Aberystwyth Paris, en New 'Schools' in Security

8/2/2019 Aberystwyth Paris, en New 'Schools' in Security

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Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen

New 'Schools' in Security Theory

and their Origins between Core and Periphery

Ole Wver

Professor of International RelationsDepartment of Political Science - University of Copenhagen

Rosenborggade 15, DK-1130 Copenhagen K, DenmarkPhone: +45 3532 3431 Fax: +45 3532 3399

e-mail: [email protected]/people/faculty/~Waever_Ole.htm

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, March 17-20, 2004.

Panel: Geo-Cultural Epistemologies in IR: Thinking Security Differently

FD24 Friday 3:45 - 5:30 PM; Sponsor: Convention Theme

Abstract: Debates in security studies in the U.S. and Europe have drifted almostcompletely apart. In Europe it is common to present the theoretical landscape in termsof, say, critical security studies, the Copenhagen School, traditionalism and feminism.In the U.S. it is more common to see the major debate within security studies as beingthe one between offensive realism and defensive realism! Previously, almost alltheoretical inventions in IR were made in the U.S. Currently, distinct theories arewidely associated with places like Aberystwyth (Critical Security Studies), Paris(Bigo's Bourdieu-inspired work) and Copenhagen (securitization). The new Europeanapproaches differ not only from security studies in the US, they also stand apart frommost work done in other parts of the world. Are these theories peculiarly 'European'and if so, why? The paper aims at explaining the emergence of these Europeansecurity theories. The explanation draws partly on the political context in the differentregions, and partly on features of the intellectual fields, International Relations andSecurity Studies. The theories are also assessed briefly as to their relevance andusefulness. To what extent are they bound to local, European problems or relevant tothe issues that are addressed elsewhere and vice-versa for the theories that flourish inthe U.S. and the periphery respectively? Can they travel to the other parts of the worldin a helpful role?


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Recently, a number of theories or research programmes often called schools have emerged withinEuropean security studies. Although security studies is habitually seen as a sub-field withinInternational Relations (IR), these schools have not been sectorial manifestations of the maintheories as defined by the over-arching landscape or grand debates of the discipline at large. Norhave they generally been copied from the US. In a discipline (IR) and a sub-discipline/field (security

studies) used to American leadership, this sudden fertility of European soil has been a surprise. Thedebate within and among and across these schools has regularly been characterised as particularlyfruitful. As noted by amongst other Mike Williams, it is with some surprise that the discipline receivesnew impulses from security studies, a corner expected to represent the most reactionary and policyobsessed (of a generally reactionary and policy obsessed discipline):

over the past decade, the field of security studies has become one of the most dynamic andcontested areas in International Relations. In particular, it has become perhaps the primaryforum in which broadly social constructivist approaches have challenged traditional largelyRealist and nonRealist theories on their home turf, the are in which some of the most vibrantnew approaches to the analysis of international politics are being developed, and the realm inwhich some of the most engaged theoretical debates are taking place.1

This has largely been a European debate. Important contributions areincreasingly coming from both non-Western and American scholars, but theemergence of these distinct theories is widely associated with places likeAberystwyth (Critical Security Studies), Paris (Bigo's Bourdieu-inspired work)and Copenhagen (securitisation). Why in Aberystwyth, Paris and Copenhagen why not in Amman, Philadelphia or Calcutta?

Despite the above cited positive responses to these schools, the point of this paper is certainly not toassume that there is something inherently good or preferable about this particular family of theoriesand that therefore the causes found should be taken as guidance about what to do in order to emulatethis development. On the contrary, it is very likely that theoretical developments elsewhere are eithergenerally superior or locally more relevant. The intention is exactly to get a clearer sense of thecontext-boundness of these European theories and schools.

Are these theories peculiarly 'European' and if so, why? The paper aims at explaining the emergence ofthese European security theories. The explanation draws partly on the political context in differentregions, and partly on features of the intellectual fields, International Relations and Security Studies.The theories are also assessed briefly as to their relevance and usefulness. To what extent are they

bound to local, European problems or relevant to the issues that are addressed elsewhere [and vice-versa for the theories that flourish in the U.S. and the periphery respectively]? Can they travel to theother parts of the world in a helpful role?

1 Michael C. Williams, Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and World Politics, in International Studies Quarterly,47 (4), 511-531. For similar claims about the vitality and importance of these debates, see Johan Eriksson, Introduction inEriksson ed. Threat Politics: New perspectives on security, risk and crisis management, Aldershot: Ashgate 2001, pp. 1-18, especially p. 18 (note 1); Jef Huysmans, "Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a Security

Studies Agenda in Europe", European Journal of International Relations, 4:4 (1998) 479-506; Steve Smith, TheIncreasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Security in the Last Twenty Years in Stuart Croft & Terry Terriff(eds.) Critical Reflections on Security and Change, London: Frank Cass 2000, pp. 72-101.

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Security studies as a field or sub-discipline

The focus of the present paper is on security theory as a distinct phenomenon, defined as theorydevelopment for the use in security studies. Relatively little has been written on the history andevolution of security studies2, and the recent waves of sophisticated, methodologically self-reflectivewritings drawing on sociology of science and historiography have almost totally focused on the IR

discipline at large. There is less of established conventions about how to view the existing situation insecurity studies regarding main theories and almost nothing in terms of explanations for theirdevelopment. This paper will therefore be in relatively uncharted waters and it certainly should be seenas a highly preliminary attempt.

Security theory is often linked to IR theory, but correspondence is far from complete. For instance inthe 1970s when interdependence theory came close to being the dominant IR theory, it left relativelylimited marks on security studies. Therefore, parts of the discussion below will overlap withdiscussions about IR theory, but the defining criteria will throughout not be the discipline of IR butthose theories that are drawn upon in security studies. Much of this happens not in IR/political sciencedepartments, but in think tanks, foreign policy research institutes and similar places. Often such policyoriented research is relatively a-theoretical or draws on some common sense mix of theoreticalfragments, but to the extent that theory is in play, then what theories? Those theories are the empirical

material of this paper; the development of these theories is the dependent variable, and independentvariables will be sought in both internalist sociology of science inspired approaches and externalist

policy related patterns.

The trans-Atlantic split: two different debates

Seen in relation to the general discipline of international relations, the sub-field of security studiesexhibits an unusual degree of divergence between European and American theoretical developments.In most other fields, scholars on both sides conduct or at least are aware of the same debates, even

or exactly if these might be balanced very differently. One example is the grand debate in IRabout rationalism and constructivism, where clearly constructivists and reflectivists have an easiertime in Europe than in the US, and hard core rational choice isfarmore influential in the US than inEurope, but research communities on both sides of the Atlantic largely agree about the existence,importance and nature of this debate only the balance between its two sides differ. Similarly, withthe debate in European studies between liberal inter-governmentalism and multi-level governance,where LIG is more American and MLG more European, but almost all European studies scholars oneither side of the Atlantic knows about this debate and many relate more or less explicitly to it.However, within security studies most scholars on one side of the Atlantic would depict (and teach)the state of the discipline in terms of debates and studies that are not mentionedin a similar overviewon the other side and vice-versa. (Obviously, this does not mechanically and fully follow geographicalcriteria, but the trend is nevertheless clear.)

In Europe there is a vibrant debate over a number of competing schools in security studies: criticalsecurity studies, the Copenhagen school, radical post-modernists, feminists, Bourdieu-inspired

approaches, and more traditional, realist positions. Several of these are not known at all to themajority of American scholars. (In this case, Canada is more European than American and partlysimply itself with its own literature on human security3, and therefore the main contrast is not Europe

2 David Baldwin, Security Studies and the End of the Cold War, World Politics, vol 48, Oct 1995, pp. 117-141; KenBooth, Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist, in Krause and Williams eds. Critical Security Studies.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1997, pp. 83-120; Patrick M. Morgan, Liberalist and Realist Security Studiesat 2000: Two Decades of Progress?, in Stuart Croft & Terry Terriff (eds.) Critical Reflections on Security and Change ,London: Frank Cass 2000, pp. 39-71;Steve Smith, The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Securityin the Last Twenty Years in Stuart Croft & Terry Terriff (eds.) Critical Reflections on Security and Change, London:Frank Cass 2000, pp. 72-101; Steven E. Miller (2001): "International Security at Twenty-five: From One World to Another",International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1; Barry Buzan, Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study ofInternational Relations", Journal of Peace Research, 21(2), 1984, pp. 109-25. + Snyder + Freedman + Ken Booth,

Ethnocentrism book+ John Garnett, Strategic Studies and its Assumptions in John Baylis, Ken Booth, John Garnett andPhil Williams, Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Policies, London: Croom Helm 1975, pp. 3-21.3 C. Thomas and P. Wilkin (eds.) Globalizaton, Human Security, and the African Experience , London: Lynne Rienner

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vs. North America but Europe vs. the U.S.)

