Rivalry and Overlap: Why Regional Economic Organizations Encroach on Security Organizations

• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Author: Stephanie C. Hofmann,Yoram Z. Haftel
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719832057
• Date: 01 October 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Rivalry and Overlap:

Why Regional Economic

Organizations Encroach

on Security Organizations

Yoram Z. Haftel

1

, and Stephanie C. Hofmann

2

Abstract

The proliferation and scope expansion of regional organizations (ROs) is one of

the most prominent features in contemporary international politics. In partic-

ular, many regional economic organizations (REOs) have expanded into the

security realm. This trend has often resulted in an overlap with regional security

organizations (RSOs) already in place. This study sheds light on this phenom-

enon by identifying the conditions under which REOs trespass into the security

policy domain despite the fact that preexisting RSOs already fulfill security

functions. We argue that the presence of strategic rivalries is an important

driver of the creation and depth of organizational overlap through scope

expansion. Specifically, RSOs that include significant interstate rivalries propel a

subgroup of like-minded states to advance and deepen security cooperation

through their existing REOs. Using an original data set of security cooperation

within economic and security ROs and a quantitative analysis, we find substantial

support for this argument.

1

Department of International Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem,

Israel

2

Department of International Relations and Political Science, Graduate Institute of International and

Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Yoram Z. Haftel, Department of International Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount

Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel.

Email: yoram.haftel@gmail.com

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2019, Vol. 63(9) 2180-2206

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719832057

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Keywords

strategic rivalries, regime complexity, overlapping regionalism, regional

organizations, institutional design, scope expansion

The proliferation and scope expansion of regional organizations (RO) is one of the

most prominent features of the contemporary international environment. Many ROs

that were initially designed to promote economic cooperation have moved into the

security sphere, thus drifting from their purported core mandate (Haftel and Hof-

mann 2017). Doubly surprising, perha ps, these regional economic organiza tions

(REOs) have entered into the security domain even in instances in which regional

security organizations (RSOs), which include some of the same member-states, were

already in place. In so doing, such REOs purportedly encroach on the turf of their

security-oriented counterparts, with potentially significant consequences for their

organizational performance and regional peace and stability (Hofmann forthcom-

ing). This phenomenon is illustrated by REOs such as West Africa’s Econo mic

Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and its overlap with the security-

oriented African Union (AU), the Union of South American States (UNASUR) that

moved into the Organization of American States (OAS) security “territory,” or the

Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) overlapping security agenda with the League of

Arab States (LAS).

To be sure, not all REOs that have an overlapping membership with RSOs

address security matters. And among those that do, some engage in such cooperation

more deeply than others. For example, most member-states of ECOWAS, the Com-

mon Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and the Arab Maghreb

Union (AMU) are also members of the AU, but they espouse deep, shallow, and no

security cooperation, respectively. The former is heavily involved in peace opera-

tions through the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). On the other hand,

COMESA only provides for regular meetings among security officials and a conflict

early warning system (CEWS), and the AMU has no security components at all. In

light of this variation, this article takes up two related questions: (1) why do REOs

trespass into the security policy domain despite the fact that preexisting RSOs

already fulfill security functions? and (2) given such overlap, what accounts for the

depth of REO security cooperation?

To answer these questions, we introduce insights from research on strategic

rivalry (Bremer 1992; Vasquez 1993; Klein, Goertz, and Diehl 2006; Colaresi,

Rasler, and Thompson 2008) into the study of (overlapping) international organi-

zations (IOs; Alter and Raustiala 2018; Jupille, Mattli, and Snidal 2013; Hofmann

forthcoming). We argue that strategic rivalries within RSOs trigger a subgroup of

member-states, which either include only one of the rivals or neither of them, to look

for alternatives. Frustrated with rivalrous tensions that create uncertainty within the

RSO that can potentially hamper the conduct of multilateral security policies, this

Haftel and Hofmann 2181