Ole Wæver

Macrosecuritisation and security constellations: reconsidering scale in securitisation theory

The Copenhagen schools theory of securitisation has mainly focused on the middle level of world politics in which collective political units, often but not always states, construct relationships of amity or enmity with each other. Its argument has been that this middle level would be the most active both because of the facility with which collective political units can construct each other as threats, and the difficulty of finding audiences for the kinds of securitisations and referent objects that are available at the individual and system levels. This article focuses on the gap between the middle and system levels, and asks whether there is not more of substance there than the existing Copenhagen school analyses suggests. It revisits the under-discussed concept of security constellations in Copenhagen school theory, and adds to it the idea of macrosecuritisations as ways of getting an analytical grip on what happens above the middle level. It then suggests how applying these concepts adds not just a missing sense of scale, but also a useful insight into underlying political logics, to how one understands the patterns of securitisation historical, and contemporary.

Politics, security, theory

This article outlines three ways of analysing the ‘politics of securitization’, emphasizing an often-overlooked form of politics practised through theory design. The structure and nature of a theory can have systematic political implications. Analysis of this ‘politics of securitization’ is distinct from both the study of political practices of securitization and explorations of competing concepts of politics among security theories. It means tracking what kinds of analysis the theory can produce and whether such analysis systematically impacts real-life political struggles. Securitization theory is found to ‘act politically’ through three structural features that systematically shape the political effects of using the theory. The article further discusses – on the basis of the preceding articles in the special issue – three emerging debates around securitization theory: ethics, transformations and post-Western analyses. The article finally suggests one possible way forward for securitization theory: a route built on first clarifying its concept of theory, then specifying more clearly the place of political theory and causal mechanisms in different parts of the analysis. The politics of securitization accordingly becomes sharpened. Instead of deducing the political quality of the theory from various empirical statements by its proponents, this approach zooms in on the very core of the theory: how does it structurally condition work done with it in systematically political ways?

The Changing Agenda of Societal Security

Security dynamics have some shared features irrespective of their referent object or ‘sector’, and ‘different kinds of security’ often interact so that one actor’s fear for military security triggers countermeasures that make another state worried about its economic security, which in turn triggers countermeasures that let a security dilemma loose operating across ‘kinds’ of security. For these two reasons, it is useful to study economic security, military security, political security, environmental security and other forms together, side by side. But there are also significant differences between, for instance security against military threats and against migration (when viewed as a threat), or between economic security and environmental security. This makes it useful to look systematically at the security of what might be called ‘sectors’ (economic, military, etc) and draw out the particularities regarding what are the main objects defended, who typically acts in this sector, and not least, what dynamics of security and insecurity are characteristic of this sector.

The theory act: Responsibility and exactitude as seen from securitization

[Speech act theorist J.L.] Austin gives us insights into the capacity of mankind for creating shared environments through language, not as a matter of transmitting anything from one head to the other or of causally influencing each other’s mental states, but as a matter of establishing situations and roles and attributing local statuses to participants. Herein lies the power of human civilization as opposed to ‘state of nature’; the power which alone makes it possible, on occasion, for someone weak and without weapons to be listened to and even obeyed, the power which makes it possible to conceive and pursue things such as social equality or solidarity and equal opportunities for genders, all of which would not be conceivable in a ‘state of nature’ ethology. To acknowledge in theory and investigate such power is at the same time to foster it and defend it against the risk of regression into forms of social life based on brute force and coercion.1

Copenhagen–Cairo on a roundtrip: A security theory meets the revolution

Although securitization theory has been applied worldwide, it has been accused of having only limited appositeness to the non-Western world. When the Centre for Advanced Security Theory began a collaboration with the Danish–Egyptian Dialogue Institute and the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo in 2010, securitization theory was challenged on two levels: both through its employment to analyse and act politically in a Middle Eastern context, and through the attempt to do so during and after the Arab Spring, when the entire Egyptian security sector was being re-evaluated. These unique circumstances prompted reflections on the use of non-traditional and traditional security concepts, on how the Egyptian revolution could be understood through securitization theory, and on what the experiences of this project might mean for further theory development. This article discusses these points in the light of the Danish delegation’s experiences.

Towards a Political Sociology of Security Studies

Endowed now with a convincing history of itself, security studies needs a sociological analysis of its workings. The ‘post-Kuhnian sociology of science’ in the Buzan & Hansen (2009) volume is too sociologically thin and offers a disembodied history of ideas, not a sociology of flesh-and-blood scholars. This article suggests how a sociology of security studies can be strung between the two poles of a sociology of international relations and theories of expertise. Special attention must be paid to the role of ‘security theory’ for policy analysis, as well as the variation over time and geographically in the institutional chains connecting academe and policy, especially the changing nature of think-tanks. The centre of analysis should be networks of scholars manoeuvring these cross-pressures and making research and other career choices. Through its focus on form, this approach can explain dominant styles of scholarship in the USA and Europe as ways of meeting contrasting demands from academic institutions and policy relevance. The article ends with an assessment of the prospects for security studies.