If you turn to the leading academic, American journals in security studies (or look at ph.d. theseswritten in the US), these debates register only very marginally.4The leading debate is instead likely to

be seen as the intra-realist debate between offensive and defensive realism5 (and other distinctionswithin realism) with numerous interventions refining the theoretical arguments and doing empirical

case studies usually through in-depth historical studies. Also there have been major debates overparticular hypotheses like the democratic peace6 and increasingly a debate that looks more like theEuropean debates: the meta-theoretical debate between constructivists and rationalists.7 However, thelatter is also the one that most clearly shows the differences, as it will be explained below.

1999; Astri Suhrke, Human Security and the Interests of States, Security Dialogue, vol. 30:3, September 1999, pp. 265-276; Simon Dalby, Geopolitical Change and Contemporary Security Studies: Contextualizing the Human SecurityAgenda, The University of British Columbia: Institute of International Relations, Working PaperNo. 30, April 2000; KantiBajpai, Human Security: Concept and Measurement, Kroc Institute Occasional Paper #19:OP:1, August 2000 (64pp);Edward Newman, Human Security and Constructivism, International Studies Perspectives, 2001:2, pp. 239-252;William Bain, The Tyranny of Benevolence? National Security, Human Security, and the Practice of Statecraft in GlobalSecurity , vol. 15:3, 2001, pp. 277-294; Roland Paris, Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?, InternationalSecurity , vol. 26:2, Fall 2001, pp. 87-102; Nicholas Thomas and William T. Tow, The Utility of Human Security:Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(2), June 2002, p. 177-192; Alex J. Bellamy andMatt McDonald, The Utility of Human Security: Which Humans? What Security? A Reply to Thomas & Tow, SecurityDialogue, vol. 33(3), September 2002, pp. 373-377; Thomas and Tow, Gaining Security by Trashing the State? A Replyto Bellamy & McDonald, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(3), September 2002, pp. 379-382. See also Canadas HumanSecurity Web Site: www.humansecurity.gc.ca , Human Security Network: www.humansecuritynetwork.org , theCommission on Human Security: http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/ and Harvards Program on Human Security:

www.cbrss.harvard.edu/hs/4 The divergence was maybe already signalled during the 1980s and early 1990s by the very different reception of BarryBuzansPeople States and Fear(1983, 1991). It never made a big impact in the US, while it became a cenral reference, astandard textbook and a modern classic not only in the UK, but generally in Europe (and Canada?).5 E.g. Sean Lynn-Jones & Steven Miller Preface, in Brown, Michael, Sean Lynn Jones, & Steven Miller (eds). 1995. ThePerils of Anarchy: Neo-realism and International Security . Cambridge: MIT Press 1995. Pp ix-xii; Jack Snyder,Myths ofEmpire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, Ithaca og London: Cornell University Press 1991; Zakaria [review-essay]; Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power - The Unusual Origins of America's World Role , Princeton, New Jersey:Princeton University Press 1998; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: W. W. Norton &Company 2001; Stephen G. Brooks, Dueling Realisms, International Organization , Vol. 51, No. 3, 1997, pp. 445-477;Randall Schweller, Neorealisms Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma, Security Studies, Spring, 5(3), 1996, pp. 90-121; Randall Schweller,Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitlers Strategy of World Conquest, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press 1998; Charles Glaser, The Security Dilemma Revisited; World Politics. October, 50 (1), 1997, pp. 171-201; Jeffrey Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited," International Security, vol. 25,

Winter 2000/01, pp. 128-61; Gideon Rose, Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy, World Politics, Vol. 51,1998, pp. 144-172; Sten Rynning og Stefano Guzzini (2001): Realism and Foreign Policy Analysis, Working Papers42/2001, Kbenhavn: Copenhagen Peace Research Institute: http://www.copri.dk/publications/WP/WP%202001/42-2001.pdf; Stephen M. Walt, The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition in Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner (eds.)Political Science: The State of the Discipline III, New York: W. W. Norton 2002.6 Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1993 + ref. to key debates inInternational Security and elsewhere.7 Peter J. Katzenstein, Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) The Cultureof National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press 1996, pp. 1-32; RonaldL. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, Norms, Identity and Culture in National Security in Katzenstein(ed.) The Culture, op.cit., pp. 33-75; Peter J. Katzenstein, Conclusion: National Security in a Changing World inKatzenstein (ed.) The Culture, op.cit., pp. 498-537; Michael Desch, "Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas inSecurity Studies," International Security, vol. 23, Summer 1998, pp. 141-70 + debate inInternational Security , vol. 24:1,Summer 1999, pp. 156-180; Ted Hopf, "The Promise of Constructivism in IR Theory." International Security, V.23,Summer 1998, pp. 171-200; Dale Copeland, "The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay,"

International Security, vol. 25, Fall 2000, pp. 187-212; Ido Oren, Is Culture Independent of National Security? HowAmericas National Security Concerns Shaped Political Culture Research, European Journal of International Relations,vol. 6:4, 2000, pp. 543-573.

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http://www.humansecurity.gc.ca/http://www.humansecuritynetwork.org/http://www.humansecuritynetwork.org/http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/http://www.cbrss.harvard.edu/hs/http://www.copri.dk/publications/WP/WP%202001/42-2001.pdfhttp://www.copri.dk/publications/WP/WP%202001/42-2001.pdfhttp://www.humansecurity.gc.ca/http://www.humansecuritynetwork.org/http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/http://www.cbrss.harvard.edu/hs/http://www.copri.dk/publications/WP/WP%202001/42-2001.pdfhttp://www.copri.dk/publications/WP/WP%202001/42-2001.pdf


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Schools of security theory in Europe

Traditionalism /

(common sense realism, policy realism

Critical Security Studies

Copenhagen School Sociological work by Didier Bigo and

colleagues + risk society

Radical post-modernists, feminists, et al

Schools of security theory in the US

Offensive realism

Defensive realism

other realisms (post-classical, etc etc)

Constructivists coming from IR ingeneral

Power and Institutions in International

Order(not really anymore the classical IRliberalism debate over the role of institutions ,

Possible avenues for explanation

Elsewhere, I have elaborated more complicated and extensive explanatory models for thedevelopments within IR theory in a particular region or country8. Others have made parallel argumentsor relevant criticisms of my model.9 Much can be said for or against various suggestions for a

complete model (and the Breitenbauch/Wivel one is probably the most consistent and comprehensive),but for the present purpose, I will simplify into an explanation from three factors:

Intellectual traditions; the dominance of e.g. positivism, historicism or other general orientations.

The organisation of the field (in this case: security studies). Generally defined in the model as thedelineation of different social sciences, notably the relationship between law, administration,sociology, history, the humanities and political science/international relations. In the present case,much of the focus will be on the relationship between universities, think tanks (strategic studies;foreign policy institutes), peace research and the public (including public intellectuals).

Practical usages: policy issues and the political agenda. This is not meant to re-import either thetraditional, semi-positivist view, that reality rests in itself and theories only mirror this, nor thegeneral IR externalist understanding of the discipline, according to which, the development of IR

can be understood as a reflection of the development in i.r. (real world international relations).According to the latter, world war I explained the raise of idealism and somehow the next worldwar II with equal necessity explained the victory of realism; icy cold war periods caused realismand neo-realism, while dtente led to interdependence and Keohane. I and Brian Schmidt haveexplained elsewhere why this kind of explanation does not hold. The interpretations andconclusions reached do not follow from events but can only be understood through thediscourse internal debates cf. the two world wars that cause opposite theoretical orientations.However, the kind ofissues a political community is faced with surely does influence the nature ofthe debate. Therefore, the formulation about practical usages: IR and (more so) security studiesare surely used(in any sense of the term) and it is important to have a sense of the challenges anddebates a community is preoccupied with in order to understand the nature of the debates andthereby the kinds of research that appear relevant in a given place and time.

