ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book presents an overview of methods used in different social sciences (political science, history, geography, public law, and economics) to investigate defence issues. The conclusion provides a short reflection on the potentialities of mixing methods and cross-fertilizing disciplines in defence studies, so as to better cope with the complexity of defence in the 21st century. Many defence issues, such as terrorism, defence policies, cyber issues, military effectiveness, and so on, lie at the crossroads of different disciplines and thus could really benefit from cross-fertilization. The first section of the Conclusion points out a few of these subjects, and in the second section, the conclusion comes back to a stimulating challenge for the future of defence studies: that of data and digitalization.
