| Summary/Abstract |
This article focuses on a category of states, referred to as weak, proven to evade entrenched international relations theoretical assumptions relating to sovereignty and government interests. It renounces these premises and builds on the argument that state weakness generates a peculiar security predicament that shapes governments’ internal agenda. It focuses on Migdal’s (1988) findings of a regime security-centered mindset shared by weak states’ leaders and asks the following: does this common mindset generate a common approach to regional cooperation? It answers this question by inferring a set of strategies toward external cooperation and proceeds by testing their empirical validity in relation to three of the most integrated regional organizations in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the American continent.
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