First, however, a brief summary of these schools in Europe, before we turn to explanations:

Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen and elsewhere

This section is not meant to give an in-depth or innovative presentation and critical discussion of thetheories. They will be only briefly introduced and the choice of cities as metaphor justified

basically to the extent necessary for knowing what to explain, i.e. what is it that is characteristic of

8 'The Sociology of a Not so International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations', inInternational Organization , vol. 52:4, 1998, pp. 687-727, especially pp. 694-6.9 Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations , Albany NY:State University of New York Press 1998 [+ handbook chapter] ; Stefano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and

International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold, Routledge 1998; Anders Wivel and HenrikBreitenbauch, Understanding National IR Disciplines Outside the United States: Political Culture and the Construction ofInternatinoal Relations in Denmark, draft March 10, 2004, G. Holden several articles and papers; etc.

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these theories and the emergence of which therefore needs to be understood. To what extent thetheories are good, useful, scientifically satisfactory, progressive, etc, is a question for another orrather many other days.

Aberystwyth has been one of the most important sites for the development of so-called CriticalSecurity Studies.10 Among the three discussed, CSS is the school that has most clearly been a broad

movement emerging out of many sources and many places, in Europe and certainly beyond. In thiscase, the metaphor of a town is therefore more problematic, but especially for the emancipatory wingof CSS, the two main figures are located at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth Ken Booth andRichard Wyn Jones. The defining work of the school, the anthology Critical Security Studies, wasedited by two post-Canadians Keith Krause (Geneva) and Mike Williams (then Portland, Maine), butMike Williams moved to Aberystwyth in 1998. The name Welsh School has occasionally been usedabout this approach.11 CSS has had non-Western participants involved in the development of thetheory, and as we will see below (last part of the paper), it is probably the one of the three that mosteasily works in a non-Western context.

CSS argues, that we as researchers should avoid seeing the world through the eyes of the state asimplied by using the concept of national security as key category. The state is often the problem asmuch as the solution, and the aim of research has to be defined in relation to human beings, not an

institution. The best way to conceptualise security in a way that ties it in with people instead of thestate is to define it in terms ofemancipation.

By implication, the concept of security becomes used in a rather classical sense, but on a differentreferent object: it is about real threats, only the real-real ones against real people and not theallegedly real ones voiced by the state. In this respect, CSS sometimes comes to sound ratherobjectivist in its concept of threats and security, and its political agenda comes close to classicalcritical peace research of the 1970s Galtung-Senghaas brand that used to be strong in NorthernEurope (Scandinavia and Germany).

This is the part of CSS that thinks of the meaning of Critical in terms of capital C-capital T,Critical Theory, i.e. Frankfurt School, early Habermas inspired thinking with a drop of Gramsci andmaybe Kant. Others think of critical in a more inclusive sense where CT is only one possible format,

and CSS as a broad movement therefore includes also other forms of theory that is critical, even if it isnot Critical Theory, i.e. feminism, normative theory and post-structuralism. In practices, the majorityof these non CT ct writers are found somewhere on the IR continuum from constructivism to post-

structuralism, e.g. much work on the social construction of threats and self-other relations.12

CSS in its broad sense shows no clear boundary towards the Copenhagen School. In some sense, it isartificial to have Krause, Williams and Wver located in different schools 13, whereas the difference

10 Ken Booth, "Security and Emancipation", Review of International Studies, 17:4, (1991), pp.313-327; Keith Krause andMichael C. Williams (eds.) Critical Security Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1997; Keith Krause andMichael C. Williams, Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies: Politics and Methods, Mershon International StudiesReview, vol. 40, supplement 2 (1996), pp. 229-254; Keith Krause "Critical Theory and Security Studies: The ResearchProgramme of 'Critical Security Studies'", Cooperation and Conflict, 33:3 (1998), pp.298-333; Richard Wyn Jones,

Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner 1999; Bradley Klein, "Politics by Design. RemappingSecurity Landscapes", European Journal of International Relations, 4:3 (1998), pp.327-346; Bradley S. Klein, StrategicStudies and World Order: The Global Politics of Deterrence . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; LeneHansen, "A Case for Seduction? Evaluating the Poststructuralist Conceptualization of Security", Cooperation and Conflict,32:4 (1997), pp.369-97.11 Steve Smith, The Increasing Insecurity; op.cit.; Alex J. Bellamy, Humanitarian responsibilities and interventionistclaims in international society,Review of International Studies , vol. 29:3, 2003, pp. 321-40.12 Bradley S. Klein, Strategic Studies and World Order, Cambrdige Univesity Press 1994.; Simon Dalby, Creating theSecond Cold War, Londno: Pinter 1990; Bradely Klein, Politics by Design. Remapping Security Landscapes, European Journal of International Relations 4 (3) (1998), 327-346; David Campbell, Writing Security: United States ForeignPolicy and the Politics of Identity, University of Minnesota Press 1992 and not least the epilogue to the second, revisededition (1998, pp. 207-227); chapters in Krause/Williams by Dalby and Klein; articles by Jim George, etc etc etc.13 On a personal note, an element that I find particularly important and thought-provoking is one which RBJ Walker andMike Williams have in different ways contributed to: The traditional concept of security is not just a product of un-imaginative, positivist mainstream scholars with too close relationships to state policy. Adopting a materialist ontology and a

positivist epistemology was an early modern security strategy, or in a sense a strategy of de-securitisation: the narrowconcept of security meant to restrict the resort to violence and defence to only the state and only in relation to physical threatswhich was an important element of the order creating process of removing these instruments from diverse groups and

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between the approaches of Booth and Buzan is probably clear enough. Therefore, at the cost ofdownplaying in this context some of the most interesting cross-cutting writings, focus will whendiscussing schools be on the most distinct versions and therefore on the Welsh school in itsemancipatory format. Writers like Williams, Huysmans, Krause and Hansen are however important tokeep in the picture not least as representatives of the broader debate around and across these schools.

The so-called Copenhagen School14

in security studies is built around three main ideas: 1)securitisation, 2) sectors and 3) regional security complexes. In this brief presentation, I will focus onthe first, because securitisation is what defines most distinctly the school in a meta-theoretical sense.However, it is worth remembering the other key ideas not least because the tensions and interactions

between these three explain much of the dynamics in the development of the theory.15

Sectors refer to the distinction between political, economic, environmental, military and societalsecurity. The concept of security complexes points to the importance of the regional level in securityanalysis and suggests an analytical scheme for structuring analysis of how security concerns tietogether in a regional formation.16

individuals in the feudal order and from religious and identity referents in the religious and civil wars of the 16

th

and 17

th

Century. That is: to limit violence and establish peaceful order, it was imperative to narrow the security logic to theminimalist reference of state and war. Thus, the concept of security is not an isolated question and certainly not a purelyacademic one of post-positivist progress, but a thoroughly political question tied in with the whole modern political languageof state, sovereignty, community and identity. To widen or in other ways redefine the concept of security is therefore not aninnocent matter of simple conceptual improvement, but a political move not to be carried out light-heartedly but with fullawareness of the implications of unpacking the Westphalian parcel of political concepts, peace and order. Cf. R B J Walker,The Subject of Security, in Krause/Williams, pp. 61-82; Michael Williams, "Comment on the 'Copenhagen Controversy'",Review of International Studies, 24:3 (1998), pp.435-441; Michael C. Williams, "Security and the Politics of Identity",European Journal of International Relations , 4:2 (1998), pp. 204-225.14 The name Copenhagen School was coined by Bill McSweeney in a critical review essay which turned into an exchange:Bill McSweeney "Identity and security: Buzan and the Copenhagen school", in Review of International Studies 22:1 (1996),pp.81-94; Barry Buzan and Ole Wver "Slippery? contradictory? sociologically unstable? The Copenhagen school replies",in Review of International Studies 23:2 (1997), pp.143-52; Bill McSweeney "Durkheim and the Copenhagen school: aresponse to Buzan and Wver", inReview of International Studies 24:1 (1998), pp.137-140; Mike Williams "Comment on

the 'Copenhagen Controversy'", in Review of International Studies 24:3 (1998), pp.435-441; Bill McSweeney, Security,Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999.

