From collective security to the construction of regional security communities: regional security governance in a global context (original) (raw)

Security regionalisms: lessons from around the world

2013

This paper analyses developments in regional security governance since 1945. It argues that regional organizations around the world have come to play increasingly important roles in security provision, often in conjunction with the United Nations whose charter makes ample provision for such cooperation. It tracks the histories of regional organizations and considers points of similarity as well as difference. While acknowledging the important role of European institutions in encouraging regionalisms around the world, the paper’s principal focus in on non-European organizations, like the African Union, ASEAN or the Arab League. Three security arenas are explored in some detail: peace operations, non-proliferation and anti-terrorist measures. While far from exhaustive these three high profile security issues provide a good illustration of the robustness and resilience of security regionalism, its agenda setting capacity and its interface with evolving global security structures.

Regional Organisations and Humanitarian Action

The author would like to thank those researchers, policymakers and practitioners who provided insights and useful suggestions on drafts of this Working Paper, including peer reviewers Louise Fawcett and Herbert Wulf. Comments on earlier drafts were also provided by HPG Research Fellows Eva Svoboda and Lilianne Fan and Research Officer Simone Haysom. This paper is part of a broader project on the role of regional organisations in humanitarian action. The project is overseen by an expert steering group which comprises Elizabeth Ferris (Brookings Institution), Sandrine Tiller (MSF), Charles-Antoine Hofmann (IFRC), Andrea Binder (GPPI) and Nicolas Lamade (GIZ). Several members of HPG's Advisory Group also provided useful comments on the design of the HPG project on regional organisations. This study was funded through HPG's Integrated Programme. A full list of IP funders is available at http://www. odi.org.uk/work/programmes/humanitarian-policy-group/work-integrated-programme.asp. ODI gratefully acknowledges this financial support.

KFG Working Paper 17 by Anja Jetschke "Do Regional Organizations Travel? European Integration, Diffusion and the Case of ASEAN"

Why do regional organizations share a number of key institutions and policies? Why do regional organizations like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) or the Carribean Community (CARICOM) look like the European Union? And why do we find the norms of the Helsinki Final Act in treaties of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)? The simple answer is that policy solutions developed in the context of regional integration diffuse. The paper contends that regional integration efforts in Europe have had a decisive but often unacknowledged influence on regional cooperation outside of Europe. The influence of European integration on regional organizations beyond Europe will be illustrated with a case that is unsuspicious of having emulated the European integration experience: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Since 1957, Southeast Asian states have selectively taken over policies and institutions from the European context. The most recent adoption, it will be argued, is the ASEAN Charter, in effect since November 2008. In accounting for this adoption, the paper argues that ASEAN members’ decision is only partially driven by genuine regional or functional demands. Members borrowed from “abroad” expecting the Charter to provide a policy solution to the cooperation problems members faced. Thus, the paper makes an original general contribution to the existing literature on regional integration: It argues that a full account of regional integration processes needs to take diffusion processes into consideration.

A REVIEW OF REGIONAL APPROACHES IN DEALING WITH SECURITY ISSUES

States have looked to their immediate and near neighbours as well as key external or regional powers as potential sources of threat or of protection. Therefore, rather than at the global or local level, the region is where most post-1945 success in achieving security arrangements has been experienced. The paper seeks to provide an assessment of the level of regionalism that has developed in the three regions of Europe, Asia Pacific and West Africa where regionalisation has developed the most, but importantly on different degrees. It uses Bjorn Hettne and Fredrik Soderbaum's 'New Regional Theory' to assess the level and direction of regionalism that has occurred in these regions since the end of the Second World War and in the post-Cold War era in the case of Europe and Asia Pacific. It is argued that the development of regionalism is dependent on the support of the regional great power(s); the extent of reciprocity that exists in the relations of the states in the region; and, the level of strategic reassurance that exists among these states. It concludes that Regionalisation has emerged in the three regions through similar processes. They all established precedents for cooperation in non-security issues first (ie the EU, ASEAN and ECOWAS) before extending cooperation to security issues (ie NATO, the ARF and the East Asian Summit, and ECOMOG). However, the degree of regionalism that has developed in each region is significantly different.

Norms in practice: people-centric governance in ASEAN and ECOWAS

International Affairs, 2020

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) both recently adopted and institutionalized the norm of people-centric governance. This is potentially transformative for both, signalling a reorientation away from their private and elite-led normative foundations. In practice, however, the norm is understood and enacted in different ways by officials at each organization and with radically different effects. In ASEAN, the norm is understood and enacted in a limited and defensive way. Its institutionalization has led only to selective engagement with civil society and has not altered established modes of regional governance. In ECOWAS, however, the norm is understood as a means to render the organization more inclusive of civil society groups and has transformed the regional project in important ways, shaping the logic and form of regional intervention and conflict prevention. To explore these experiences—convergence in ado...

Habits of Peace: The Foundations of Long-Term Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia and South America

2017

The regions of Southeast Asia and South America are often cited as puzzling cases of long peace among nation-states. Absent hard power balancing behaviours, liberal democratic development, and economic interdependence, both present unlikely cases for prolonged periods of time absent large scale inter-state violence. This research begins with an inquiry into the foundations the long peace of each region: practices of conflict management. More narrowly, this project asks: How can we understand cooperation and community building alongside persistent militarized violence? Upon what foundations have these largely illiberal states been able to build relative but lasting peace despite pervasive territorial disputes? In answering these questions, this research argues that distinct and diplomatic habits shape the management of peace and conflict in each region. The underlying argument of this work is that the habitual and dispositional qualities of regional diplomatic practice inform the lon...

Regional Institutions

Security Studies. An Introduction ed. Paul Williams, 2009

This chapter considers the role of regional institutions in the provision of international security. It looks at the history and development of regionalism in the security sphere, and the evolving relationship between the United Nations (UN) and regional institutions.