Assessing regional security dialogue through the agent/structure lens: reflections on ACRS

Using insights from agent/structure dynamics, the authors highlight the interplay between social/ideational elements drawn from the international experience with arms control, and those that prevailed at the state/agent level, among participants in ACRS. At the agent level, they focus on Egypt and Israel, the major protagonists in the talks. Their analysis reveals implicit clashes that occurred among these different ideational dimensions, and their constraining impact on the ability of states to achieve agreement on cooperative security arrangements. They suggest that attention must be directed to these constraints in any attempt to reconvene the ACRS talks.