political will at the domestic level. Major findings of this chapter reveal that throughout the case studies, diverging domestic political interests and lack of political will to develop geothermal energy or adopt renewable energy regulations are key in explaining the variation in effectiveness of the clean energy complex across case studies.

Chapter 5 shifts focus to the impacts of the regime complex – particularly financial and technical assistance (utility modifier and capacity-building mechanisms) coupled with policy advising (social learning mechanism) – on the removal of barriers to geothermal development in Indonesia. The chapter provides a political economy analysis of the domestic actors and interests involved in the energy sector in Indonesia, and then recounts the history of geothermal development in Indonesia with a focus on the impacts of the clean energy regime complex on the dynamics of barriers to geothermal development. This analysis reveals that the clean energy regime complex, through financial and technical assistance combined with policy advising, is critical to impacting geothermal development in Indonesia by filling gaps in financing for high-risk exploration and early-stage development. This chapter provides insights on how the regime complex impacted domestic politics and geothermal barriers despite the absence of a legally binding framework. It also sheds light on the narrow pathway of change in the face of domestic political barriers and energy security concerns affecting political will.