Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
Available online 28 October 2019
0301-4215/© 2019 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Securitization and state encroachment on the energy sector: Politics of
exception in Poland’s energy governance
Kacper Szulecki
Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway
A R T I C L E I N F O
Keywords:
Energy security
Securitization
Critical security studies
Poland
Nuclear energy
Utilities
A B S T R A C T
As energy security becomes a key topic of policy debates, not least in Central and Eastern European states, which
are vulnerable to gas supply disruptions from Russia, it has been suggested that EU energy policy becomes
‘securitized’. However, full securitization attempts, which not only identify threats but also call for exceptional
measures to deal with them, are relatively rare in the energy sector. Why do governmental actors initiate
securitizing moves aimed at implementing exceptional measures in the energy sector, and what explains the
acceptance of certain moves or measures and dismissal of others? This paper looks at Poland, comparing two
examples of such moves. Drawing on a primary document analysis, the paper shows how a shared socio-technical
imaginary provided an anchor for the successful securitization of the nuclear project, while liberal market discourses
limited audience acceptance of the securitizing move in the power sector. Securitization appears to be a
mechanism triggered when core state powers over energy are challenged from below (civil society, market actors)
and above (supranational institutions), particularly in already securitized contexts. The paper concludes
with the value added of Securitization Theory for energy policy studies and lays out a Critical Energy Security
Studies agenda, which can build on it.
1. Introduction
First coined in response to the shock of the 1973 Oil Crisis, the
concept of “energy security” functioned as a specialist term for over two
decades and began to gain broader prominence only in the 2000s
(Jewell and Brutschin, 2019; Kester, 2018; Szulecki, 2017). Importantly,
energy security is at the same time a characteristic of energy systems,
perhaps best understood as their low-vulnerability (Cherp and Jewell,
2014, 2013), and a rhetorical commonplace employed by experts, policymakers,
journalists, etc. As a rhetorical commonplace, it is invoked to
justify certain actions in its name, to explain decisions, to legitimize
policies, or simply to make things sound important. Acting in the name
of energy security, like in the name of raison d’�etat, or "national interest"
or "the people" – is all in fact a continuous exercise in constructing energy
security as a relational notion emerging in the contextual interplay
of a particular event.
This dual nature of the energy security concept remains outside the
scope of most political science and energy studies analyses. As Cherp and
Jewell note (Cherp and Jewell, 2011p. 210), “there is virtually no
research” on the interaction between the “analysis of vulnerabilities of
energy systems and policy narratives about risks and response
capacities. At the same time, such narratives are often used in both
setting the agenda of energy security research and interpreting the results”
. More recently, Jewell and Brutschin identified a gap between
energy security rhetoric and action, suggesting that the reasons for
employing security references in particular energy governance contexts
require a more thorough investigation, and “there is far too little
research which documents how actors use energy security to advance
their own agendas at the national level” (2019, p. 19). All these authors
point to securitization as a concept which can be useful for such analyses
(Cherp and Jewell, 2014; Jewell and Brutschin, 2019).
The original proponents of the securitization concept within Security
Studies – Buzan and Wæver – define it as “the discursive process through
which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political
community to treat something as an existential threat […] and to enable
a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat”
(2003, p. 491). Meanwhile, most energy policy research has been
making only loose references to Securitization Theory (Bridge, 2015;
Nyman, 2013; Nyman and Zeng, 2016; €Ozcan, 2013), focusing instead
on the apparent increase in references to “energy security”, providing
summaries of the positions of key stakeholders. Thus the notion of
increasing energy securitization in the EU became something of an
E-mail address: kacper.szulecki@stv.uio.no.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Energy Policy
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.111066
Received 3 April 2019; Received in revised form 26 September 2019; Accepted 18 October 2019
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
2
orthodoxy (Boersma and Goldthau, 2017; Hofmann and Staeger, 2019;
Judge and Maltby, 2017; Khrushcheva, 2011; Natorski and Herranz
Surrall�es, 2008; Siddi, 2017a).
The results are problematic in two ways. Firstly, the concept of
“energy security” is not necessarily implying the presence of any existential
threat and often functions in technical and visibly desecuritized
contexts, putting in question the thesis that energy is indeed becoming
securitized in the EU and elsewhere (Szulecki, 2017). Secondly, while
the securitizing speech act – a reference to security, identification of a
threat, and a referent object to be protected – are significant and can
alter political reality, within which energy policy is forged, very few
studies of energy policy to date have paid attention to the other part of a
securitizing move, namely– urgent and exceptional measures proposed to
deal with the threat.
