It is the aim of this paper is to explore the role pivotal states play as security providers and what impact they have in particular on regional security governance. The choice to base the analysis at the regional level is due to the relative stability some regions have been able to achieve and the way regional (in)stability can be seen as a sub-set of global governance. The paper will make use of the concept of security governance. Given the growing interaction between national and regional actors in the decision making of regional security governance, a state-centric approach is insufficient as a framework of analysis. Security governance covers threats that have to do with potential or actual violence: terrorism, war and counter insurgency, ethnic cleansing, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, massive human rights violence, and organised crime, as well as issues that have to do with natural disasters: famines, pandemics, cyber warfare, and even financial crises.

It is the aim of this paper is to explore the role pivotal states play as security providers and what impact they have in particular on regional security governance. The choice to base the analysis at the regional level is due to the relative stability some regions have been able to achieve and the way regional (in)stability can be seen as a sub-set of global governance. The paper will make use of the concept of security governance. Given the growing interaction between national and regional actors in the decision making of regional security governance, a state-centric approach is insufficient as a framework of analysis. Security governance covers threats that have to do with potential or actual violence: terrorism, war and counter insurgency, ethnic cleansing, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, massive human rights violence, and organised crime, as well as issues that have to do with natural disasters: famines, pandemics, cyber warfare, and even financial crises.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism - the first of its kind - offers a systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalization, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesize the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research. Twenty-seven chapters review the theoretical and empirical scholarship with regard to the emergence of regionalism, the institutional design of regional organizations and issue-specific governance, as well as the effects of regionalism and its relationship with processes of regionalization. The authors explore theories of cooperation, integration, and diffusion explaining the rise and the different forms of regionalism. The handbook also discusses the state of the art on the world regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Various chapters survey the literature on regional governance in major issue areas such as security and peace, trade and finance, environment, migration, social and gender policies, as well as democracy and human rights. Finally, the handbook engages in cross-regional comparisons with regard to institutional design, dispute settlement, identities and communities, legitimacy and democracy, as well as inter- and transregionalism.

This paper is concerned with the question whether ASEAN as a regional organization is a provider of regional security governance. There is already a lively theoretical debate on the question whether ASEAN is a relevant and effective security organization and opinions on this question considerably diverge (see, e.g. Acharya and Tan 2006; Kang 2003; Martin Jones and Smith 2007). In this paper, I ask whether the concept of regional security governance provides a better theoretical fit for the empirical security practices of the member states. I argue that the governance concept provides a weak fit, primarily because ASEAN's security understanding and conceptions are orthogonal to the assumptions of the global governance concept. While one could hardly speak of a 'a' governance concept, governance approaches appear to converge on the central assumption that actors actively contribute to it. In the case of ASEAN security has been achieved through a set of norms and security practices that do not require active cooperation but only restraint from specific actions and the commitment to strengthening individual state-capacity. Theoretically, to speak of security governance through ASEAN thus constitutes conceptual overstretch. It is a useful heuristic, however, to reflect on the concept of 'state' in IR theories. I do not argue that ASEAN has not produced security in the region, I argue that the framework of security governance is an inadequate concept to evaluate that security function.

This book seeks to understand the role of regions in the provision of security (and insecurity) practices across the globe. Specialists with expertise in the regions they examine present eight case studies and analyses of the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Europe. Discussing both The State and people in the context of security, this book examines four categories; inter-state security, transnational criminal practices (the drugs trade, human trafficking migration), proliferation issues (both nuclear and non-nuclear), and issues of domestic/state collapse. The book uses an inclusive definition of security to include traditional and non-traditional conceptions, and incorporates the use of force and the threat of the use of force, as well as issues related to the integrity of peoples. The chapters weave theory and case studies to provide a rich description of a variety of regional governance forms; and, where applicable, the absence of them to move beyond regionalism to consider the key determining features of regional governance. Comparative Regional Security Governance will be of interest to students and scholars of international security, international relations and governance.

This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.

Rewiring Regional Security in a Fragmented World examines conflict management capacities and gaps regionally and globally, and assesses whether regions--through their regional organizations or through loose coalitions of states, regional bodies, and non-official actors--are able to address an array of new and emerging security threats.