Constructing Southeast Asian security: the pitfalls of imagining a security community and the temptations of orthodoxy

Khoo, Nicholas

doi:10.1080/0955757042000203696

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…According to Amitav Acharya (2014), ASEAN could be described as a "nascent" security community, sustained by a discrete ensemble of norms that underpinned the development of a "we-feeling" among its member states. By characterizing ASEAN as such, Acharya inaugurated a new phase in what became, and still remains, the most central and enduring debate within Asia-Pacific IR (Khoo 2004;Ba 2005;Emmerson 2005;Acharya 2014;Emmers 2017). This debate rapidly came to reflect a broader divide between rationalist and constructivist camps in the study of the region.…”

Section: Security Community-building In Southeast Asia and The Broade...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Polysemy of Security Community-Building: Toward a “People-Centered” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)?

Martel

2020

International Studies Quarterly

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This article contributes to ongoing debates on security community-building in international relations (IR) by focusing on the productive role of discursive contestation in this process. It builds on recent work associated with the “practice” turn, discourse theory, and the study of security communities in the Global South to propose a new understanding of how the diversification of security governance impacts security community-building. The article develops an original discourse-based approach that conceptualizes security community-building as a polysemic, omnidirectional, and contested process in which social agents debate the meaning of security and the boundaries of community. It applies this approach to the case of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to show how contestation over the organization's identity as a security community “in the making” takes place along two dimensions. First, different (and potentially incompatible) versions of the community compete for dominance. Second, contestation also unfolds “internally,” among social agents who agree on which version ought to prevail. I illustrate this part of the argument through an examination of the debate over ASEAN's identity as a “people-centered” community. The demonstration is supported by the analysis of “texts” enacted in the discursive field where the security community is talked into existence, as well as interviews with practitioners.

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Section: Security Community-building In Southeast Asia and The Broade...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Polysemy of Security Community-Building: Toward a “People-Centered” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)?

Martel

2020

International Studies Quarterly

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“…Poor specification of the concept in the constructivist rendition together with (paradoxically) the reliance on formal regional institutions means that existence of a security community is impossible to falsify, and that there is no way to demonstrate that a political project with the ambition to build a security community has failed. 32 In replication of the liberal progressivism engrained in Adler and Barnett's theory, security community, defined primarily by complex institutional structure mirroring modern nation state design, is the utopia of regional security arrangement 'towards' which relevant actors -states, or their political elites -aspire or should aspire. Finally, security communities are often conceived instrumentally as serving states' interests (including through coordination of common defence against external threats) rather than as results of existing dependable expectations of peaceful change among the concerned societies.…”

Section: Resurrection(s)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Security community: A future for a troubled concept?

Ditrych

2014

International Relations

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This article offers first a brief commentary on Karl Deutsch and his collaborators’ development of the concept of security community, before moving to a critical review of constructivist attempts by Adler, Barnett and their colleagues at resurrecting it. The article makes the case that while the serious effort to give security community a new life is laudable, the appropriation also renders the concept at once theoretically complex and methodologically superficial. Drawing constructive lessons from the previous research, it seeks to demonstrate the potential of the security communities research provided that it (1) restores the Deutschian ethos of rigorous, transparent, collective and transdisciplinary research; (2) takes seriously the challenge to the realist paradigm by zooming in and out of the modern state when thinking about security community; and (3) in addition to processes of integration investigates more thoroughly also the processes of disintegration.

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“…On the other hand, the non-interference norm has prevented ASEAN from addressing gross human rights abuses and domestic violence that constitute grave threats to the security of large numbers of people. The organization was paralysed when separatist insurgencies and anarchy gripped Indonesia after the fall of President Suharto in 1998; it was ineffectual in relation to the East Timor catastrophe in 1999; and it has been stung by criticism of its soft approach to the military regime in Myanmar (Caballero-Anthony, 2003;Khoo, 2004). These failures, the resulting damage to ASEAN's credibility and the persistent problem of domestic instability have provoked a contentious debate around softening the non-interference doctrine in favour of 'enhanced interaction' or 'flexible engagement' when internal problems have negative external implications (Acharya, 2004: 260-4).…”

Section: Nathan: Domestic Instability and Security Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestic Instability and Security Communities

Nathan

2006

European Journal of International Relations

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The problem of political instability is neglected in the literature on security communities. In this article I argue that domestic stability, defined as the absence of large-scale violence in a country, is a necessary condition of these communities. Domestic violence precludes the existence of security communities because it renders people and states insecure; it creates the risk of cross-border destabilization and violence; and it generates uncertainty and tension among states, inhibiting trust and a sense of collective identity. I conclude that the benchmark of a security community—dependable expectations of peaceful change—should apply as much within states as between them. This is consistent with the work of Karl Deutsch, whose pioneering concept of a security community is widely understood to mean the absence of interstate war. Deutsch, in fact, was equally concerned with large-scale internal violence.

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Constructing Southeast Asian security: the pitfalls of imagining a security community and the temptations of orthodoxy

Cited by 11 publications

References 28 publications

The Polysemy of Security Community-Building: Toward a “People-Centered” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)?

The Polysemy of Security Community-Building: Toward a “People-Centered” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)?

Security community: A future for a troubled concept?

Domestic Instability and Security Communities

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