Regional security institutions play a significant role in shaping the behavior of existing and rising regional powers by nurturing security norms and rules, monitoring state activities, and sometimes imposing sanctions, thereby formulating the configuration of regional security dynamics. Yet, their security roles and influence do not remain constant. Their raison d’etre, objectives, and functions experience sporadic changes, and some institutions upgrade military functions for peacekeeping operations, while others limit their functions to political and security dialogues. The question is: why and how do these variances in institutional change emerge? This book explores the mechanisms of institutional change, focusing on regional security institutions led by non-great powers. It constructs a theoretical model for institutional change that provides a new understanding of their changing roles in regional security, which has yet to be fully explored in the International Relations field. In so doing, the book illuminates why, when, and how each organization restructures its role, function, and influence. Using case studies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Organization of African Unity (OAU)/ African Union (AU), it also sheds light on similarities and differences in institutional change between regional security institutions.

A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive volume on the international relations of Asia and the Indo-Pacific. The Asian region has become the fulcrum of international relations globally—it is the most economically vibrant, geostrategically significant, socially and culturally diverse, and militarily dangerous region in the world. The world’s leading great powers—the United States and China—jockey for primacy and vie for influence throughout the region, while “middle powers”—India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea—are extending their regional reach. The ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is collectively important in its own right, but has also become the epicenter of US-China regional competition. While Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands largely operate in their own orbits, Australia has assumed growing regional impact. North Korea and Taiwan are both significant actors but they are also each tinderboxes of potential conflict. While the region is geographically sprawling across the Indo-Pacific, it is tied together economically, technologically, and strategically. No one working in or on Asia cannot afford to read this volume.

African regional organizations have played leading roles in constructing collective conflict management rules for the continent, but these rules or norms have not been static. Currently, the African Union (AU) deploys monitors, authorizes peace support operations, and actively engages to resolve internal conflicts. Just a few decades ago, these actions would have been deeply controversial under the Organization of African Unity (OAU). What changed to allow for this transformation in the way the African regional organization approaches peace and security? African peace examines why the OAU chose norms in 1963 that prioritized state security and led to a policy of strict non-interference - even in the face of destabilizing violence - and why the AU chose very different norms leading to a disparate conflict management policy in the early 2000s. Even if the AU’s capacity to respond to conflict is still developing, this new policy has made the region more willing and capable of responding to violence. Nash argues that norm creation largely happened within the African context, and international pressure was not a determinant factor in their evolution. The role of regions in the international order, particularly the African region, has been under-theorized and under-acknowledged, and this book adds to an emerging literature that explores the role of regional organizations in the Global South in creating and promoting norms based on their own experiences and for their own purposes.

Provides a fresh perspective on ASEAN's role for regional security in Southeast Asia.

This Handbook expertly explores the profound transformations in international relations in recent decades. Proliferating cross-border challenges, including global financial crises, climate change, environmental degradation, irregular migration, and COVID-19, require governance structures that transcend the nation state and take both global and regional interplay, as well as problem-solving capacities, into account. Contributing authors investigate the effectiveness of international cooperation and performance in a diverse range of policy fields.

The contemporary nuclear landscape is rife with challenges. Stagnated progress in disarmament, widespread modernization plans, and emergent proliferation pathways are contributing to the risk of catastrophe. Meanwhile, global nuclear order appears more precarious than ever. This book makes a case for a regional reorientation of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, arguing that a more specialized, decentralized, and localized arrangement could more effectively address post-Cold War challenges. In the process, it develops a framework to analyze the conditions that would allow for more robust regional nuclear cooperation.?? Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation includes a series of case studies, centering on Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. It provides a comprehensive overview of existing nuclear cooperation at the regional level, including in the context of nuclear-weapon-free zones. For each case, the book both analyzes the viability of a stronger regional nuclear order and considers the form such an order would likely take. What is the magnitude and character of the nuclear proliferation threat across different regions? What does the presence of institutions in economic, environmental, and human security domains suggest about the likelihood of addressing that threat? A better understanding of broader regional patterns may be the key to explaining the possibility of regional nuclear cooperation. It may also help identify means to effectuate the timing and scale of that cooperation, bolstering regional nuclear orders and, in turn, ensuring the viability of global nuclear order.

This book explores how the Quad Plus mechanism is set to reshape the global multilateral economic and security co-operations between Quad partner countries and the rest of the world. With the Quad partners – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – seeing deteriorating ties with China, the book provides a holistic understanding of the reasons why Quad Plus matters and what it means for the post-COVID Indo-Pacific and Asian order. It goes beyond the existing literature of the global Post-COVID reality and examines how Quad Plus can grow and find synergy with national and multilateral Indo-Pacific initiatives. The chapters analyze the mechanism’s uncharacteristic yet active approach of including countries like South Korea, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand and ASEAN/Vietnam for their successful handling of the pandemic crisis, thereby reshaping the new world’s geopolitical vision. A unique study focused solely on the intricacies and the broader dialogue of the ‘Quad Plus’ narrative, the book caters to strategic audiences as well as academics researching International Relations, Politics, and Indo-Pacific and Asian Studies.