The Copenhagen School is usually taken to refer first of all to the work done since 1985 by the EuropeanSecurity research group at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, notably its series of collective books: Egbert Jahn,Pierre Lemaitre, and Ole Wver Concepts of Security: Problems of Research on Non-Military Aspects, CopenhagenPapers no. 1, Copenhagen: Center for Peace and Conflict Research 1987; Ole Wver, Pierre Lemaitre and Elzbieta Tromer(eds.) European Polyphony: Perspectives beyond East-West Confrontation, London: Macmillan 1989; Barry Buzan,Morten Kelstrup, Pierre Lemaitre, Elzbieta Tromer, and Ole Wver The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios forthe Post-Cold War Era, London: Pinter Publisher 1990; Ole Wver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre,Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, London: Pinter Publichers 1993; Barry Buzan, Jaap deWilde, and Ole Wver, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner 1998; Buzan and Wver,Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security , Cambridge University Press 2003. The most thorough reviewof the school in this respect is Jef Huysmans "Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a SecurityStudies Agenda in Europe", in European Journal of International Relations 4:4 (1998), pp.479-506. For importantreflections on the origins and context for the emergence of the school, see also several chapters (and especially the editorsintroduction to) Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung (eds.) Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen PeaceResearch, Routledge 2004. Especially in Scandinavia but increasingly beyond, a lot of applications have been done, butalso many critical comments and revisions have been published. See Johan Eriksson, Observers or Advocates? On thePolitical Role of Security Analysts, i Cooperation and Conflict, 1999:3; Iver B. Neumann, "Identity and the Outbreak ofWar : Or Why the Copenhagen School of Security Studies Should Include the Idea of 'Violisation' in Its Framework ofAnalysis", International Journal of Peace Studies, 3:1 (January 1998), pp. 7-22; Hansen, Lene (2000) "The LittleMermaids Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School," Millennium, vol. 29, no. 2, pp.285-306; Albert, Mathias (1998): Security as Boundary Function: Changing Identities and 'Securitization' in WorldPolitics, International Journal of Peace Studies 3 (1): 23-46; Ceyhan, op cit.; Williams, Words, Images, op.cit.15 Sectors and regional security complexes stem from Barry Buzan altough the main reference now is to collectiveCopenhagen School books (Security, A New Framework from 1998 and Regions and Powers in 2003, respectively).Securitisation comes from Ole Wver but also here the main reference is now a collective book (Security: A NewFramework).16 The concept of regional security complex was introduced by Barry Buzan in People, States and Fear: The National

Security Problem in International Relations, Harvester Wheatsheaf 1983. The concept is at the centre of the most recent book from the project group in Copenhagen: Buzan & Wver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of InternationalSecurity , Cambridge University Press 2003.

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Part of the background for the Copenhagen School was the debate in politics and security studies inthe 1970s and especially 1980s over a wide versus a narrow concept of security. The everything

becomes security worry of tradtionalists, was met by the argument that with a clearer sense of whatmakes a security issue a security issue, it is possible to extend the net widely and look for security inall sectors and with all possible referent objects. It is necessary to be able to discriminate and separatesecurity issues from non-security. Only by having a clear sense of what is security, is it possible toopen up without being swept away.

The real functions of the term, the powers of the concept, are found where it is employed in political practice. Language users implicitly follow rules for what is seen as meaningful statements. Thisapproach does not entail conducting opinion polls and asking people what they think security means,nor asking philosophers what would be the most logically consistent definition, but analysing actuallinguistic practices to see what regulates discourse. What do practitioners do in talking security?

In security discourse, an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referentobject (traditionally, but not necessarily the state).17 The designation of the threat as existential

justifies the use of extraordinary measures to handle it. The invocation of security has been the key tolegitimising the use of force, and more generally opening the way for the state to mobilise or to takespecial power eg. using conscription, secrecy, and other means only legitimate when dealing with

security matters. Security is the result of a move that takes politics beyond the established rules ofthe game and frames the issue as above normal politics.

To register the act of something being securitised, the task is not to assess some objective threats thatreally endanger some object, rather it is to understand the processes of constructing a sharedunderstanding of what is to be considered and collectively responded to as a threat. The process ofsecuritisation is a speech act. It is not interesting as a sign referring to something more real: it is theutterance itself that is the act. By saying the words, something is done (like giving a promise, betting,naming a ship). It is by labelling something a security issue that it becomes one not that issues aresecurity issues in themselves and then afterwards possibly talked about in terms of security.18Thus theexact definition and criteria of securitisation is the intersubjective establishment of an existentialthreat with a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects.

A characteristic feature of the CS is its scepticism towards security. It has often anti-democratic andanti-creative implications. The usual critical strategy of widening security has a problem when itaccepts the underlying assumption of the mainstream approach that the more security the better andextends this to still more areas. Securitising environment, identity and religion subsumes these areasunder a problematic rationality. In contrast, the CS sees security as a negative, as a failure to deal withissues as normal politics. Ideally, politics should be able to unfold according to normal procedureswithout this extraordinary elevation of specific threats to a pre-political immediacy. De-securitisation is the optimal long-range option, since it means not to have issues phrased as threatsagainst which we have countermeasures but to move them out of this threat-defence sequence andinto the ordinary public sphere (or the economy, or letting religion be religion19, or what othermechanisms it is then left to). In a conflict resolution perspective, the way forward is often de-securitisation rather than the production of more security, cf. the case of European integration (the

Monnet method).20

17 Barry Buzan, Jaap de Wilde, and Ole Wver, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner,1998; Ole Wver, "Securitisation and Desecuritisation", in On Security, Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press 1995, pp. 46-86; Wver, Securitisation: Taking stock of a research programme in Security Studies,paper presented to PIPES, Chicago, February 2003.18 J L Austin,How to do things with words, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1975 (1962); John R.Searle (Speech Acts: ...); Jrgen Habermas (Universal Pragmatics ...); Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc ....; Judith Butler,Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, Routledge 1997; B. Honig, Declarations of independence: Arendt andDerrida on the problem of founding a republic, American Political Science Review, vol. 85:1, 1991, pp. 97-113; JohnForrester, The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida , Cambridge University Press 1990, especially ch.7. Pierre Bourdieu, 19 Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Ole Wver, In Defence of Religion: Sacred Referent Objects for Securitization",Millennium: Journal of International Studies , vol.29 no. 3, 2000, 705-739.20 Ole Wver, Inscurit, Identit : une dialectique sans fin in Entre Union et Nations: Ltat en Europe , ed. by Anne-Marie Le Gloannec, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po 1998, pp. 88-137. (English version as Identity and Insecurity Unlimitedas chapter 10 in Wver, Concepts of Security, University of Copenhagen 1997.) On the question of security dilemmas andsecurity systems in the societal sector, see also Wver, Identity, Integration and Security: Solving the Sovereignty Puzzle in

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Paris has been the main site of a distinct theoretical development, mostly inspired by Bourdieu andother sociologists, with a dose of Foucault and a thorough commitment to detailed, empiricalinvestigations of actual practices by various agencies practices that often reveal patterns and

processes different from those one find by studying official discourse. Didier Bigo is the main figurein this development and his journal Cultures & Conflits has published a number of important worksin relation to this research programme.21 Also Jef Huysmans who have written extensively on the

different new schools have clarified and elaborated important assumptions and implications of theParis approach.22

Empirically, Bigo has amongst other things shown how internal and external security merge asagencies compete for the gradually de-territorialised tasks of traditional police, military and customs.Also they jointly produce a new threat image by constantly connecting immigration, organised crimeand terror. In-security is largely a product of security discourses and security policy. Bigo starts from aconception of a field and its actors and ask what they do. If done simplistically, the actor-basedapproach could easily become something close to conspiracy theory. But by now this work hasevolved into a very elaborate and unusually well documented mapping of practices notably also at themicro level by the various agencies involved on the security field. An important advantage of thisapproach is that it better than others includes routine practices and even deviation from official policy,

i.e. it is less oriented to discourse and more to all practices of agencies. It is obviously a quitedemanding task, if you have to penetrate these various agencies and agents from police and otherbureaucracies to private security companies and their more or less hidden, transnational networks,but it has the great advantage of being able to keep up with a society increasingly characterised byprofessionalisation and technical rationalisation, where specific social positions are privileged inrelation to doing security.

