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States often build alliances with non-state actors to address their security needs and pursue their strategic objectives, but such alliances are highly unreliable and fraught with grave risks for the allying parties. The gradually increasing capabilities of a non-state actor may embolden it to give preferences to its own geopolitical agenda, thereby adversely affecting the alliance. Thus, states and non-state actors have mostly failed to maintain stable relationships due to diverging interests and opportunistic politics. Iran and Hezbollah have however maintained an alliance, which has entered its fourth decade of organisational existence, and this potentially hostile alliance is transforming the regional strategic landscape. The longevity of their alliance is somewhat puzzling. This article contends that the Iran-Hezbollah alliance has withstood collapse because Iran gives significant autonomy to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah controls and optimizes its resources and revenue which are at its disposal. Additionally, the chaotic regional structure and their intersecting interests play a pivotal role, not only fostering this nexus but also significantly potentiating the survival of their alliance while reducing the likelihood of opportunistic dissociation.

In recent years, studies in the fields of both foreign policy analysis and international relations theory on China's domestic level have increased. However, these increases in studies have not been well received. Our research reviewed the related classical literature and the published literature over the past decade, seeking to find correlations among the various domestic factors and explore the progress of the operationalization of several variables. Our findings reveal that regime type and beliefs are the two variables which have been well studied in both of the fields of foreign policy analysis and international relations theory; that variables related to actors have been studied in the field of foreign policy analysis; and that new academic achievements inboth the studies have been adopted into the paradigms of international relations theory. These new developments have generally stimulated multilevel analysis in international relations. ; 近年来,国内政治层次在对外政策分析和国际关系理论两个领域的共同推动下,形成了一个要素庞多、交互复杂的知识网络体系,但却很少有研究兼顾宏观与微观双视角下去探究、梳理、整合这个知识体系。通过考察相关经典文献与近十年的研究成果,本文对国际关系研究中的国内政治解释进行类型化的分析,从宏观上寻找各要素之间的相关性,从微观上探索各变量的操作化进展。各变量在对外政策分析与国际关系理论两个领域的发展状况和深入程度存在差异,其中政体、观念等是两个领域的交互关系较深的变量,而行为体相关变量主要由对外政策分析领域推动,一些国际关系理论范式直接套用了这些研究成果。两个领域间相互推动发展的这种关系,不仅使国际关系研究不再只强调单方向、单层次的分析方法,而且互动与跨层次分析的成果也越来越丰富。

Actors partially relinquish sovereignty in return for physical protection by a more powerful actor, generating a hierarchical relationship of a dominant, which supplies a political order, and subordinate(s), seeking the benefits that the political order can offer. This is the outcome of rationally assessing the respective situation, ultimately forgoing the presupposed paradigm that all actors are acknowledged as equal units in IR. The product of applying this hierarchical rubric to the Korean Peninsula offers a fundamental alternative for understanding how and why the current Korean Peninsula Nuclear Crisis unfolded in the manner that it did, while building upon relevant literature constituting the crux of hierarchy in international relations. What is presented are two political orders running parallel to one another: (1) the USA and the ROK and (2) China and the DPRK. Historically, both orders took fundamentally different tracks, as the USA and the ROK maintained a tight, valued and active social contract, while China and the DPRK periodically drifted into loose, devalued and inactive phases. Additionally, a paradigm has emerged following China's inclusive behavior post-1978, the USA's unipolar moment, and Washington's aggressive signaling and actions, forcing the DPRK to reconsider its dominant's reliability as a credible security guarantor. Having witnessed these seismic shifts, the DPRK has intensified its development of 'the ultimate security guarantor', leading to the contemporary crisis we are facing today. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

Grappling with the contemporary topos of a Sino-Russian Entente, Kazakhstan is caught between a delicate long-term peer-competition and potentially a structural rivalry involving the two Eurasian Leviathans, China and Russia. Acknowledging this perspective, Nur-Sultan is inducing hedging dynamics, fishing for a better range of net benefits, while playing a significant fulcrum role central to the regional geopolitical and geo-economic matrix. Although Russia is retaining the prevailing role in the security domain, China is catching up with Russia in various economic indices, notably generated by the Belt and Road Initiative. Utilizing the conceptualization of hierarchy in international relations adapted from the work of David A. Lake, this paper outlines how Nur-Sultan's interests and preferences are acknowledged by the respective dominants, as a basis for social contracting processes to generate a dual hierarchical order in Central Asia.

Can hedging be applied to non-Asia-Pacific regions and historical contexts? And, to what extent did Brazil operationalize hedging behavior during the Second World War? Taking these questions, the purpose of this paper is to expand the discourse on hedging twofold: First, to employ it within a South American context; second, to verify hedging historically as a widespread strategic unit-level behavior of small and middle powers amid systemic-level great power competitions. Here, by unboxing Brazil's hedging behavior during the Second World War, specifically President Getúlio Vargas's ' equidistância pragmática' (pragmatic equidistance) coping strategy, it is found that Brazil employed hedging behavior with omnidirectional engagement with both the United States and Nazi Germany, yet later abandoned this strategy to fully align with Washington and the Allies in 1942, once Brazilian security and economic interests were aligned.