Paul Roe

Securitization and Minority Rights: Conditions of Desecuritization

This article assesses the possibilities for applying the concept of desecuritization to the area of minority rights. The major conclusion is that a Jef Huysmans-type deconstructivist strategy, while perhaps conducive to the desecuritization of the individual migrant, is not possible in the case of the collective minority; indeed, the desecuritization of minority rights may well be ‘logically impossible’ in certain cases. The article seeks to show how, in seeking to maintain their collective identity, minorities are necessarily imbued with a certain ‘societal security-ness’, which, if removed, results in the death of the minority as a distinctive group. The article therefore suggests that ‘managing’ securitized issues might be more profitable than trying to ‘transform’ them.

Is securitization a ‘negative’ concept? Revisiting the normative debate over normal versus extraordinary politics:

The purpose of this article is to revisit the normatively defined debate over securitization as a negative conception. Claudia Aradau’s work has largely served to define this debate, with Aradau arguing that securitization/security is an inherently negative conception inasmuch as its mode of extraordinary politics necessarily both institutionalizes fast-track decisionmaking (‘process’) and produces categories of enemy others (‘outcome’). In making evident the main assumptions therein, my argument is that this debate has taken place not only in terms of a specific – and indeed contestable – rendering of the securitization concept, but also in terms of a more general acceptance of an essentialized (Schmittian) logic of security. The article thus seeks ultimately to demonstrate the value of de-essentializing the practices evoked by speaking security and to show how this enables meaningful engagement with other emerging conceptions of ‘positive’ security.

The ‘value’ of positive security

This article seeks to revise the concept of Positive Security. Although largely neglected by the existing Security Studies literature, Bill McSweeney’s work otherwise represents a significant contribution in this regard. The author argues, however, that although of great value, McSweeney’s positive security formulation is unduly restrictive in terms of the referent object and to the sectors of security it is applicable to, and cannot unproblematically be equated to ontological security, as McSweeney’s work tends to do. Employing Graham Smith’s notion of a ‘generic’ security conception, and placing positive security more firmly in the peace studies tradition, the author suggests rather that a revised concept be predicated on the defence of ‘just’ values.

Reconstructing Identities or Managing Minorities? Desecuritizing Minority Rights: A Response to Jutila

I WAS VERY PLEASED to see Matti Jutila’s reply to my original article from 2004 concerning the desecuritization of minority rights.1 Throughout, Jutila raises some important contentions and, fundamentally, suggests a further and potentially valuable mode of desecuritization: what he refers to as a ‘reconstructivist’ strategy. Nonetheless, a number of the contentions made by Jutila in his piece are slightly misplaced. For the most part, this is owing to some confusion as to whether I equate minority rights with societal security or, as I believe Jutila sees it, with societal insecurity. This is important, as it causes the two of us to proceed according to sometimes rather different notions of the politics of securitization. Moreover, at times Jutila agrees with me more than he may think. He agrees that a Huysmanstype ‘deconstructivist’ strategy cannot be employed in this context, as likewise he agrees that the provision of minority rights is, more than anything else, predicated on the maintenance of distinct cultures. Moreover, Jutila’s reconstructivist strategy, although conceived as an alternative to my own proposed ‘managing’ of minority rights, can arguably be seen as consequent to successful management, not instead of it. That said, I fully agree that further thinking in accordance with Jutila’s approach is certainly warranted. In the main body of this article, I proceed in the following way: first, I deal with Jutila’s main contentions – the lack of clarity between ‘normal’ and ‘emergency’ politics, the reification of society and societal identity, and the charge that issues do not determine securitization. Second, out of a brief rearticulation as to the logical impossibility of utilizing a deconstructivist strategy, I then tackle Jutila’s conception of reconstruction. Third, and following on directly from this, I make a few suggestions as to how a reconstructive strategy may proceed slightly differently. Rejoinder

Misperception and ethnic conflict: Transylvania's societal security dilemma

This article proposes that instances of ethnic violence can profitably be viewed through the concept of a societal security dilemma. It begins by arguing that the explanatory value of the security dilemma might be enhanced by shifting the focus of the concept away from its traditional concern with state sovereignty to an emphasis on ethnic identity instead. This is proposed through combining the security dilemma with the Copenhagen Schools notion of societal security. In this way, the article claims that the resultant societal security dilemma is able to capture certain dynamics between ethnic groups that its traditional variant necessarily misses. The article then goes on to show how ethnic violence between Hungarians and Romanians in the Transylvanian city of Tirgu Mures can be partly explained by the societal security dilemma concept. It argues that many Romanians were mobilized on the basis of the misperception that Hungarian societal security requirements necessarily threatened their own identity. The article concludes that misperceptions on both sides were enabled by the weakness of the Romanian State; that insufficient mechanisms existed for the clear, unambiguous signalling of intentions.

Which Security Dilemma? Mitigating Ethnic Conflict: The Case of Croatia

SINCE THE BEGINNING of the cold war, the concept of the security dilemma has been fundamental to International Relations (IR) literature. Although often contested, the basic nature of the concept, according to Barry Posen, rests upon the notion that the actions of a state to enhance its own security produce reactions that, in the end, can make it less secure. This action-reaction dynamic is predicated on an “inadvertency” of the first state’s behavior. Hence, Robert Jervis remark that “most of the ways in which a country seeks to increase its security have the unintended effect of decreasing the security of others.” “Unintended consequences” implies that decision makers find themselves in security predicaments that are not of their own making. In this regard, Charles Glaser identifies the concept as “the key to understanding how in an anarchical international system states with fundamentally compatible goals still end up in competition and war. The traditional (interstate) formulation of the security dilemma has been employed to explain the outbreak of the First World War as well as the superpower competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. Since the end of the cold war, however, the concept has departed from its traditional inter-state use in seeking to explain conflict at the intra-state level. Now the security dilemma has arguably become the favored tool for realist/neorealist approaches to the questions surrounding ethnic violence and war. Indeed,

Gender and 'Positive' Security

Focusing predominantly on the works of Ken Booth and Bill McSweeney, this article explores how the normative commitment of the two writers to the individual referent and to a set of values constitutive of human agency is reflective of a more ‘positive’ security. In particular, the article focuses on how in their formulation of values, both Booth (security as emancipation) and McSweeney (ontological security) draw on gender and feminist approaches and, importantly, how critical feminist scholarship can profitably be used to reconcile concentration on both the global and the local, thus providing greater conceptual clarity and empirical grounding to the positive security project.