Other participants to this debate are notably traditionalists to the one side and hard-core post-modernists and feminists to the other. By hard-core post-modernists, I mean those who mostactively criticise security as such. By linking more directly to Nietzsche and Heidegger, they questionwhy at all we are concerned about security. Only the timid and unambitious strive for security betteris to live interestingly and less predictably. Also the point by Derrida and others about the typicallymodern longing for fixity and predictability can be used here. Better would be to face the Other and

what is truly different as an exciting challenge.23

E.U. Studies, inJournal of International Affairs , vol. 48:2, Winter 1995, pp. 389-431, and European Security Identitiesin Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 34:1, March 1996, pp. 103-32. See also: Paul Roe, "The Intrastate SecurityDilemma: Ethnic Conflict as a 'Tragedy'", Journal of Peace Research, vol. 36:2, 1999, s. 183-202; Paul Roe,Misperception and ethnic conflict: Transylvanias societal security dilemma, Review of International Studies, vol. 28:1,2002, pp. 57-74; Pierre Hassner, Beyond Nationalism and Internationalism, Survival, 35:2 (1993); Gidon Gottlieb,Nations without States, Foreign Affairs, 73:3 (1994); Ted Gurr, Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and theChanging World System, International Studies Quarterly, 38:3 (1994); Kristian Gerner, From the Black Sea to theAdriatic: Ethnicity, Territoriality and International Security, Security Dialogue, 24:1 (1993); Roxanne Lynn Doty,Immigration and National Identity: constructing the nation, Review of International Studies , 22:3 (1996) 235-55.21 Didier Bigo, Polices en rsaux, lexprience europenne, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po 1996; Bigo, LEurope de lascurit intrieure: penser autrement la scurit, in Anne-Marie Le Gloannec (ed.) Entre Union et Nations, Paris:Presses dela Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques 1998, pp. 55-90; Bigo, "Security(s): Internal and External, the mbius

ribbon", paper presented at the annual convention of ISA, Toronto March 199? (is published, but where?), Bigo, Securityand Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease, Alternatives, vol. 27: supplement, Feb. 2002, pp.63-92; Bigo, When two become one: internal and external securitisations in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams(eds.) International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration, London: Routledge 2000, pp. 171-204;Bigo, Didier (2002) To Reassure and Protect, After September 11 on web-page by the Social Science Research Councilafter September 11, http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/bigo.htm; Ayse Ceyhan, Analyser la scurit: Dillon, Waever,Williams et les autres, in Culture et Conflits no. 31-32, Automne-hiver 1998; Ayse Ceyhan and Anastassia Tsoukala, TheSecuritization of Migration in Western Societies: Ambivalent Discourses and Policies in Alternatives, vol. 27: supplement,Feb. 2002, pp. 21-40; Huysmans, Defining Social Constructivism, op.cit.; Claudia Aradau, Migration: The Spiral of(In)Security, Rubikon e-journal, March 2001, http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/claudia1.htm; Claudia Aradau,Beyond Good and Evil: Ethics and Securitization /Desecuritization Techniques, Rubikon e-journal, Dec 2001:http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/claudia2.htm.22 Jef Huysmans, in Cultures et Conflits + Defining Social Constructivism +

23 James Der Derian, The Value of Security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard i Ronnie D. Lipschutz, ed. On

Security, New York: Columbia University Press 1995, pp. 24-45; Michael Dillon,Politics of Security: Towards a PoliticalPhilosophy of Continental Thought, London: Routledge 1996; Costas Constantinou, Poetics of Security, Alternatives,vol. 25:3, 2000, pp. 287-306; Anthony Burke, Aporias of Security, Alternatives, vol. 27:1 (2002), pp. 1-27; Andreas

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On the one hand, it is quite easy to ridicule this in the institutional setting of security studies, becauseis obviously appears a rather academic approach. Try to tell policy makers: September 11?Terrorism? How exciting! You should take this as an interesting chance to develop and change andexperience difference. Not very promising. On the other hand, exactly the post-911 debate shows therelevance of this radical position, because ultimately an inescapable question in relation to terror is towhat extent we can learn to live with a very unwelcome danger like terror. Any strategy for erasing the

threat of terrorism and therefore any attempt to securitise terrorism as a totally unacceptable riskwhich leaves us in mortal and intolerable danger until removed is deemed to drive us all into avicious circle of increased insecurity and counter-productive security strategies. Terror can only bedealt with if not totalised as a threat, and thus ultimately any promising strategy has to have anelement of learning to tame ones own worries. Ironically, this approach therefore has some immediate

policy relevance, but at least in the short term, it has usually (maybe with the idiosyncratic exceptionof James Der Derian) not been able to forge ties with policy research and has thus remained a debatelimited to high theory.

Feminists have done much work on security thinking.24 Often, the usual divisions within feminism(standpoint, Marxist, liberal, post-modern, etc) show up in this work too, and accordingly different

parts line up close to some of the already mentioned schools, while other parts are more distinct. Quite

a bit of the feminist work comes close to Booth type CSS (which is not surprising given the stronginfluence of feminism on Booths thinking): individual security should be given priority, state securityis over-emphasised by traditional, masculinist scholarship, and sometimes it is also stressed how thevery forms of theory and study is male science.25 Other parts of feminist work is more post-structuralist and stress the articulation of concepts of gender, nation and security (often inspired byElshtain)26. This scholarship is an important part of the broader debate, but it is not easy to define adistinct position at present and it is therefore treated as part of the larger debate, not as a school.

Finally, an emerging debate within these mostly European security circles is about risk society. Theliterature that developed originally among mostly sociologists and primarily in relation to environmentand production systems, obviously meet at some point the concerns of security studies, especially assecurity widens beyond the international into various domestic settings, and risk simultaneouslyspreads to becoming allegedly the predominant mode of societys self-reflection.27 How and where

these two logics meet and what it implies is very much an open question and a debate that has onlyjust begun, but it should tie in relatively smoothly with some of the existing concerns in the Europeansecurity debate.

- - -

An aside on the term schools: The pattern is not totally consistent, and one can find the term appliedto e.g. realism (the realist school), but mostly the main theories that are seen as constituting the coredebates at the centre of the discipline (i.e. leading circles in the US) are notreferred to as schools.

Behnke, Postmodernizing Security, paper presented at ECPR Joint Session of Workshops, Mannheim, 26-31 March1999.

24

J. Ann Tickner, Gender and International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving global Security, New York:Columbia University Press 1992. Add many more ref.25 Cf. Booth, Security and Self, op.cit.26 Lene Hansen, Rape/Bosnia article in Feminist Journal, several articles in special issue of Cooperation and Conflictespecially the Swedish one on conscription, etc etc.27 Niklas Luhmann: Risiko und Gefahr in Soziologische Aufklrung 5. Konstruktivistische Perspektiven. WestdeutscherVerlag, Obladen 1990, pp. 131 169; Ulrick Beck, Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage 1992; MikkelVedby Rasmussen, Reflexive Security: NATO and International Risk Society in Millennium, vol. 30:2, 2001, pp. 285-309; Shlomo Griner, Living in a World Risk Society: A Reply to Mikkel V. Rasmussen, in Millennium, vol. 31:1, 2002,pp. 149-160; MVR reply in Millennium ; Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press 1999;Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge Polity Press 2001; Anthony Giddens, Modernityand Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press 1991; Franois Ewald, Insurance andRisk in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller eds., Chicago:The University of Chicago Press 1991, pp. 197-210; Franois Ewald, Two Infinities of Risk in Brian Massumi (ed.) The Politics of Everyday Fear, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 1991, pp. 221-8; Claudia Aradau,Beyond Good and Evil: Ethics and Securitization /Desecuritization Techniques, Rubikon e-journal, Dec 2001:http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/claudia2.htm; Ole Wver, Security: A Conceptual History for internationalrelations, paper presented at ISA and BISA 2003.

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There is no constructivist school, Wendtian school or Yale-Chicago school. This is not only becausethese (American born) theories are seen as too wide-spread i.e. going beyond any locality becauseit is generally understood also that the English school is not about scholarship in England, but aspecific tradition of work referring to certain referent points (Wight, Bull, and the whole BritishCommittee); and the Copenhagen School keeps being used as a name despite the fact that withgrowth in applications (and the governments closure of COPRI, the schools original home), a

decreasing fraction of its work comes out of Copenhagen. Nor, is the nature of the different effortsdistinct enough that one could claim that school gets used when something is not systematic enoughto be a theory or a research programme. Probably, the implicit linguistic rules here are that a school isnota major competitor, i.e. it is not one of the parties to the main debate(s) that define the discipline,

but still of a certain independent and continuous existence (cf. the English School). Thus, there is anelement of repressive tolerance built into the term.

- - -

To sum up, what is characteristic of these European schools of security studies, the following can bea first attempt28:

Shared:

Reflections on the concept of security as such, i.e. as interesting in itself and not only a matter ofdelineation or pre-analytical definition.

Concern with the issue of possible widening as contradictory and political.

Security as practice.

Self-reflection: ones own practice as security analyst is implicated in the politics of security, andas such one face hard ethical dilemmas as security actor.

