Overlapping Regionalism and Security Cooperation: Power-Based Explanations of Nigeria's Forum-Shopping in the Fight against Boko Haram
AbstractRegional conflicts increasingly require multilevel efforts by regional, subregional, and international actors. When states are confronted with a cooperation problem, often there are several institutions available to address this issue. Drawing on the literature of overlapping regionalism and forum-shopping, we argue that existing explanatory models benefit from adding power-based explanations. By conceptualizing an issue-specific dimension and factors specific to the national environment as additional power-based criteria for forum-shopping, we expand the existing literature. Applying our framework to the response to the Boko Haram uprising, our study examines why Nigeria preferred …
“If you compress the spring, it will snap back hard”: The Ukrainian crisis and the balance of threat theory
The narrative of an aggressive and neo-imperialist Russia that has dominated analyses of the 2014 Ukrainian crisis lacks theoretical rigour. We argue that a sustainable transformation of the Ukrainian crisis requires an accurate analysis of the context of the conflict, which should include an understanding of Moscow’s perception of the threats to its interests. This policy brief develops a theoretical understanding of the Ukrainian crisis through the lens of Stephen M. Walt’s balance of threat theory. We conclude that a realist analysis will help to explain Russian actions.