Habits of Peace: The Foundations of Long-Term Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia and South America

The regions of Southeast Asia and South America are often cited as puzzling cases of long peace among nation-states. Absent hard power balancing behaviours, liberal democratic development, and economic interdependence, both present unlikely cases for prolonged periods of time absent large scale inter-state violence. This research begins with an inquiry into the foundations the long peace of each region: practices of conflict management. More narrowly, this project asks: How can we understand cooperation and community building alongside persistent militarized violence? Upon what foundations have these largely illiberal states been able to build relative but lasting peace despite pervasive territorial disputes? In answering these questions, this research argues that distinct and diplomatic habits shape the management of peace and conflict in each region. The underlying argument of this work is that the habitual and dispositional qualities of regional diplomatic practice inform the long peace of these regions and regional relations more generally. In each region, distinctive and discrete qualities of regional relations shape crisis response, but also shape how crises, themselves, are understood by regional diplomatic officials. These â habits of peaceâ make possible long-term regional cooperation and relative peace alongside persistent intra-regional violence. After articulating the conflictual nature of peace in each regional case, I suggest that existing understandings of regional long-peace overlook the practical and tactical foundations upon which interstate cooperation rest. I offer a theoretical framework and particular set of methods attentive to the habitual and dispositional qualities of inter-state relations. In the subsequent empirical cases I demonstrate the existence and effect of a particular regional habitual disposition in each region, with a particular focus on episodes of regional crisis including the 2011 Preah Vihear border dispute in Southeast Asia and the 1995 Cenepa conflict between Peru and Ecuador.Ph.D