Aberystwyth:

widening

emancipation

social construction of threats; self/other relations

Copenhagen:

securitisation: the political construction of security issues.

desecuritisation: security is not good but at best a minor evil, while most often our aim should beto limit the rhetoric of security and its accompanying politics of exceptions and emergencies.

distinguish between securitising actors and referent objects.

Paris:

internal and external security merge.

Security agencies. Praxis over discourse

And now to the explanations of all that:

Philosophy, money and institutions

As presented above, this will be attempted in terms of three levels:

1. Intellectual traditions.

2. The organisation of the field.

3. Practical usages: policy issues and the political agenda.

28 One could also sum up in terms of theorists. Maybe: Aberystwyth: Habermas, Gramsci, Cox. Copenhagen: Waltz,Schmitt, Austin and Derrida. Paris: Bourdieu, Foucault, Weber.

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The first level is almost too easy in this case. It is obvious, that the European debates are morereflectivist or post-positivist than the American ones. The spectrum of meta-theoretical positions

probably does not differ much between the US and Europe (and many individuals move back andforth), but the median point does. Therefore, the seemingly similar debates, that could be seen as beingabout constructivism meets security studies on both sides, turn out very differently. In US securitystudies, it is about a distinct type of mainstream constructivism that orients itself towards the canons

of science among rationalists, where much (but far from all) constructivism in Europe blends in withmore radical positions. Accordingly, the debate mostly in International Security over the role ofconstructivism in security studies29, turns out to be about assessing the importance of ideas in securitystudies, i.e. ideas and identity conceived as variables and judged in strict causal terms. Also the

participants explicitly engage in laborious efforts to define a conventional constructivism as distinctfrom a critical constructivism.30 This striking contrast in the elaboration of seemingly similarimpulses illustrates the difference in context and normality.

This meta-theoretical difference in turn is already well-explained by previous contributions to theliterature on sociology of IR and other writings on the social sciences. The explanation has manylayers including deep ones around the historical constitution of national identities, where DorothyRoss convincingly has argued that the American historical consciousness the way the American

nation is constructed in time, the millennial belief in American exceptionalism was served best bynaturalist social science and threatened by historicist approaches.31 Abstract and scientific socialscience is therefore a repeated preference in US, even when this comes in new forms for each wave. Tothis can then be added later inclinations related to the fascination with technology and progress(Thorstein Veblen; Stanley Hoffmann). Positivist inclinations were supported also by level 2 factorsrelated to the formation and delineation of the different social sciences 32. Finally, the Cold War periodstrengthened this pattern further due to the social role of IR and security studies in Cold War policy and the ensuing funding. This blurs into the second level, but before we continue systematically tothis, it is necessary to pause a bit and complicate this simple and familiar story about positivistAmericans versus post-Positivist Europeans:

The two sides differ not only in terms of meta-theory (positivism/post-positivism) but also about IRtheory (realism or not) and methodology (historical case studies or other methods). Also, it is

necessary to focus on how security studies differ from IR in general in the US and Europe respectively.Realism remains much more central in U.S. security studies than it is in both general American IR/IPE(IO as well as ISQ type)33 and than it is in European security studies. Within American IR, securitystudies has its distinctstyle. In security studies (as represented primarily by the journals InternationalSecurity and Security Studies), the dominant form of research is more historical, less oriented towardsformal rational choice than in IO-style IR.34 This is not an instance of traditionalism a la second

29 Michael Desch, "Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies," International Security, vol. 23,Summer 1998, pp. 141-70 + debate in International Security, vol. 24:1, Summer 1999, pp. 156-180; Ted Hopf, "ThePromise of Constructivism in IR Theory." International Security, V.23, Summer 1998, pp. 171-200; Dale Copeland, "TheConstructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay," International Security, vol. 25, Fall 2000, pp. 187-212;Theo Farrell, 'Constructivist Security Studies: Portrait of a Research Program', International Studies Review, 4, 1, 2002, pp.49-72.30 Here, it probably also plays a role, that the field of practiced policy research in the security field is more closelydisciplined and specialised in the US. Therefore there are few constructivists (very few radical constructivists), whereas itis possible to be both a post-structuralist and a policy researcher (and government advisor) in some European countries(partly because of a different game over the status of different disciplines, partly simply because of lessspecialisation/division of labour in smaller countries).31 Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, Cambridge University Press 1991.32 See the work of John Gunnell and others a summary is found on pp. 713f of Wver, The Sociology, op.cit.33 As noted by several authors, (neo)realism has long been present in general IR (not-specifically-security-oriented)discussions mostly as a ghost: Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, a very large part of theoretical arguments werejustified as critiques of neo-realism, but to actually find a self-defined neo-realist at an ISA meeting or in the pages of IO,was not that easy. Obviously, this meant that neo-realism was influential in shaping debates but in a much more in-directway than within security studies, where it remained something like the orthodoxy.34Michael Brown, Steven E. Miller and Seam M. Lynn-Jones (eds.) Rational Choice and Security Studies: Stephen Waltand His Critics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Cf. also the statistics in Wver, The Sociology of a Not so InternationalDiscipline, especially figure 3 (p. 702) and Table A1 (p. 727). Unfortunately, these statistics include only IO and ISQ, notIS and SS, but I think it is clear that the distribution between different meta-theories in the non-security journals differmarkedly from what one would find in the security journals.

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debate (Hedley Bull) where judgment is seen as integral to research35, because a journal likeInternational Security is at least as insistent as IO on strict causal and positivist social science. Thisshows in the actual publishing record but maybe more revealingly in places like the instruction sheetfor contributors. It asks a potential author to sum up (at least for herself) her argument in an arrowdiagram because if this is not possible, the argument is not clear yet. This implies that an argumentnecessarily takes the form of propositions about cause-effect relations among a few factors (and not

e.g. writing structured history, deconstructive interventions or normative IR).

The debate between offensive and defensive realism is illustrative of this: it is phrased in terms ofgeneral IR theories, and of a kind where clear behavioral hypotheses can relatively easily be deduced,and thus in-depth, historical case-studies is a fruitful method to evaluate the competing theories andto refine them by modifications, complications and often combinations. The preference is -- incontrast to IO for not too abstract and arcane theories and a relatively clear discussion of what state

behaviour to expect. Usually, the immediate policy relevance is clearer and in recent yearsespecially: what should we expect of other great powers and major regional powers? When will theyturn aggressive and expansionist, and when will they be status quo powers? In principle, theoffensive/defensive realism debate could also be the basis of how to think about the current US

position, but interestingly this is relatively rare36 and US policy is more often linked to the debate

about the role of power (empire) vs. institutions (and soft power) in international order.Generally, the preferred style is cause-effect knowledge about security relevant issues based onhistorical case studies (or more rarely: large-n data).

It is not possible to explain patterns of security theory purely at the level of intellectual traditions. Aswe have seen above, questions about organisation and usage have already started to creep into thisfirst part of the discussion, and in order to get to grips with these layers, lets first zoom in a bit moresystematically at the differences in form between security theory in the two settings (i.e. condense theresults of the previous section) and from there try to distil out the elements of an explanation, becauseto start from the explanatory factors, there are too many options for where to start funding patterns,institutions, linguistic divides and it is therefore more fruitful to work backwards from patterns thatget gradually clearer:

35 Hedley Bull, 'International Theory: The Case for the Classical Approach', in World Politics, 3 (1966), 361-377. See also

the recent attempt to elaborate this methodological stance: Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant:Human Conduct in aWorld of States, Oxford, Clarendon Press 2000(?).36 See some elements of this in Mearsheimer, The Tragedy, op.cit.

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Contrast

The US

Concept of security not interesting

(only delineation)

General IR theories applied and

competing

Narrow military focus

Rationalist theories; but in soft

version often using historical case

studies

Instrumental knowledge to assist

in handling policy tasks

Europe

Concept of security as continued

centre of reflection

Specific theorising about security

Broad econ-political approach

Degrees of

reflectivism/constructivism

General reflection as part of

political process in society on

fundamental questions of self-

definition and self-shaping.

