The Construction of International Friendship in South America

The question of international cooperation was first discussed by mainstream International Relations (IR) theories in the 1960s and 1970s with the emergence of neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism, and complex interdependence theory. However, the debate remained confined to the rationalist paradigm, with neorealism being one of the main interlocutors. Attempts to move beyond cooperation and to deal with stable peace, security communities, and interstate trust and friendship from a different paradigm have only been more recent developments, and today constitute a growing literature.1