ABSTRACT
Regional security institutions are intriguingly complex. Scholars have long debated their security utility and many emphasize their limitations in shaping international politics, yet a number of states and policymakers have invested and are willing to invest their diplomatic and economic resources in these “ineffective” institutions. Despite the conventional notion that power politics rules institutions, major powers also engage with these regional institutions and often adhere to their norms and rules. The ability of these institutions to wield such influence hinges not only on their general utility in providing information or reducing transaction costs among members, but also on their political legitimacy as an aggregation of states within the international arena and their role in providing regional norms and rules that determine legitimate conduct for member states. With this power, the institutions can constrain and empower states by shaping states’ choices, behavior, and preferences, and by influencing those of existing and rising regional powers. The issue of their influence, however, is only half the story. Because the strategic environment rarely remains constant, the regional institutions simultaneously evolve, and do not necessarily emphasize the same objectives, norms, or rules over time. Their institutional raison d’être is subject to change, as is their constraining and empowering ability to shape regional security. For example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at its inception in 1967 never considered having a security mechanism, but it later created security forums in Southeast Asia and beyond, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF ) (1994) and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus (2010). The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (1975) primarily aimed to create an economic community in West Africa, but it institutionalized a peacekeeping mechanism in the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) (1999). The Organization of African Unity (OAU) (1963) strictly adhered to the principle of noninterference, and it was inconceivable to have a conditional noninterference principle-which its successor, the African Union (AU), currently holds. Articulating the security effect of these regional security institutions (RSIs) and the dynamics of regional security, therefore, requires an in-depth understanding of institutional change.
