Logo image
The regional path to peaceful change: What the Asian and European experiences tell us
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The regional path to peaceful change: What the Asian and European experiences tell us

M. Beeson
Ethics & International Affairs, Vol.34(4), pp.535-545
2020
url
Link to Published Version *Subscription may be requiredView

Abstract

One of the more striking, surprising, and optimism-inducing features of the contemporary international system has been the decline of interstate war. The key question for students of international relations and comparative politics is how this happy state of affairs came about. In short, was this a universal phenomenon or did some regions play a more important and pioneering role in bringing about peaceful change? As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay suggests that Western Europe generally and the European Union in particular played pivotal roles in transforming the international system and the behavior of policymakers. This helped to create the material and ideational conditions in which other parts of the world could replicate this experience, making war less likely and peaceful change more feasible. This argument is developed by comparing the experiences of the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their respective institutional offshoots. The essay uses this comparative historical analysis to assess both regions’ capacity to cope with new security challenges, particularly the declining confidence in institutionalized cooperation.

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Source: InCites

Metrics

5 readers on Mendeley

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Citation topics
6 Social Sciences
6.27 Political Science
6.27.50 International Relations
Web Of Science research areas
Ethics
International Relations
Political Science
ESI research areas
Social Sciences, general
Logo image