Coda

Abstract

We employ the last very brief chapter to summarize the topics and findings put forward in the earlier chapters. The details of the arguments and findings are left to the initial chapters. The coda is meant merely to remind readers of some of the analytical territory covered in the earlier chapters on types of rivalry and selected dynamics associated with their activities in world politics.In this chapter is not a full-fledged chapter. We do not wish to go over the preceding 13 chapters in detail. The details are best left to the chapters in which they appear. Some of the highlights should suffice to remind readers what questions we were tackling. At the same time, no single work is likely to make a major dent in what needs to be done on a topic like rivalry analysis. The larger undertaking resembles a number of loosely coordinated artisans chipping away at a huge block of stone. There is never likely to be a finished product unless interstate rivalries disappear altogether. That might happen some day but it does not appear to be something to anticipate in the near future. Instead, the huge block of stone resists shaping, continues to expand in size, and evolves with new wrinkles emerging in rivalry behavior.For our immediate part, we have addressed several dimensions of rivalry behavior:Existence: New strategic rivalry data have been made available expanding the dataset from 2010 to 2020. The older dataset (1494-2010) has been revised as well adding a few cases that had been overlooked in earlier iterations. The full rivalry count (1494-2020) now stands at 266 cases, although only major power rivalries are counted in the 1494-1815 period. If one controls for the number of interstate dyads in the international system, rivalries are slowly disappearing from the scene. Yet enough cases persist to maintain conflict levels in some regions (especially in the Middle East and North Africa and most of the regional subsystems in sub-Saharan Africa) and certainly globally with the revival of major power competition. Interestingly, no new interstate rivalries were found to have emerged between 2015 and 2020. Since rivalries tend to be non-existent in some regions and concentrated in others, other things being equal, we might expect rivalries to be increasingly restricted in geographical scope. Other things, however, may not prove to be equal in terms of