This paper argues for the need to move the study of energy securitization
beyond the relative frequencies of utterances of “security” in
energy policy debates (Heinrich and Szulecki, 2017), and instead underline
the politically performative aspect of securitizing energy,
resulting from the declaration of existential threat and “the generation
of the capacity to break free of the rules of ‘normal’ politics” (Williams,
2015, p. 115). Securitization, Williams emphasizes, is “above all political”
and its focus is most importantly on what security does. While the
increased interest in energy security – even if it does not always directly
lead to policy change – is important, there is a whole realm of questions
related to the way energy security rhetoric can empower, frame,
distract, or insulate certain stakeholders within energy governance with
direct political implications. This realm has remained largely unexplored
to date.
Why do governmental actors initiate securitizing moves aimed at
implementing exceptional measures in the energy sector, and what explains
the acceptance of certain moves or measures and dismissal of
others? To shed light on this, the analysis that follows focuses on Poland
– a country which can be considered a most likely case of energy securitization,
since it is one of the most vocal proponents of a more
“geopolitical” approach to energy security in the EU (Fischhendler,
2018; Jewell and Brutschin, 2019). However, even there, earlier
research has identified relatively few full-fledged securitization attempts,
ones clearly identifying an existential threat to a particular
energy-related referent object and proposing exceptional measures to
deal with it. The paper explores two instances of such securitizing
moves. One is a case of successful securitization in the nuclear sector,
leading to the introduction of exceptional measures in the strict sense, i.
e. increasing the competences of state security services. The other illustrates
a securitizing move and pushback on the state/market interface
in the electricity production sector.
The broader argument flowing from the analysis is that rather than
using securitization as a mere description of a discursive shift in EU
debates or conversely, in an agency-cantered mode of reasoning, for
conspiratorial thinking about elites, it is best to see it as a social
mechanism occurring more broadly (Guzzini, 2011), as a response of
states who in the energy sector see a challenge to their core powers. In
the Polish case analyzed, we see that the real “threats” which exceptional
measures are targeting come from below and above – from the civil
society, market logics and supranational actors. The paper therefore
proposes seeing energy securitization as an element of state encroachment
on the energy sector and concludes with a plea for more research
taking on questions of sovereignty, exceptional measures and normative
consequences of energy policy choices – in a postulated Critical Energy
Security Studies agenda.
2. Theoretical framework: securitization in the energy sector
2.1. Securitization
This paper departs from the observation that despite the popularity
of energy security in Europe, few studies have treated the idea of energy
securitization seriously. The visibly loose and imprecise approach to the
concept in the field of energy studies renders a rather messy picture,
where “securitization” is taken to simply mean making references to
security, or in the case of energy “the process whereby particular groups
develop the level of energy security they desire and maintaining this
over time” (Bridge et al., 2018, p. 201), a definition bearing little
resemblance to the concept’s Security Studies legacy.
The point here is not theoretical fundamentalism, asking to “return
to the roots” of the concept for the dogma’s sake. It is rather that
Securitization Theory deals with a phenomenon which has significant
repercussions for democratic politics, and if indeed securitization in the
energy sector is excessive, we should be worried. The dominant view of
security in this tradition is thus negative, and the “debates over the
connection between securitization and the politics of exception have
(understandably) consistently been cast in a negative light” (Williams,
2015, p. 115). The securitization approach, writes Wæver, “points to the
inherently political nature of any designation of security issues and thus
it puts an ethical question at the feet of analysts, decision-makers and
activists alike: why do you call this a security issue? What are the implications
of doing this – or of not doing it?” (1999, p. 334).
Securitization, as defined by Buzan and Wæver (2003), presents a
process of security construction and consists of several major components.
In a first step, a securitizing actor constructs a referent object and
threat narrative claiming the existence of an existential threat to the survival
of this referent object. This narrative is then presented in a speech
act to an audience recommending exceptional measures which would
break the normal rules of the game for security reasons. This represents a
full securitization attempt – a move which, if accepted, leads to successful
securitization (Buzan et al., 1998, 25, 31; Buzan and Wæver,
2003, p. 71).
The main underlying hypothesis is that identifying an existential
threat and calling up security aims to remove an issue area from the
sphere of political deliberation and into the sphere of exception. Growing
out of the immense Cold War era securitization of domestic, transnational,
and international politics, the concept of (de)securitization as
advanced in the early writings of Wæver (1989, 1995), put much
emphasis on that normative and policy dimension of security talk.
Wæver’s entry point was critical both of the political and the academic
treatment of “security”, which he perceived as doubly problematic.
Firstly, in the way security is portrayed as something having a real existence
irrespective of political discussions, and secondly, being inherently
a “good thing”, with security maximization as a naturalized policy
goal (Wæver, 1989). The so-called Copenhagen School of critical security
studies was thus advancing a new approach to security on both
ontological, epistemological, - and political grounds. Security is not an
objective thing it comes into being through speech, and thus the utterance
is its primary reality. The underlying value commitment of Securitization
Theory is the problematization of instances where security is
being invoked, understanding that speech acts have a purpose and
securitization, as the Cold War era has shown, can be a means of limiting
(democratic) political oversight. This explicitly political edge to the
concept is sometimes criticized, which is paradoxical, according to
Wæver, since “it is exactly one of the advantages of the approach to open
up those kinds of questions” (1999, p. 334).
