Regional security complex theory

Regional security complex theory (RSCT) is a theory of international relations developed by Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver and advanced in their 2003 work Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security. Buzan and Wæver are perhaps best known as the key figures behind the influential Copenhagen School of security studies, in which the main principle is examining security as a social construct (see also securitization and constructivism).

RSCT posits that international security should be examined from a regional perspective, and that relations between states (and other actors) exhibit regular, geographically clustered patterns. Regional security complex is the term coined by Buzan and Wæver to describe such structures.