International alliance — a political relationship between two or more states in which they agree to act together for a common purpose, such as to deter or defeat an external threat. These relationships range from formal, treaty-based agreements on one hand to informal security cooperation arrangements on the other. They may be based on mutual benefit or reciprocity, as in the Entente Cordiale signed by England and France in 1904; or they might be based on interests, such as economic prosperity or national security.
The formation and cohesion of international alliances has been a subject of intense academic study, especially since the 1960s. Influential works include those of Glenn Snyder, Stephen Walt, and Kenneth Waltz. The latter developed a theory of international politics known as neorealist, which, along with neoliberalism, is one of the two major perspectives on the study of international relations.
Managing international alliances poses challenges, including the difficulty of building trust. The authors of this article suggest that a greater understanding of how to generate trust can help improve management of these alliances. They explore ways that partners can proactively manage their alliances in order to build trust, particularly through process-based and characteristic-based mechanisms that are to a large extent within the control of alliance managers. They also examine the role of leadership in the generation of trust. While the emergence of the Internet has changed the nature of relationships between countries, the need to build and maintain trust remains as important as ever.
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