Regional order in Southeast Asia : a case for collective identity?

For some time regional observers have been preoccupied with one question: how to make sense of the peace and order that exist among Southeast Asian states? Traditional conceptions of security put forward by realism and institutionalism focus on the material structure of the international system. Both theories tend to treat interests as given; systemic interactions affect behaviour but do not transform state interests. States either compete or cooperate for one purpose- power and/or material rewards. Viewed through such prisms, it is puzzling how Southeast Asian states with their historical legacies of intense hostilities, mutual jealousies, and territorial conflicts, escaped the logic of conflict for the last thirty years. Theories of interests defined solely in materialist terms are clearly impoverished. In contrast, constructivism offers a better account of the region's security dynamics. Its conceptualization of the possibilities of peace argues that the content of national interests emerges out of a process of representation through which state leaders make sense of their international context. In other words, both the 'interests and the identities on which these interests depend, rest not solely upon the structure of the system but also upon collective meanings that constitute the structures which organize state actions'.Master of Science (Strategic Studies