2.2. Politics of exception in energy governance
Existing studies of securitization in European energy policy show an
increase in security rhetoric, but rarely find traces of exceptional politics
resulting from securitizing moves, suggesting that in the EU arena
“framing energy as a security issue contributed to a reinforcement of the
discourses in favor of maintaining energy policies in a predominantly
intergovernmental framework” (Natorski and Herranz Surrall�es, 2008,
p. 84), and that conceptual ambiguities of EU discourses have “politicized
rather than securitized energy policy” (Hofmann and Staeger,
2019, p. 18). Quasi-ritualized references to energy security, securitizing
K. Szulecki
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
3
moves without a call to action can be termed security jargon (Heinrich
and Szulecki, 2017, p. 47) or tactical securitization (Fischhendler, 2015,
p. 247). A research project analyzing energy security debates in two EU
countries across three energy sectors has found that energy security
references, while indeed frequent, constitute a ritualized practice, often
without any securitizing aims, and full-fledged securitization attempts
are very rare (Heinrich, 2017; Lis, 2017; Szulecki and Kusznir, 2017).
Analyses of actual securitizing moves justifying exceptional measures
tend to require much more fine-grained, micro-level analyses of national
and subnational policy debates (Christou and Adamides, 2013; Fischhendler
et al., 2015; Fischhendler and Nathan, 2014).
Carl Schmitt (2008) famously stated that “sovereign is [he] who
decides on the [state of] exception” (Ausnahmezustand). Governments,
companies or other relevant actors exercise sovereignty in an issue area
by deciding over its exception from regular policymaking. Giorgio
Agamben (2005) conceptualized the state of exception as a particular
paradigm of government. Drawing on both Agamben and Schmitt allows
us to understand what these special measures of “exception” may imply
in political processes and what that means for the Arendtian vision of
politics underpinning Securitization Theory (Hansen, 2012; Wæver,
2011; Williams, 2015).
Narrowing down exceptional measures to military interventions (as
proposed e.g. by Nyman, 2013) excludes most of what might be interesting
in energy securitization, if we move beyond the narrow classic
focus on the international politics of oil, and blunts the theory’s critical
and political-normative edge. Kuzemko (2014, p. 260) proposes to see
exceptional measures as a “break with previous political practice” which
“at once both reduces government responsibility for policy while also
leaving it less subject to political discretions, deliberations and interventions”
(2014, p. 261). Similarly, Salter (2011, p. 121) claims that
“ordinary measures”, which do not break the rules of the normal political
process, also make for securitization as long as there is some public
policy change, either in discourse, budget, or in actual policy, such as the
granting of new or emergency executive powers. Fischhendler in turn
emphasizes organizational and institutional change such as concrete
infrastructures that aim to protect the referent object or institutional
mechanisms to counter perceived threats (e.g., special representatives or
committees, exclusion of public stakeholders from governance, civilian
disengagement) (Fischhendler, 2015).
Understanding energy policy as a public policy, where transparency,
rule of law, and democratic oversight are important values and where
societal welfare is the ultimate governance goal, Heinrich and Szulecki
have proposed a tripartite conceptualization of exceptional measures
(2017, p. 41): (1) breaking norms, that is explicit or implicit prescriptions
about “how things are done”, (2) shifting competences and
power towards the executive, and (3) withholding or limiting information.
The analysis that follows builds on this typology of exceptional
measures, understanding that the three do not have to occur together;
either of these qualifies as exceptional measures in the analysis, if it is
legitimized by reference to security.
2.3. Why securitizing attempts succeed or fail: Audience acceptance
The overall research question this analysis seeks to answer is: Why do
governmental actors initiate securitizing moves aimed at implementing
exceptional measures in the energy sector, and what explains the
acceptance of certain moves or measures and dismissal of others? To
answer the second part, we need a deeper theorization of what can account
for the acceptance of a securitization attempt or push back against
it.
An important factor which can enhance audience acceptance and
facilitate securitization in some contexts is the broader national security
imaginary and energy security discourses. Fischhendler et al. (2015)
point to the fundamental importance of these discourses that dominate
other debates, serving as a reservoir of narratives and rhetorical commonplaces
that spark securitization in areas far from usual security
concern.
