Since 2011, the Arab world has seen a number of autocrats, including leaders from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, fall from power. Yet, in the wake of these political upheavals, only one state, Tunisia, transitioned successfully from authoritarianism to democracy. Opposition parties forged a durable and long-term alliance there, which supported democratization. Similar pacts failed in Morocco and Mauritania, however. In Why Alliances Fail, Buehler explores the circumstances under which stable, enduring alliances are built to contest authoritarian regimes, marshaling evidence from coalitions between North Africa’s Islamists and leftists. Buehler draws on nearly two years of Arabic fieldwork interviews, original statistics, and archival research, including interviews with the first Islamist prime minister in Moroccan history, Abdelilah Benkirane. Introducing a theory of alliance durability, Buehler explains how the nature of an opposition party’s social base shapes the robustness of alliances it builds with other parties. He also examines the social origins of authoritarian regimes, concluding that those regimes that successfully harnessed the social forces of rural isolation and clientelism were most effective at resisting the pressure for democracy that opposition parties exerted. With fresh insight and compelling arguments, Why Alliances Fail carries vital implications for understanding the mechanisms driving authoritarian persistence in the Arab world and beyond.

Why do some attempts to conclude alliance treaties end in failure? From the inability of European powers to form an alliance that would stop Hitler in the 1930s, to the present inability of Ukraine to join NATO, states frequently attempt but fail to form alliance treaties. In Arguing about Alliances, Paul Poast sheds new light on the purpose of alliance treaties by recognizing that such treaties come from negotiations, and that negotiations can end in failure. In a book that bridges Stephen Walt's Origins of Alliance and Glenn Snyder's Alliance Politics, two classic works on alliances, Poast identifies two conditions that result in non-agreement: major incompatibilities in the internal war plans of the participants, and attractive alternatives to a negotiated agreement for various parties to the negotiations. As a result, Arguing about Alliances focuses on a group of states largely ignored by scholars: states that have attempted to form alliance treaties but failed. Poast suggests that to explain the outcomes of negotiations, specifically how they can end without agreement, we must pay particular attention to the wartime planning and coordinating functions of alliance treaties. Through his exploration of the outcomes of negotiations from European alliance negotiations between 1815 and 1945, Poast offers a typology of alliance treaty negotiations and establishes what conditions are most likely to stymie the attempt to formalize recognition of common national interests.

How to Create Joint Value Alliances, partnerships, acquisitions, mergers, and joint ventures are no longer the exception in most businesses—they are part of the core strategy. As managers look to external partners for resources and capabilities, they need a practical roadmap to ensure that these relationships will create value for their firm. They must answer questions like these: Which business combinations do we need? How should we govern them? Will their results justify our investments? Benjamin Gomes-Casseres explains how companies create value by “remixing” resources with other companies. Based on decades of consulting and academic research, Remix Strategy shows how three laws shape the success of any business combination: • First Law: The combination must have the potential to create more value than the parties could create on their own. Which elements from each business need to be combined to create joint value? • Second Law: The combination must be designed and managed to realize the joint value. Which partners best fit our strategic goals? How should we manage the integration? • Third Law: The value earned by the parties must motivate them to contribute to the collaboration. How will we share the joint value created? Will the returns shift over time? Supported by examples from a wide range of industries and companies, and filled with practical tools for applying the three laws, this book helps managers design and lead a coherent strategy for creating joint value with outside partners.

A broad-ranging study of the relationship between alliances and the conduct of grand strategy, examined through historical case studies.

Some companies discover the value of cross-border collaborations only after fighting long, head-to-head battles that leave them financially exhausted, intellectually depleted, and vulnerable to the next wave of competition and innovation. Grudgingly they come to recognize the benefits of sharing and trading control, costs, skills, capital, information, technology and access to markets - but only after a heavy price. Now companies can begin to learn the value of collaboration and how to capitalize on strong, flexible alliances by reading Collaborating to Compete. Written by McKinsey & Company's leading international management consultants, this strategic and operational guide provides practical information on how to design effective cross-border alliances-based on hundreds of case studies worldwide that illustrate the common factors that go into winning alliances. The authors argue that successful companies are transferring competence across borders by retaining key managers from acquired companies and by employing other strategies designed to reap the best from both companies in the consolidation. The authors also argue that effective collaboration is based on a long-term sequence of actions and that alliances fail when they're driven by hasty shortsighted goals. The authors highlight key steps in putting together a powerful alliance including: overcoming the resistance to alliances from executives and managers; finding the best structure and partner to meet a given set of goals; building flexibility into your collaboration to permit changes in legal and financial structures; ensuring good, frequent communication between you and your partners; setting up internal mechanisms to resolveconflicts quickly; and rescuing poorly conceived alliances. In reading about the activity of leading companies in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, readers will discover that even acquisitions - once a strictly predatory enterprise - are now taking on a more collaborative color. Drawing on McKinsey's strategies from the Triad, Collaborating to Compete goes on to show why cross-border strategy approaches need to account for the unique regulatory structural, and cultural barriers presented by individual countries and regions. The book shows that by following through on the basic prescription: U.S. companies can "ally for advantage" to open up the once impenetrable Japanese market; Japanese MNCs can successfully move into those complex U.S. markets; U.S., Japan, and other countries can crack the European Economic Community; and European companies can transcend obstacles and make successful U.S. acquisitions. Collaborating to Compete also looks hard at the dramatic restructuring of Europe and Asia and points out how European companies will have to use cross-border acquisitions and alliances to respond to new threats from global and Pan-European competitors.

Reviews the evolution of strategic alliances involving U.S. and Japanese companies in the semiconductor industry, and analyzes whether alliances can contribute to the renewal of an industry faced with stiff competition from Japan. Provides an overview of the changing nature of technology linkages in this important industry.

Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our time involve the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups, as well as fractionalization within them. It would be natural to suppose that warring groups form alliances based on shared identity considerations - such as Christian groups allying with Christian groups - but this is not what we see. Two groups that identify themselves as bitter foes one day, on the basis of some identity narrative, might be allies the next day and vice versa. Nor is any group, however homogeneous, safe from internal fractionalization. Rather, looking closely at the civil wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia and testing against the broader universe of fifty-three cases of multiparty civil wars, Fotini Christia finds that the relative power distribution between and within various warring groups is the primary driving force behind alliance formation, alliance changes, group splits and internal group takeovers.