One major difference is that on the US side, reflections on the concept of security play no integratedrole in research. Such considerations are at most involved in delineating the field and thereby locatingthe questions about which then to gain empirical, causal, historical and theoretical knowledge. 37 If anarticle is defined as security analysis, this will typically mean that at most the reflection on this statusconsists in defining security studies as being about e.g. the study of the threat, use and control ofmilitary force38 and therefore a theoretical-empirical study of causes of war is relevant or the strategic

use of sanctions might with a little more difficulty be justified too; the concept of security is notpresent in the analysis as such. In the European debates, questions about the concept of securitybecame the launching pad for a general attention to the self-reflective nature of the discipline, i.e. thatthe discipline not only studied security, but it also had its own concepts of security and thereby its ownsecurity practices. Doing security therefore implied to reflect on the practice of speaking in the nameof this concept. This pointed towards a general attention to the close connections between(sub-)discipline, theory, concept and the studied object (all called something like or with security).

A partly related, second difference is that in Europe, a particular debate emerged that was organised atfirst within and because of the particular questions related to security , but which increasinglyinfluences more general IR debates. In the US, influences clearly went the opposite way: the

37 This is particularly clear in The Culture of National Security, where Katzenstein (Introduction, op.cit, pp. 7-11) argues

the strategic rationale of employing a narrow concept of security in combination with the new approaches, because again if you can beat the traditionalists in their home field, it is evidently easy later to transfer this gain to the new fields that arealready home turf for the new approaches. Implicitly, the question of concepts of security is here reduced to a question ofissues, whereas the meta-criticism raised by Critical Security Studies, the Copenhagen School and others does not register.This is the approach to the concept that frames the book (it returns on pp. 523-528). Almost as an aside, Jepperson et al(Norms, Identity, op.cit) reflect (pp. 72-75) on the possibility that different theories reflect external developments andsuddenly the discussion employs a logic very close to securitisation/desecuritisation when it explains why various issueshave been defined as on or off the security agenda as the result of political processes.

Similary, Steven E. Miller, ("International Security at Twenty-five: From One World to Another", InternationalSecurity , Vol. 26, No. 1 (201), pp.--) show in a grand overview of 25 years ofInternational Security, how at best thewidening debate register as a question of a re-drawing of the boundary of the issue area and meta-theoretical pluralism isproven by articles on the causal impact of norms, i.e. as a question of what variables to include as independent variable.38 Stephen M. Walt The Renaissance of Security Studies,International Studies Quarterly, 35, (1991), p. 212. The debateon wide vs. narrow concept had much American participation in the early phase, but it is widely seen as dealt with by now.Jessica Mathews, 'Redefining Security',Foreign Affairs , 68:2 (1989); Richard Ullman, "Redefining Security", InternationalSecurity 8, 1 (1983):129-153. Famous anti-wideners include Stephen Walt "The Renaissance op.cit. and through a mostlydifferent route Daniel Deudney, "The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security,"Millennium, 1990, Vol. 19: 461-476.

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theoretical positions within security studies derive from general IR debates. This is probably mosteasily seen in the case of the debate on constructivism. The main salvo from the constructivists, theKatzenstein volume39, was launched explicitly as a move in a general IR debate where constructivistsfound that it was time to prove their worth on the home ground of realism: security. Most of thecontributors were not primarily working in fields or institutions traditionally seen as security. Incontrast to earlier periods such as the golden age of security studies in the 1950s and 1960s, it is

today not particular challenges, needs or debates within security studies that motivate theorydevelopment.40 In the context of American IR, this change is valued. It is generally assumed to be asign of maturity to get away from particular theories and debates in sub-fields and instead developgeneral theories that are in turn applied to different fields like European integration, internationalsecurity or trade disputes.41

The new European theories developed in relation to public discussions about security and attempts todevelop specific theorising for this purpose. Thus, these theoretical developments were the product ofcomplicated, personal processes of political and theoretical choices and settling or coming to termswith ones role in-between academia, expertise and citizen/public intellectual.42It is often stated thatIR research in the US is more closely connected to policy than in Europe43, but this is only partly true:Relevant research is more systematically promoted through various channels in the US, and quite large

sub-systems (primarily think-tanks) are very directly linked to policy. Also academic journals like International Security have a more implicit policy orientation expressed by frequent discussions interms of what we (the US) should do, where equivalents are much more rarely found in any Europeanacademic journal. However, the disconnectbetween large parts of academic IR and policy circles isalso very significant in the US, and European research typically has a broader concept of politics, notonly as policy advice. These represent different understandings of relevance.

The bottom-line on this point is that the European theories developed as an integral part of strugglingwith security issues, the American ones much more detached as part of academic debates betweenvarious explanatory theories. This in turn is in the American optic the most policy relevant, becausethe role of the analyst is to provide the relevant knowledge of cause-effect relations that enable theoptimal policy decision. Politics and knowledge are not seen as that separate in the European context,where the researcher as participant in the process thinks more in terms of ethics, dilemmas and

choices.

As we have now zoomed in on the relevant form of knowledge in the two situations and therelationship between researcher and policy-makers as two important intermediate variables, it

becomes possible to think more systematically about plausible explanations of the present pattern.

Follow the money, is often a good advice, and funding patterns are probably an important part of thestory. Another major part is the structure in which research is organised along the spectrum from

policy oriented think tanks to ivory tower academe.

The US seems to be marked by [what seems to me to be] a relatively strong division of labour betweenuniversities and think tanks.44Theoretical research is the task of university researchers, of which sometry to be policy relevant, also do policy pieces and direct their research towards those questions thatare meaningful for key policy questions. Think tanks, on the other hand, seem to be under a heavy

pressure for doing extremely practical, straight-forward research and researchers there usually do notstray too much into theorising, not even in the application/utilisation sense. This pattern does not

39 Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press 1996.40 The golden age is presented by David Baldwin as the 2 nd of 4 phases of security studies, see: David Baldwin, SecurityStudies and the End of the Cold War, World Politics, vol 48, Oct 1995, pp. 117-141.41 In relation to European integration studies, this argument is made forcefully by Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice forEurope: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, , NY: Cornell University Press1998, pp. ##.42 Ken Booth, Security and Self, op.cit.; Jef Huysmans, 'Defining social constructivism, op.cit.43 Notably, Stanley Hoffmann, International Relations, An American Social Science Ddalus, vol. 106, 1977, pp. 41-60.44 An expression of this is, that relatively few scholars move back and forth, or at least it is hard to think of that manyleading scholars in academic IR who have spent a major part of their career in think tanks or similar policy oriented research

institutions. Most of the important counter examples are probably about either figures who have dual affiliations (CharlesKupchan, e.g.), or about units within established universities that are designated to policy orientation and manage to attractmoney of the policy kind for research within universities and drawing on faculty for that purpose (e.g. Harvard).

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create the distance/interaction tension which in the European case has often been the room forinnovation, i.e. beyond the grip of the discipline and its constant grand debate repetitions and yetenough in contact to engage and influence. This is closely linked to patterns of funding, where in theUS relatively much is distributed via competitive grants. The individual researcher is therefore mainlyexposed to the pressure of a large market and weaker direct social presence pressure from smallerinstitutions. I.e. researchers from all over compete in relation to general criteria for what is relevant

and interesting, whereas this kind of research at the inter-face of theory and security policy relevanceis less located in small and medium sized (maybe ad hoc) institutions, where in Europe the balance ismore towards the latter. [I do not have data on this, and I have to investigate it in more detail to see ifthis actually holds so far it is quite impressionistic.]

In Europe, there seems to be much more of a continuum of academically oriented research institutesthat are nevertheless not part of a university. Places like the Max Planck Institute in Germany andCERI in France, but maybe in the present context, most importantly the role ofpeace research45. Itwas clearly more than influential in relation to Copenhagen and especially relevant for Ken Booth inAberystwyth, but much less so in Paris. Here, however, the French tradition for public intellectuals

plus the very different relationship between IR and other disciplines, i.e. the closeness to sociology,explains a lot instead.

Institutes such as the peace research institutes were in-between in the sense of being policy orientedbut not a-theoretical. It is of course a long story how peace research changed with different intellectualand policy frames over the decades and its strengths and weaknesses were different in different

periods,46 but especially in relation to the 1980s and early 1990s, it is interesting how scholars whowere clearly relating to IR as their discipline, worked differently when relating also to peace research either because employed there or because active e.g. in movements like Pugwash. More than peaceresearch as a grand project, this probably has to do with the sociological micro-mechanisms, the socialconventions within peace research institutes roughly what kind of argument you can use towardseach other where questions of relevance and political implications are a legitimate part of the game ina way which is not common within a political science/IR department, while on the other hand theory is

part of the picture in a way that differs from establishment think tanks. It is not that peace research initself and with its own rules and self-understandings ensure ideal conditions for intellectual

innovation, often the contrary. But the location of individuals at the interface of peace research and IRis often productive. When people with a disciplinary IR reference develop new ideas while located in

peace research or some other inter-disciplinary context, IR scholars are inclined to credit this to IR andsee the alternative affiliation as coincidence. But when it becomes common that a considerable part ofthe new ideas come from people in odd locations, it becomes unconvincing to write this off ascoincidence, and the mechanism might have more to do with the way disciplinary mechanisms workwithin IR as a discipline and therefore a need for distance. Totally trans-disciplinary institutes thatrefuse all relationship to the old disciplines and insist on only the subject matter easily become tooinstrumental and without a basis for self-reflection, but the situation with dual disciplinary definitionscan be helpful in both stimulating new thinking and delivering a disciplinary self-reference withinwhich to express these ideas.

