Weak Countries' Preference For Regional Security Cooperation

After the Cold War, regional security cooperation institutions around the worldhave made great strides. However, these institutions have a huge difference in thelevel of institutionalization. This paper argues that the cause of this difference is thatthe comprehensive power of nation states makes them have a various institutionalpreferences of regional security cooperation.Especially for those weak states, they suffer less external stress from internationalsystem after the end of Cold War, while the civil wars increasingly threaten thenational security of weak states. Many weak states’ domestic structures becamefragmentized and even to some extent of anarchy. Limited by their lack of capacities,weak states have to violate the logic of self-help and resort to other states forassembling the collective capacities in order to address the security threats which theyare unable to singly deal with. In such cases, states in the region will generate a strongdemand of regional security institution. At the same time, the decline of hegemonyresults in the insufficient supply of regional security cooperation which should beprovided by hegemony as public goods, thus strengthening weak states’ endogenousdemand for regional security institutions. Consequently, when facing fatal survivalchallenge, the more incapable states are the more intense demand for regional securitycooperation institution, and thus more possible to develop a highly institutionalizedinstitution.In addition, weak states need to utilize regional security cooperation institution tostrengthen their de facto sovereignty as a remedy of their undermined de juresovereignty. Furthermore, a robust regional security cooperation could help to keepthe power balance of region by institutionally counterbalance the regional hegemony.By selecting the ECOWAS and its member states as a research case, this articledemonstrates the above mentioned hypothesis that weak states have a strongpreference on highly institutionalized regional security cooperation.