Adler: The Spread of Security Communities

Adler, E., 2008. The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO's Post--Cold War Transformation. European Journal of International Relations, 14(2), 195.

“This article invokes a combination of analytical and normative arguments that highlight the leading role of practices in explaining the expansion of security communities” (195).

Adler begins by exploring different reasons where by international institutions spread. He highlights explanations including, the rhetorical, normative imitation, socialization, persuasion. “While these theories are not mutually exclusive and while the different mechanisms are important at particular stages, they may not be sufficient because they do not make practices a central focus or let them carry the major causal and constitutive weight in the explanation” (196). “…security communities…spread by the co-evolution of background knowledge and subjectivities of self-restraint. The combined effect of communities of practice and the institutionalization of self-restraint accounts both for the social construction of rationality, in the sense that cooperative-security practices related to self-restraint help constitute dependable expectations of peaceful change, and for normative evolution, in the sense that self-restraint brings about security through cooperation” (196).

Illustrates this argument by exploring NATO expansion.

“Practices are knowledge-constituted, meaningful patterns of socially recognized activity embedded in communities, routines and organizations that structure experience” (198).

Communities of practice are the nexus between agent and structure. These communities shape the identities of their members, facilitate learning, socialize, etc. They grow and change through “cognitive evolution”. Some communities of practice can become self-restraint communities. Violence becomes unnecessary amongst these communities for resolving conflict.

Much on NATO and how NATO is an example of communities of practice.