Abstract

While ‘regions’ continue to generate discussion in fields such as international relations as well as playing a role in practical politics, political philosophers have shown little interest. Common theories of political philosophy fail to include reasoning about regions normatively, despite collaborations amongst neighbouring states being key to pool resources and build capacity, and raise several questions pertaining to sovereignty. I set out to formulate pro tanto regional obligations, understood as valid claims of states for assistance from other states in their region. The article is limited to the special conditions of large-scale disasters which transform the normative expectations between democracies.