ABSTRACT
The state is a political entity that remains conceptually difficult to define. State-building as a concept suffers from its subsummation to, or conflation with, nation-building. The subsummation of state-building to nation-building is a product of the origins of the literature in which the former was considered a component of the latter. While Federalism, Functionalism, and Neo-Functionalism provided a basis for studying regional integration processes, they relied heavily on the influence of supranational institutions which makes them ill-equipped to analyze spaces where such institutions are not present or where they lack any real autonomy. The concept of security communities emerged in parallel with the theories of regional integration. The concept of security complexes, like that of security communities, focuses on security as the main variable for delineating as well as understanding regions.
