State Incoherence as Weakness, Instability and Failure

Abstract

Comprehensively understanding ‘security’ in the contemporary South Caucasus would require anyone to grasp the sub-state processes underlying the fragility of its constituent states. In the previous chapter, the notion of ‘discursive stability’ introduced this sub-state level into the discussion of amity and enmity in an RSCT context, something made possible by the complex, multi-level nature of the theory. RSCT certainly remains state-centred, but the theory does allow for more flexibility in including sub-state processes and non-state actors in its analyses of international security than its more mainstream ‘black-box’ rationalist ancestor, neo-realism. And one of the obvious advantages of opening that black box of statehood is the possibility of factoring in what is commonly called ‘state weakness’ and ‘state failure’ into integrated accounts of international and regional systems like the South Caucasus.