Reason and Experience in Renaissance Italy

Political life in Renaissance Italy was held together by political principles which underlay, or were used to justify, political proposals and decisions in practice. This wide-ranging comparative survey examines these political principles, as expressed in sources such as council debates, preambles to legislation and official correspondence, in the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century Italy. Focusing especially on the five republics - Florence, Venice, Genoa, Siena and Lucca - the book also considers princes and signori, and the principles underlying relations between states, particularly relations between major and minor powers. Many of the ideas articulated by those confronting practical political problems ranged beyond the questions dealt with in formal treatises of political thought and philosophy. Drawing on extensive archival research, Christine Shaw explores the relationship between 'reason and experience' in the conduct of political affairs in Renaissance Italy, and the gap between theory and practice.

Why Minor Powers Risk Wars with Major Powers

Major powers have immense resources at their disposal, while minor powers are assumed to avoid wars and power politics due to structural and material constraints. This provokes the question why do some minor powers nonetheless decide to militarily engage their vastly stronger opponents, particularly major powers? Inspired by several theoretical insights, this book proposes a more complex framework of minor powers in interstate asymmetric conflict. It analyses five conditions highlighted by previous studies: domestic crisis, foreign support, window of opportunity, anomalous beliefs, and regime stability. The theoretical framework works well with a mixed-methods approach, a medium-N research design (Qualitative Comparative Analysis), and three case studies: Iraq (1990), Moldova (1992), and Serbia (1999). The book finds that by looking through the lenses of multiple theories, one can observe a more nuanced relationship how different conditions interact in impacting minor powers’ decisions. Ultimately, minor powers militarily engage major powers when facing a more important domestic crisis and when they also believe that they have a window of opportunity or support from another major power in order to constrain major powers’ capability and resolve. Looking at the current conflict in Syria, there are important policy implications given the observation that minor powers do and will continue to challenge major powers in the future.

Conclusion: Dealing with Complexity, Defeat and Beliefs

The concluding chapter develops four main findings of the book, based on the evidence obtained in all the empirical chapters. First, there is more than one way for a conflict to brew. All five conditions that were studied have causal relevance but in different ways. Second, major powers are not the main threat in these asymmetric disputes, but rather it is the domestic crisis because it can threaten regime stability, and thus the very survival of the regime. Third, minor powers seem to have reachable war objectives, such as regime survival or denying domestic opponents a victory. Fourth, the case of Iraq shows a failure of the regime to comprehend an opponent’s intentions and capabilities. Such anomalous beliefs are particularly a consequence of closed, personalistic regimes where there are no competitive ideas that can dislodge subjective views. The concluding chapter wraps up with some insights on how these findings can be used to assess the current Syrian conflict and policy implications.

Introduction

Looking at examples of interstate asymmetric conflict, this chapter argues that regimes of minor powers fighting major powers might seem suicidal. This book was not the first piece of research to have been puzzled by such behaviour. However, in this introduction, the strengths and weaknesses of previous studies are highlighted. The aim of this book is to attempt to address some of these weaknesses by asking a similar question on more recent cases, namely, why or under what conditions have minor powers attempted to resist or challenge others they know to be significantly more powerful than they by force of arms in the post-Cold War period? That said, this chapter argues that problem-driven pragmatism allows us to take insights from multiple theories. Finally, this chapter discusses the data, findings, relevance, scope and the main audience that might be interested in reading this book. At the end of the chapter, the organisation of the book is provided.

In Search of a Theory of Minor Powers in Interstate Asymmetric Conflict

The second chapter presents the theoretical framework of minor powers in asymmetric interstate conflicts, in line with problem-driven pragmatism. The framework examines how foreign support, window of opportunity, domestic crisis, regime stability, and anomalous beliefs shape their choices, particularly the choice to go to war. There are theoretical disagreements over definite roles each condition plays, the reason why further inquiry is justified. Moreover, to account for the possibility that conditions can offset or complement each other, the concept of conjunctural causation is utilised, reflecting on greater complexity in understanding the asymmetric conflict. An important caveat is raised, namely, that this study focuses on conventional interstate wars, because, unlike unconventional conflict, state actors have identifiable territory, resources, and military personnel. Such exposure makes them more vulnerable in asymmetric conflict compared to the vulnerability of non-state actors.