Occasional Paper #18:OP:3 
by Raimo Väyrynen

Väyrynen explores the possibility that a security community, both as an institution and societal practice, can contribute significantly to stable peace. Conventional research on military alliances and other security organizations has paid little attention to security communities despite the fact that the concept has existed at least for half a century. This failure can be, in part, explained by the fact that these theories have either rejected the concept of identity or considered it too "soft" for a hard-nosed analysis of security threats and remedies against them. The existence of a durable security community requires that it embodies both objective and subjective elements of security which together constitute a necessary precondition for such a community. Väyrynen examines how the material and societal elements of security meet in the concept of trust, which has inter-subjective and institutional foundations, but which at the same time can be linked with essential factors, such as economic interdependence and military confidence.

   

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