“Alignment” is an umbrella term to describe a relationship between two or more states that involves mutual expectations of some degree of policy coordination on security issues under certain conditions in the future. The types of alignment explored in this chapter are alliances, thin and thick security institutions, coalitions, and strategic partnerships. The distinguishing features of these alignments are their differing levels of formality and the reason for their creation, or their objectives. Strategic alignments remain one of the dominant means that sovereign states possess to cooperate and coordinate their actions around common threats and political interests. States are either pulled into distrustful relations through security dilemmas or they are obliged to work together to solve common problems. Alliances, security institutions, coalitions, and strategic partnerships offer a variety of ways that states may seek to address security issues, threats, or challenges to their territories or interests.

This chapter discusses IST itself as well as the research design of the book. It provides a detailed exposition of the key variables of the theory: the status-seeking strategies of rising powers, institutional openness, and procedural fairness. It discusses the causal mechanism that explains the impact of openness and fairness on a rising power’s status and corresponding choice of strategy. It generates four possible strategies a state may follow: cooperate, challenge, expand, and reframe. On research design, the chapter describes the scope conditions of the theory, definitions of key concepts, case selection, research methodology and sources, and the observable implications of the theory and how they differ from the observable implications of alternative (materialist) explanations.