Regional security cooperation

Abstract

What are the different kinds of regional security organisations that exist? What theoretical tools do we have to explain the emergence of regional frameworks across the world? And how do they vary from an institutional and operational point of view? In this chapter, we show that regional security cooperation projects vary in many ways, for example in membership size, degree of formality, size of bureaucracy or whether they are part of a general-purpose or task-specific organisation, and revisit the reasons for why states and other actors invest in regional security cooperation in the first place. Then, we turn to theoretical explanations, which can be divided into three broad streams – those that emphasise dynamics internal to the region; those that accentuate dynamics external to the region; and those that focus on political dynamics not linked to security concerns – to explain the existence of regional security cooperation. Lastly, we map existing regional security cooperation projects across the globe, and discuss their functions, effects and effectiveness.