Regional

Security Complex Theory

Week 6

Desy Arya Pinatih, Msi

International Relations Department
FISIP Brawijaya
 Today’s menu

RSCT : An Introduction
3 Theoretical Perspectives On Post Cw Security
Order
RSCT : Historical Context
RSCT : Theory Mapping
RSCT : Variables and Prediction
3 Theoretical Perspectives On Post Cw Security
Order

The The
Neorealist Regionalist
Perspectives Perspectives

The Globalist
Perspectives
 The Neorealist Perspectives

Post CW : a change of
power structure at the
Distibution of material global level (the end of
Rest on an argument power in the bipolarity), and its
about power polarity insternational system à concern is to identify the
Balance of power nature of that change in
order to infer the security
consequences
 The Globalist Perspectives

Antithesis of realism’s (and neorealism’s) statist, power-political

understanding of international system structureà rooted mainly in
cultural, transnational, and international political economy
approaches

The independent role of both transnational entities –

corporations, non-governmental social and political organisations
of many kinds – and intergovernmental organisations and
regimes.

Redefinition of teritorial sovereignity as the ordering principle for

human activity :
• Networks interactions of many kind and level of actors
• The states may still the player but do not necessarily control
 The Regionalist Perspectives

The regional level stands more clearly on

its own as the locus of conflict and
cooperation for states and as the level of
analysis for scholars seeking to explore
contemporary security affairs

Post CW :
• The decline of superpower rivalry reduces the
penetrative quality of global power interest in the rest
Contains elements of both neorealism and of the world
globalism, but gives priority to a lower • Most of the great powers in the post-ColdWar
level of analysis international system are now ‘lite powers’, leaving local
states and societies to sort out their military-political
relationships with less interference from great powers
than before.
 RSCT : Historical Context
1500-1945
• The new European national states reached out
economically, politically, and militarily, creating
both formal and informal empires in all quarters of
the globe.
• In most of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia,
European power eventually dominated and occupied
the existing social and international systems, largely
stifling indigenous regional security dynamics.
• There was regional security of a kind, but it was
defined much more by global rivalries among the
European powers

1945-1989
• The wave of decolonisation à created dozens of new
states, and allowed regional security dynamics to
start operating among newly independent actors
• On the other hand, the bipolar rivalry of the United
States and the Soviet Union subordinated most of
Europe and Northeast Asia, and penetrated heavily
into most of the newly liberated regions.
 RSCT : Historical Context

Post CW (1990-now)
• It lifted the superpower overlay from
Europe, and radically changed the pattern of
superpower penetration in Northeast Asia.
• By removing ideological confrontation and
Soviet power from the equation, it greatly
changed both the nature and the intensity of
global power penetration into thirdworld
RSCs

Many regional level security

dynamics appeared to get more
operational autonomy than they
had had before
 REGIONAL SECURITY COMPLEXES
THEORY

Security Complex Definition :

šBuzan (1983) :
“ a group of states whose primary security concerns link together
sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot reasonably be
considered apart from one another”
šBuzan (1998) :
“‘a set of units whose major processes of securitisation, desecuritisation,
or both are so interlinked that their security problems cannot
reasonably be analysed or resolved apart from one another’
27/09/22
Four Levels of Analysis of RSCT

Sub-national (domestically in the states of the

region)

State-to-state relations (which generate the

region as such)

The region’s interaction with neighbouring

regions (this is supposed to be relatively
limited given that the complex is defined by
interaction internally, being more important)

The role of global powers in the region (the

interplay between the global and regional
security structures)
Theory
Variables Prediction
Mapping

Maintenance
Status Quo
Boundary
Internal
Transformation

Anarchic External
Structure Transformation
RSCT

Polarity

Social
Construction
Boundary Polarity
• which differentiate • which covers the
the RSC from its distribution of
neighbours; power among the
units; and

Anarchic Social
structure construction
• which means that • which covers the
the RSC must be patterns of amity
composed of two and enmity among
or more the units.
autonomous units;
 3 Possible Evolutions to an RCS

Maintenance of the status

quo, which means that there
are no significant changes in its
essential structure;

•anarchic structure (because of

regional integration);
Internal transformation, •to polarity (because of
which means that changes in disintegration, merger, conquest,
differential growth rates, or
essential structure occur suchlike); or
within the context of its •to the dominant patterns of
amity/enmity (because of
existing outer boundary : ideological shifts, war-weariness,
changes of leadership, etc.); and

External transformation, which

means that the outer boundary
expands or contracts, changing
the membership of the RSC,
and most probably
transforming its essential
structure in other ways.
Types Of Security Complexes

27/09/22
more of this, next week… JJJ