Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: List of Figures and Table - Acknowledgments - List of Abbreviations - 1. Introduction - 2. Habitual Dispositions and Conflict Management - 3. Uncovering Meaning and Practice in Regional Diplomacy - 4. Practicing Peace in Southeast Asia - 5. Practicing Peace in South America - 6. Comparisons, Contributions, and Conclusions - References - Index

This book offers a comparative regional perspective on the conflictual long peace of Southeast Asia and South America. In South America, despite persistent territorial disputes and regime instability, war has been the exception rather than the rule since the 1940s. In Southeast Asia since the 1960s, war has largely eluded the region's states, despite territorial disputes and interstate rivalries that remain all but endemic. This book explores and accounts for these realities. It finds that regional interstate relations are shaped by particular habitual dispositions, discrete sets of processual and substantive qualities of relations understood and enacted largely as a matter of course by diplomatic communities of practice. Different habitual dispositions in each case shape conflict management and regionalism in important ways and lead to a tolerance of limited regional violence. The book expands on new developments in social international relations theory to develop a practice-oriented and interpretive account of regional relations, drawing on detailed interviews with regional practitioners. The book centers on exploring the existence of habitual dispositions in each case and tracing their role across crucial cases of regional conflict management, including the Southeast Asian response to the Preah Vihear dispute in 2011 and the South American response to the Cenepa conflict in 1995.