ABSTRACT
In this volume, our team of contributors has set out to examine the changing nature and evolution of the key concepts of ‘order’ and ‘security’ through a variety of institutional, regional and national perspectives. We did not begin with a set of preconceptions as to whether a ‘new security order’ has or has not developed since the end of the Cold War. Rather, we asked our contributors to consider the core concepts from their own given perspectives. Is it, therefore, possible to draw general conclusions from what has been written here hitherto? While a measure of caution is undoubtedly in order, it is both possible and desirable, in the interests of not leaving readers ‘hanging’, to offer some general, if tentative, conclusions here. The discussions in this final chapter will, therefore, be focused first on the general question of whether a solid and recognisable security order now exists throughout Europe. Attention will then turn to the pivotal issue of the role of international institutions in extending order and security from the part of geographical Europe where they are well established and strong to those where they are weaker or barely existent at all. This process is fraught with institutional, political and cultural difficulties from the perspective of both the ‘givers’ and the ‘receivers’, as has been made clear by several of our contributors here.
