Why is Europe a Peaceful Region? A New Framework for Analysis

Although the pacification of Europe is a process that was set into motion in early 1950s, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that sparked a flurry of publications that aimed to describe and explain how such an achievement was possible. After this initial theoretical enthusiasm, the current decrease in the research output is proportionally inverse to the growth of integrative linkages in the European Union. This article argues that the old epistemological tools to understand the pacification of Europe are becoming obsolete as they are embedded in a regional context that no longer exists. In order to overcome this shortcoming, this article introduces a new interpretative framework predicated upon the idea of regional peace and security clusters (RPSCs). In the paper the European RPSC is assessed in a comprehensive and historical way.