The South’s ‘Insecurity Dilemma’

Abstract

This chapter develops a typology of states that are said to exist within international society. Rather than providing highly detailed accounts of certain states the chapter adopts a more abstract approach comparing the experience of ex-colonial ‘Southern States’ with the experience of the more industrialised ‘Northern States’. Writings on this topic within the subject of International Relations have emphasised the ‘insecurity dilemma’ that confronts ex-colonial states arising primarily from the fact that, unlike the nation-states of the ‘North’ where the state is generally coterminous with nation, ex-colonial states are usually state-nations, in which multiple ethnic communities reside within a state’s borders.¹ This absence of a position of so called ‘unconditional legitimacy’ in the ex-colonial states because of the plethora of ethnic communities that reside within their borders, is said to be one of the main differences that set them apart from the more cohesive states of the ‘North’.²