Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. xii, 226 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$145.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-65174-6.
The focus of this book, institutional change in regional security institutions (RSI), is an ambitious one, in large part because the security field is often seen as inhospitable to the role and importance of international institutions. Undeterred, the book sets off by positing what it calls a two-step process of institutional change: when the regional distribution of power changes, we should expect this to trigger institutional change in the RSI; the substantive contents of that change are then determined by the member states’ assessments—positive, negative, uncertain—about the continued security utility of the RSI itself. The analytics underscore, sensibly, the importance not just of the material basis but also the normative and ideational makeup of institutions and their agents.
The idea of conceptualizing institutional change itself is not an easy one. But this book suggests we can mark and distinguish institutional differences over time by zeroing in on three observable types of changes in the security objectives, norms, and functions of an RSI: consolidation, displacement, and layering. Although these could be strengthened with more conceptual fleshing out (for example, their sequencing, concurrence, durability etc.), they make for a useful way to bring together the book’s evidence in a thematic and chronological manner.
With its general two-step framing, the book then uses qualitative approaches to delve into within-case analyses of institutional changes, spread across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Organization of African Unity (OAU)/African Union (AU). Specifically, the chapter narratives focus on sets of periods under the three umbrella institutions of interest (with a good summary in Table 6.1), combining interviews, government reports, secondary sources, as well as archival research through fieldwork in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Singapore.
The case analyses show all three of the posited types of institutional changes taking place at varying speeds. In the ASEAN case, institutional consolidation and layering occur concurrently; ECOWAS trajectories over time show institutional layering, consolidation, and displacement; and the OAU/AU case goes from virtually no change to institutional layering and then displacement. While consolidation and displacement are certainly at play, layering appears to be more readily observable as a strategy across the three cases and over the time periods under analysis. The case histories are where the book is strongest, helping to draw attention to non-great power narratives of institutional change involving Asia and Africa. We need more studies like this one that bring our cross-cultural and historical understanding of regions into mainstream IR debates and global events.
The book grapples well with the issues of defining and distinguishing RSI from their cohort, and identifying general pathways to change. It singles out two of its findings, which showcase some of the challenges involved in getting the individual case histories right but keeping the analytical lens broad. One is that it is not just actual changes in the strategic environment that trigger responses on the part of actors; it can also be the expected changes in the same makeup that can lead to reactions and maneuverings. Another intriguing, and altogether plausible, trigger for change is geography. To be sure, as the book documents, distributional changes at the global level are important in affecting the prospects for change. But it also shows that those that are regionally closer—or even global ones that filter through at the regional level in various ways, such as concerns about the spreading influence of extra-regional powers—tend to weigh more heavily in actors’ security calculations.
The book succeeds in identifying and raising many issues, but it also leaves some unresolved. There is certainly more work to be done in the IR field as a whole on better specifying the underlying conditions under which macro and micro shifts lead to institutional change, a point the book anticipates early on. Engaging with some of the latest scholarship focusing on institutional types and change across different policy spaces, some of which came out before or around the same time as this book (for example, works in which typologies move away from institutions as monolithic (e.g., Saadia M. Pekkanen, Asian Designs: Governance in the Contemporary World Order, Cornell, 2016); or works focused on the availability of competitive institutional options that affects members’ preferences on exit or change (e.g. Phillip Y. Lipscy, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, Cambridge, 2017), will be of help in future analyses focused on the pathways of institutional changes in IR. For now, this book has already taken important steps forward in helping us to better appreciate some of the complexities and challenges in the scholarly endeavors ahead.
Saadia M. Pekkanen
University of Washington, Seattle, USA