What kind of theory – if any – is securitization?

One of the great appeals of securitization theory, and a major reason for its success, has been its usefulness as a tool for empirical research: an analytic framework capable of practical application. However, the development of securitization has raised several criticisms, the most important of which concern the nature of securitization theory. In fact, the appropriate methods, the research puzzles and type of evidence accepted all derive to a great extent from the kind of theory scholars bequeath their faith to. This Forum addresses the following questions: What type of theory (if any) is securitization? How many kinds of theories of securitization do we have? How can the differences between theories of securitization be drawn? What is the status of exceptionalism within securitization theories, and what difference does it make to their understandings of the relationship between security and politics? Finally, if securitization commands that leaders act now before it is too late, what status has temporality therein? Is temporality enabling securitization to absorb risk analysis or does it expose its inherent theoretical limits?

Regions and Powers: Security complexes: a theory of regional security

This chapter presents an operational version of regional security complex theory (RSCT). RSCT provides a conceptual frame that captures the emergent new structure of international security (1 + 4 + regions): hence our title Regions and Powers . As we have shown, RSCT has a historical dimension that enables current developments to be linked to both Cold War and pre-Cold War patterns in the international system. It contains a model of regional security that enables one to analyse, and up to a point anticipate and explain, developments within any region. RSCT provides a more nuanced view than strongly simplifying ideas such as unipolarity or centre–periphery. But it remains complementary with them, and provides considerable theoretical leverage of its own. In an anarchically structured international system of sufficient size and geographical complexity, RSCs will be an expected substructure, and one that has important mediating effects on how the global dynamics of great power polarity actually operate across the international system. This makes the theory interoperable with most mainstream realist, and much liberal-based, thinking about the international system. In another sense, the theory has constructivist roots, because the formation and operation of RSCs hinge on patterns of amity and enmity among the units in the system, which makes regional systems dependent on the actions and interpretations of actors, not just a mechanical reflection of the distribution of power. Wendt (1999: 257, 301), for example, makes the connection explicit, pointing out that his social theory can be applied to regional security complexes.

Regions and Powers: Reflections on conceptualising international security

This chapter reflects on a number of points about regional security complex theory (RSCT) and its application. The first section reconsiders the validity of the two starting assumptions about security that structured this study: territoriality and the regional level. The next section looks at the comparative element of RSCT, drawing together a series of questions that can be asked about all regions, and taking a first cut at some conclusions based on the present exercise. The third section sums up what we think are the advantages of the regionalist approach to security. Finally, the last section sets out some of the problems that arose for us in applying RSCT. Starting assumptions: territoriality and the regional level of security analysis When we began this project in 1998, the two starting assumptions that structured it were that territoriality still remained a central feature of international security dynamics, and that the regional level was both generally necessary to any coherent understanding of international security and increasingly important in the post-Cold War world. The logic linking these assumptions was that processes of securitisation would be strongly influenced by the fact that most types of threat travel more easily over short distances than long ones, and that this logic remained strong despite the numerous and well-rehearsed advances in technology that have been shrinking the planet for several centuries. How well have these assumptions stood up, both in general and under the specific challenge of international terrorism manifested since 11 September?

Regions and Powers: Levels: distinguishing the regional from the global

The how and why of distinguishing the regional from the global level Any coherent regionalist approach to security must start by drawing clear distinctions between what constitutes the regional level and what constitutes the levels on either side of it. Lake and Morgan (1997c) draw the distinction between regional and global, but then use definitions of region that effectively conflate these two levels. The fact that the regionalist approach features a distinct level of analysis located between the global and the local is what gives RSCT its analytical power. Distinguishing the regional from the unit level is not usually controversial. Units (of whatever kind) must have a fairly high degree of independent actor quality. Regions, almost however defined, must be composed of geographically clustered sets of such units, and these clusters must be embedded in a larger system, which has a structure of its own. Regions have analytical, and even ontological, standing, but they do not have actor quality. Only exceptionally does this distinction become problematic, as for example in the case of the European Union (see ch. 11). Mostly, the differentiation of units and regions is fairly straightforward. Distinguishing the regional from the global is less straightforward. The easy part is that a region must obviously be less than the whole, and usually much less. The tricky bit is actually specifying what falls on which side of the boundary.