‘Securitization’ revisited: theory and cases

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry Balzacq ◽  
Sarah Léonard ◽  
Jan Ruzicka
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Analytics Of Government ◽  
To Come ◽  
Initial Focus

Securitization theory seeks to explain the politics through which (1) the security character of public problems is established, (2) the social commitments resulting from the collective acceptance that a phenomenon is a threat are fixed and (3) the possibility of a particular policy is created. In the last decade, research on securitization has grown significantly. The aim of this article is to evaluate the achievements of securitization theory. First, its main concepts and premises are critically discussed. This article then proceeds to examine the empirical applications of securitization theory to a broad range of issues, as well as the theoretical implications of these studies. Finally, it discusses the main challenges faced by securitization scholars and puts forward strategies to overcome them. This article develops three inter-related arguments. First, notably thanks to empirical studies, securitization theory has significantly developed beyond its initial focus on the speech act. Second, as a result, the distinctiveness of securitization theory currently lies in its capacity to articulate a specific approach to security – influenced by the speech act – with an ‘analytics of government’, which emphasizes practices and processes. Third, securitization theory faces three types of challenges, related, respectively, to theory, method and methodology. The capacity of scholars to overcome those will strongly influence the extent to which securitization theory will be able to make significant contributions to the debates in Security Studies and International Relations in the years to come.

Paradigms of Cognition in Security Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Andrzej Glen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

The article outlines difficulties related to the paradigm of cognition in security sciences, which have been generalised by asking about the paradigm that allows to study security of various entities and to obtain progress of knowledge about this fragment of reality. Then, a set of paradigms typical for the social sciences, disciplines: political and administrative sciences, international relations theory sub-discipline: security studies and management and quality sciences were analysed and evaluated using a system of hypothetical and assertion-deductive methods. The subject, time and spatial context of security of entities, the subject scope of security sciences and the ontological approach to the understanding of beings in the reality of security of entities were outlined. The usefulness of analysed and evaluated paradigms in cognition of security was assessed in this context. Finally, a complementary paradigm of cognition in security sciences was proposed and its usefulness in relation to multi-paradigmatic cognition was demonstrated.

scholarly journals How to do things with silence: Rethinking the centrality of speech to the securitization framework

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 476-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Guillaume
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Way Of Thinking

This contribution offers the first steps in a novel conceptualization of how international relations and security studies can provide an analytics of silence. Starting with an analysis of a paradigmatic use of silence in the field, Lene Hansen’s ‘Little Mermaid’, the contribution shows the limitations and issues with an analytics that concentrates on the meaning behind silences. Silence as meaning is problematic because analytically what is offered solely is the overinvestment of the analyst’s ‘horizon of expectation’ upon a sign that is not generally meant to be one. Mobilizing a feminist reading of pornography as speech act, the contribution shows how silence may also be performative, in the sense that it does something to a specific logocentric order at the heart of our analysis of the international or security. The contribution finally offers a possible way of thinking about silence as doing rather than meaning and shows how this can be a possible analytical path to invert our analytics of the international and security from the perspective of the state/the powerful to that of the subaltern.

scholarly journals The Social Context in Coercive International Bargaining

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard J. Schoppa
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Side Payments ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Bargaining ◽  
Thomas Schelling

Although international relations scholarship emphasizing the role of social constructs such as norms and culture has established a beachhead in the area of security studies, it has yet to take on another bastion of the rational materialist approach: studies of coercive international bargaining. Scholarship in this area, ranging from the work of Thomas Schelling to James Fearon, has long argued that bargaining outcomes reflect the material costs and benefits faced by participants in negotiations. Participants can influence outcomes, these models assume, only through tactics such as credible threats and side payments that reshape the material context of negotiations.

scholarly journals Coercion by fear: Securitization of Iraq prior to the 2003 war

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-386
Author(s):  
Basar Baysal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
President Bush

The Iraq War was one of the most prominent events of the early 2000s. The prelude to the war halted the sense of optimism that captivated International Relations as a discipline after the end of the Cold War. The United States initiated this war following a lengthy securitization process. This study focuses on analyzing the securitization process in Iraq prior to the 2003 war. To that end, the article investigates the securitization process by asking, “How, within what context, and when did the securitization of Iraq take place?” For the study, 85 speeches made by President Bush are analyzed to examine how the president presented Iraq as an existential threat. The study also examines the kinds of arguments used by the Bush administration in securitizing Iraq. This study contributes to the literature on the 2003 Iraq War and security studies by applying Securitization Theory to the Iraq case by incorporating two essential contributions to the securitization analysis: context and audience(s).

scholarly journals Towards a genealogy of ‘society’ in International Relations

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENS BARTELSON
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Societal Context ◽  
To Come ◽  
Human Association ◽  
Early Phases

AbstractThe concept of society and its cognates have long been widely invoked in order to understand International Relations. Theories of international society distinguish between a society of states and a mere system of states, and theories of world society assume that the world constitutes a single social space. In order to come to terms with the social character of International Relations, constructivists of different stripes have invoked a societal context within which the construction of identities and norms takes place. As I shall argue in this article, these usages draw on conceptions of society that emerged during the early phases of modern sociology, and have then been projected onto alien historical and cultural contexts. In order to avoid the anachronism and Eurocentrism that invariably have resulted from these uncritical usages, I argue that academic International Relations should seek to accommodate those forms of human association that cannot be subsumed under a recognisably modern concept of society by incorporating insights from postcolonial sociology into its theoretical core.