The third level of an explanation then is about the kinds of policy challenge that the different researchenvironments are exposed to. One can not fully and solely explain from there. The first and secondlevel have carried much of the long-term effects, whereas the third is more time-bound, but it is a morerecent re-enforcement of patterns, and it is worth a thought to what extent even these criticalEuropean approaches are helped along by being politically useful and relevant.

45 Ole Wver, The Strange Successes of Scandinavian Peace Research: Why the inter-twined disciplines of Peace Researchand International Relations develop differently in the US, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, Presentation at theconference In Search of Peace in the Twenty-First Century in Seoul, January 25, 2000, organised by the Korean PeaceResearch Association the Korean National Commission for UNESCO; Stefano Guzzini, The Cold War is what we makeof it: when peace research meets constructivism in International Relations and Guzzini/Jung Copenhagen Peace

Research (as well as other chapters) in Guzzini and Jung (eds), Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen PeaceResearch, London: Routledge 2004.46 Wver, The Strange Successes, op.cit.

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The geopolitics of Western security theories

At least in relation to future developments, it will help to have a look at the policy challenges that faceAmericans and Europeans respectively. The relevant questions are not at the level of the short term

political situation or a specific political administration or government it should be larger patterns.This will here be attempted through a world politics analysis derived from Regional Security Complex

Theory (RSCT).47

A regional security complex was originally defined by Barry Buzan as A group of states whosesecurity problems are so closely intertwined that they can not meaningfully be understoodindependently of each other.48More recently, it has been reformulated in securitisation terminologyas A set of units whose major processes of securitisation, desecuritisation, or both are so interlinkedthat their security problems cannot reasonably be analysed or resolved apart from one another. 49The

basic idea is to look at the regional level formations that are often the level which mediates global anddomestic level factors.

The security of the world so to say falls in chunks.

This is clearly a non-American theory, because the US as the global level actor par excellence is proneto see unified global interpretations of the world after the Cold War comes the Clash ofCivilisations, unipolarity, the war on terror or globalization. However, such neat summaries ofworld politics will increasingly fail as the world becomes more diversified there will be noalternative to taking the detour around the different stories from different regions where securityincreasingly unfolds in different forms in terms of the dominant units, the main sectors and the natureof security issues. Seen from all other places than the US and to some extent a few other global

powers the main security issues will be regional. After all, it is not so surprising that most often themain threats come from neighbours or other local forces, because most threats travel more easily overshort than over long distances, and only great powers transcend this logic to some extent, and eventhey have to grasp the regional dynamics because otherwise they do not know how to engage otheractors who are tied to this logic. A major claim of the theory is that the interaction between global andregional actors happens on terms set by the regional actors to a much larger extent than expected by IRtheories that usually privilege the top-down perspective. In contrast to the emphasis on global powersin understanding e.g. Middle East politics, it is usually the lines of conflict generated by actors in theregion that open the possibility of penetration by external actors and then typically along linesdefined by indigenous conflicts.

The different RSCs differ along various important dimensions. The basic pattern is relatively stable.There are a limited number of - therefore significant - external changes of RSCs (boundaries) whichis quite fortunate, because the theory would be less informative if the RSCs where constantlymutating, or for that matter is they were totally static. Regarding internal order, it is striking that quitea lot of RSCs are more or less centred, rather than accord with the common IR expectation of

balancing systems of sovereign equality. Crucial developments are not parallel: the regions becomeincreasingly regional in terms of form, i.e. security is about different things, have different actors,

etc. In most regions the analysis point to one or a few open questions that will determine their futurecourse. Charting the total security map has to cover three areas: global level, regional level, global-regional interplay.

However, even such an analysis has to have some conception of the global level. According to RSCT,the global structure is 1 + 4 + regions1 + 4 + regions

. The debate on global structure has become constricted by a simplistic conception of polarity

47 Thus it is an explanation based on a Copenhagen School interpretation of the world, which implies a certain element ofcircularity or maybe a fractal format, where a pattern re-appears at different levels. The different theories with specialattention to US-European differences are partly explained by a security analysis carried out by one of the Europeantheories, a theory which is not only European in origin, but where the European (or at least the non-Americanness) can beclearly discerned in the theory itself. Some might see this element in the structure of the paper as problematic, others as

unavoidable and some maybe even as a merit.48 Buzan, People, States and Fear, 49 Buzan et al, Security: A New Framework, p. -- and Buzan & Wver,Regions and Powers, op.cit., p. --

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that stems from the failure to distinguish regional from global that derive from the Eurocentric periodwhen the global powers were also the dominant powers of one region, the European. A regional

balance of power was also the global, and polarity was seemingly a simple concept. The discipline didnot reflect systematically on the meaning of the shift of terminology from great power to super power

was it just normal inflation, or just a bigger great power? and the implications of a shift to globallevel polarity were not worked out. Therefore, today, we have a tendency to discuss polarity as either

multipolar or unipolar and everyone excluded from that level are regional powers, but surely that willnot do. The US is not dominant enough to constitute unipolarity, and especially not, if that is to implythat e.g. China and the EU are purely regional powers. Nor is multipolar very appropriate when one

power is so much more equal than everyone else. It is necessary to distinguish between super powersand great powers.50A super power has global reach and power in all sectors and there is only onesuch today, the US. But there are four great powers, China, Russia, EU, Japan. They are contemplated

as potential (or recent) super powers, they have influence beyond their own region even if not in allothers, and first of all the defining criteria they are included in considerations about global power

by other powers (e.g. in terms of possible coalitions). The structure among these two kinds of powers

make up the global power structure, and therefore it is today 1+4 (and the most likely alternative isprobably neither bi- nor multipolarity but 0+x, a non-superpower structure coming about most likelyby US abdication from a global role).51 Finally, regional powers are all those who define the polaritystructure of a RSC, be that as the central power in a centred complex or as the two or more in a bi- ormultipolar region.

The US position is clearly unique and it defines a quite particular agenda. The US is not a memberofother regions than North America, but as aswing powerit willpretendto be member of other regionslike Europe and East Asia. It generally resists narrow regionalisation that excludes it from regions andtries to counter this with thinner hyper-regionalism (FTAA against South American regionalism,APEC against exclusive Asianism, and increasingly usage of NATO and other trans-atlantic attemptsto weaken the EU). Similarly, a global agenda serves to maintain the pre-eminence of the US andavoid the gradual strengthening of other centres of power. Equally, it serves to maintain USmobilisation of global involvement, which is no simple thing given the deep-seated domesticsuspicion against foreign involvements and strong stateness. Intensive securitisation of some globallevel threat is therefore a natural US attraction.

From EU-Europe, the security problem looks much different. The EU is the centre of its own RSC.This RSC is structured and stabilised by European integration, and thus a political-economic strategyhas proven remarkably successful in creating a security community.52 Thus, it is understandable as

50 Buzan and Wver,Regions and Powers, chapter 2 and in more developed in Buzan, The United States and the GreatPowers, forthcoming Polity Press.51 Huntingtons concept of uni-multipolarity captures some of the same dynamics of 1+4: it is not only a mix ofunipolarity and multipolarity, but a very particular one: the unipole thinks the system is unipolar and acts accordingly, whilethe great powers thinks it is multipolar or surely: should be and they act accordingly. Obviously, this promises trouble!

52 Ole Wver, The EU as a security actor: reflections from a pessimistic constructivist on post-sovereign security ordersin Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds.) International Relations Theory and the Politics of EuropeanIntegration: Power, security and community, London: Routledge 2000, pp. 250-94; 'Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in

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Super powers: 1 (USA):

Has global reach and all-round power

Great powers: 4 (China, Russia, EU, Japan)

Potential super power.

Inc

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