Which region? The politics of the UN Security Council P5 in international security crises

Stephen Aris, Aglaya Snetkov, Andreas Wenger

2016 - 2020

Funded by SNF

The role of regions in international politics is becoming increasingly important. However, this role is complicated by the vague and politically-sensitive nature of the concept of “region”. There are often contrasting views among key international actors about the who, what and where of a “region”, and who has the right to speak for which “region”. The outcome of this contestation over the regional often has important consequence for international politics.

This external pageprojectcall_made uses an inter-disciplinary IR-Geography framework to critically analyze the political implications of how regions are represented in international security crises. We investigate how the UN Security Council and key international actors (China, France, Russia, UK, US) have argued over the regional during the recent crises in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine, and ask what impact this has had on the international response to these crises.

Partners: Department of Geography and Environment, University of Geneva; Asia Division, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politi