Erewhon or Lilliput? A Critical View of the Problem

1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 404-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Predictive Power ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Military Force ◽  
General Reader ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come

The predictive power of the social sciences is poor. That of the science of international relations is particularly mediocre, since it deals with a type of social action—the conduct of foreign policy—that is pervaded by uncertainty and in which even the most carefully calculated actions partake of gambling. Therefore, to try to forecast the chances of “international military force” in general during the years to come would be an exercise in futility. There are, however, two tasks which a political scientist can begin to perform. One consists of making the necessary distinctions; they may appear tiresome to the general reader and trifling to the impatient reformer, but both those gentlemen ought to remember that the opposite of distinctions is confusion. The second task consists of examining what kinds of international forces appear to be compatible with the international system in which we live.

scholarly journals Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies ‘into’ the discipline of International Relations: Towards a vernacular turn

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Croft ◽  
Nick Vaughan-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mutual Interest ◽  
Fit For Purpose

The performance of International Relations (IR) scholarship – as in all scholarship – acts to close and police the boundaries of the discipline in ways that reflect power–knowledge relations. This has led to the development of two strands of work in ontological security studies in IR, which divide on questions of ontological choice and the nature of the deployment of the concept of dread. Neither strand is intellectually superior to the other and both are internally heterogeneous. That there are two strands, however, is the product of the performance of IR scholarship, and the two strands themselves perform distinct roles. One allows ontological security studies to engage with the ‘mainstream’ in IR; the other allows ‘international’ elements of ontological security to engage with the social sciences more generally. Ironically, both can be read as symptoms of the discipline’s issues with its own ontological (in)security. We reflect on these intellectual dynamics and their implications and prompt a new departure by connecting ontological security studies in IR with the emerging interdisciplinary fields of the ‘vernacular’ and ‘everyday’ via the mutual interest in biographical narratives of the self and the work that they do politically.

Fear no more: emotions and world politics

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (S1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROLAND BLEIKER ◽  
EMMA HUTCHISON
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Science Methods ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Social Science Methods ◽  
Political Perceptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific

AbstractAlthough emotions play a significant role in world politics they have so far received surprisingly little attention by International Relations scholars. Numerous authors have emphasised this shortcoming for several years now, but strangely there are still only very few systematic inquiries into emotions and even fewer related discussions on method. The article explains this gap by the fact that much of International Relations scholarship is conducted in the social sciences. Such inquiries can assess emotions up to a certain point, as illustrated by empirical studies on psychology and foreign policy and constructivist engagements with identity and community. But conventional social science methods cannot understand all aspects of phenomena as ephemeral as those of emotions. Doing so would involve conceptualising the influence of emotions even when and where it is not immediately apparent. The ensuing challenges are daunting, but at least some of them could be met by supplementing social scientific methods with modes of inquiry emanating from the humanities. By drawing on feminist and other interpretive approaches we advance three propositions that would facilitate such cross-disciplinary inquiries. (1) The need to accept that research can be insightful and valid even if it engages unobservable phenomena, and even if the results of such inquiries can neither be measured nor validated empirically; (2) The importance of examining processes of representation, such as visual depictions of emotions and the manner in which they shape political perceptions and dynamics; (3) A willingness to consider alternative forms of insight, most notably those stemming from aesthetics sources, which, we argue, are particularly suited to capturing emotions. Taken together, these propositions highlight the need for a sustained global communication across different fields of knowledge.

A Moment to Come Together: Personal Reflections on Trayvon Martin

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-137
Author(s):  
Roxanne Christensen ◽  
LaSonia Barlow ◽  
Demetrius E. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Professional Psychology ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
Professional Responses ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Personal Reflections ◽  
Unique Individual

Three personal reflections provided by doctoral students of the Michigan School of Professional Psychology (Farmington Hills, Michigan) address identification of individual perspectives on the tragic events surrounding Trayvon Martin’s death. The historical ramifications of a culture-in-context and the way civil rights, racism, and community traumatization play a role in the social construction of criminals are explored. A justice orientation is applied to both the community and the individual via internal reflection about the unique individual and collective roles social justice plays in the outcome of these events. Finally, the personal and professional responses of a practitioner who is also a mother of minority young men brings to light the need to educate against stereotypes, assist a community to heal, and simultaneously manage the direct effects of such events on youth in society. In all three essays, common themes of community and growth are addressed from varying viewpoints. As worlds collided, a historical division has given rise to a present unity geared toward breaking the cycle of violence and trauma. The authors plead that if there is no other service in the name of this tragedy, let it at least contribute to the actualization of a society toward growth and healing.

Cinematic Search for Identity in the Shade of Turkey’s 1960 Coup: The Social Realism Debate and The Hope

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-168
Author(s):  
Celal Hayir ◽  
Ayman Kole
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
New Era ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Turkish Cinema ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time ◽  
Democratic Constitution ◽  
Realism Debate

When the Turkish army seized power on May 27th, 1960, a new democratic constitution was carried into effect. The positive atmosphere created by the 1961 constitution quickly showed its effects on political balances in the parliament and it became difficult for one single party to come into power, which strengthened the multi-party-system. The freedom initiative created by 1961’s constitution had a direct effect on the rise of public opposition. Filmmakers, who generally steered clear from the discussion of social problems and conflicts until 1960, started to produce movies questioning conflicts in political, social and cultural life for the first time and discussions about the “Social Realism” movement in the ensuing films arose in cinematic circles in Turkey. At the same time, the “regional managers” emerged, and movies in line with demands of this system started to be produced. The Hope (Umut), produced by Yılmaz Güney in 1970, rang in a new era in Turkish cinema, because it differed from other movies previously made in its cinematic language, expression, and use of actors and settings. The aim of this study is to mention the reality discussions in Turkish cinema and outline the political facts which initiated this expression leading up to the film Umut (The Hope, directed by Yılmaz Güney), which has been accepted as the most distinctive social realist movie in Turkey. 

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