Copenhagen School
Petr Ocelík
ESSn4007 / MEBn4001
26th November 2020
Outline
• Assumptions
• Securitization
• Security sectors
• Regional security complex
Copenhagen school
• Context: traditionalists vs. revisionists
• Analytical framework for study of international security
• Currently: mainstream approach in security studies
• Based on:
• (“radically”) idealist ontology
• interpretative epistemology(discourse analysis)
• “residual traditionalism”
Security as a social construct
• There is no “essence”, no universal feature of security
• Security is socially constructed and intersubjectively
shared
• Security is a self-referential practice: an issue becomes a
security issue only by being labeled as one
→ Focus on discursive construction of security issues
Securitization
• Framing
• standard (depoliticized)
• politicized
• securitized
• Audience acceptance
• Extraordinary measures
• Linkages
Securitization
• Securitizationactors: ones that declare – via illocutionary speech act
– existential threat towards a particular referent object
• Functional actors: ones that significantly affect the dynamic of the
security environment (sector)
Speech acts
• Constativeact: the literal meaning of the utterance
• Appellativeact: the social function of the utterance,for what purposeit is used in a
given context
• Performativeact: the effectof the utterancein a given context
“I warn you, the oil is running out!”
• Constativeact: made vocal sounds,said that with a Czech accent
• Appellativeact: making a warningabout (an existential) threat
• Performativeact: made you (audience)feel insecure(or amused)
• Facilitatingconditions
degreeof widening modes of widening (modifiedWeisová2004)
horizontal
(sectors)
vertical
(referent objects)
values threatsources
narrow concept military-political state sovereignty,
territorial integrity
other states,
(non-stateactors)
widenedconcept societal nation,
societal groups
national unity,
identity
(states),
nations,
migrants,
hostile cultures
economic state,non-stateactors,
institutions,individuals
development,
subsistence
states,
market failures
environmental environmentalsystems,
humankind
sustainability,
survival,
quality of life
states,
globalization,
humankind
Regional security complex
• Brings back geography to IR
• Structural characteristics:
• Boundaries: differentiation from the rest of the system
• Anarchy: number of actors in the complex
• Polarity: distribution of power within the complex
• Social construction: relationships of amity and enmity
• Definition (Buzan and Waever 2003: 44):
“...set of units whose major processes of securitization,
desecuritization, or both, are so interlinked that their security
problems cannot be reasonably analyzed apart from one another.”
• Security constellation: an aggregate of all four levels of analysis
Copenhagen school and energy security
• Energy not considered as “a distinctive area of security interactions”
• Typically included in an economic sector
• Other options: energy sector as a new (additional) one? Energy
sector as a supra-sector? (Palonkorpi 2008)
→ Let’s discuss this ☺
Summary
• A comprehensive framework for security analysis
• Esp. theory of securitization now part of the mainstream
• The objective: desecuritization of the debate
• Criticism: state-centric, inconsistent use of constructivist and
rationalist concepts, focus mainly on discourse (omits context),
conceptual and methodological doubts (audience)