序章　国際政治のなかの同盟

抄録

This special issue is an attempt to reexamine the dynamics of alliance politics from historical and theoretical perspectives. The subsequent essay serves as an introduction to the current issue and is divided in two parts. The first half provides a short overview of the theoretical and historical literature concerning alliance politics, with special attention to important topics, such as: alliance formation, alliance security dilemma, alliance functions, alliance institutionalization, and the dynamics of asymmetrical alliances.

The second half of this piece contends that the scholarly contribution of the eight articles in this volume are significant to the study of alliance politics. With evidence from neglected archival sources, YAGUCHI Hiroaki and TAJIMA Nobuo reinterpret the nature of such well-studied alliances as the Quadruple Alliance in the nineteenth century and the alliance among the Axis powers in the 1930s. FUJII Atsushi’s article on French-Belgian relations and NAKASHIMA Takuma’s article on the US-Japan alliance respectively examine the alliance politics in Europe and Asia with emphasis on the wider historical contexts – decolonization in the 1950s and the development of nuclear weapons technology in the 1960s. International Relations (IR) theorist IZUMIKAWA Yasuhiro offers a new “dynamic” theory of alliance politics concerned with the interplay between allied countries and their adversary, while FUKUSHIMA Hiroyuki seeks to reassess the transformation of the post-war US-Japanese alliance by means of his new analytical model. Articles by SANBYAKUGARI Hiroshi and SATAKE Tomohiko shed new light on the post-Cold War US-Japanese alliance. The former meticulously scrutinizes the development of the Two-Plus-Two system between the allies after 1990, while the latter analyzes the implications of the increasing Australian-Japanese security cooperation for the “hub and spoke” alliance system in post-war Asia. All in all, this special issue makes significant contributions to the historical and theoretical literature on alliance politics.