Security Communities and their Neighbours: A Framework of Analysis

Abstract

How are we to understand the relationship between a security community and its neighbours and explain why some security communities may become regional fortresses whilst others become powerful sources of integration? Before moving on to examine the four aspects of the framework outlined briefly in the introduction, it is worth recapping where we are in the argument. States, I argued, inhabit an international society comprised of rules and norms that shape the relations between them. However, there is little agreement about the nature of that society: pluralists argue that it is a loosely bound society tied together by practical rules of association that help to manage the relations between states. Solidarists, on the other hand, insist that international society also consists of purposive rules and norms through which the society as a whole pursues moral purposes and can come to hold moral agency. Whilst solidarism constitutes a powerful critique of pluralism it is questionable whether the international society we inhabit today is actually solidarist or not. The fact that many states remain selective about the way they pursue and implement the society’s purposive rules suggests that at best international society exhibits weak solidarist trends.¹