Meanwhile, challenges to securitizing moves require a closer look at
audiences. The focus on and extensive theorization of audiences is the
most obvious way in which most "sociological" approaches depart from
the Copenhagen School by paying greater attention to power relations
between securitizing actors and audiences (Balzacq, 2011). Not only do
different audiences play different roles, they also have different kinds of
relationship with securitizing actors. These are structured by both
formal and informal power relations, which, in most cases, pre-date
attempts at securitization and are often institutionalized within particular
political systems even if one of the possible outcomes of securitization
is that those power relations are subject to change (Judge et al.,
2017, p. 163).
The relations between actors and audiences should not be understood
in a static and unidirectional manner, where a securitizing actor
has the power to compel or influence different audiences to varying
degrees (Wæver, 2011, p. 468). Instead, it is important to recognize, as
C^ot�e (2016) argues, that audiences are active agents that can contest,
develop, and potentially transform securitizing moves in a process of
deliberation. There are two explanatory factors that logically follow
from Co^t�e‘s proposal. Firstly, if audience acceptance or lack thereof
follows a deliberative process, space for deliberation must first be open.
While securitizing moves can be overt, the exceptional measures
following can often be insulated from public scrutiny already – so the
attention paid by different non-governmental actors of the issue area can
potentially explain the emergence of challenges to both moves and
measures. Secondly, Co^t�e suggests that if audiences are actors, their
identities will matter in the iterative process of securitization. We can
assume that actors in a sector, e.g. energy policy, whose
self-identifications, values and roles are visibly different from those of
the securitizing actors, will oppose securitization attempts and articulate
alternative conceptions of (energy) security.
3. Case selection and method
In European energy policy analyses, Central and Eastern European
(CEE) countries are usually portrayed as those that show a “geopolitical”
and possibly “securitized” approach to energy (Jewell and Brutschin,
2019; Judge and Maltby, 2017). This is displayed by their insistence on
introducing collective energy security mechanisms, and more often, in
portraying Europe’s reliance of natural gas imports from Russia as a
security concern or outright threat (Brutschin, 2016; Siddi, 2017b).
Among these, Poland is perhaps the most vocal, and Polish politicians
have made several attempts at putting gas supply security concerns at
the top of EU agenda, with the 2014 initial “Energy Union” proposal
arguably the most successful (Szulecki et al., 2016). If we are to look for
cases of energy securitization, Poland appears to be the best place to
start searching.
The cases of energy securitizing moves on the level of specific sectors
were selected based on data gathered in a three-year project "Towards a
common European Energy policy? Energy security debates in Poland
and Germany", involving a broad media analysis as well as 39 interviews
with Polish energy sector experts and stakeholders.1
The research on
Poland found surprisingly few instances in which a securitization
attempt, both comprised the identification of an existential threat to a
referent object articulated in an air of urgency and suggested extraordinary
measures to deal with it (Heinrich, 2017; Szulecki and Kusznir,
2017). The analysis that follows looks at two such attempts, selected
1
For a detailed description of the operationalization of theoretical concepts,
methods applied, data gathering procedures and interviews questions as well as
respondents list see: ‘Documentation of data collection’, available at: http
://www.forschungsstelle.uni-bremen.de/UserFiles/file/04-Forschung/docume
ntation_data-collection.pdf. The project was financially supported by the
German-Polish Science Foundation (Grant Nr. 2014–15).
K. Szulecki
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
4
because of the variation in visible audience acceptance: the securitization
of Poland’s nuclear energy program and the securitizing move in
the power sector.
To answer the research question, in the Polish case, I conduct an
analysis of political rhetoric aimed at securitization and trace the reactions
– both in terms of audience acceptance or pushback and the
consequences of securitizing moves in exceptional measures adopted.
According to the notion that a “geopolitical” energy policy paradigm is
by definition securitized, we can hypothesize that external (“geopolitical”)
threats and foreign policy justifications should play an important
role and explain the reasons behind securitizing moves, and that
governmental actors should seek the securitization of sectors and issues
which display (or are perceived as displaying) vulnerabilities related to
international supply chains.
The discussion compares what threats were presented, how they
were framed, what the referent objects to be secured were, and suggests
which elements can account for the acceptance of one securitizing
attempt and the partial failure of the other. Apart from the data gathered
within the aforementioned project, additional material was obtained
through media analysis as well as from primary documents (including
transcripts of parliamentary committee hearings, as well as internal
energy company documentation).
4. (De)securitizing energy: acceptance and rejection of
exceptional measures in polish energy debates
4.1. Securitization and Poland’s nuclear program
Plans for joining the nuclear energy club first appeared in Poland in
the 1960s, when the Communist party leadership under Władysław
Gomułka began to consider the possibility of constructing nuclear power
plants (NPP) based on a British design (Borewicz et al., 2019). The
ground for this was laid by the opening of an experimental reactor “Ewa”
in �Swierk near Warsaw in 1958, which allowed Poland to build up domestic
know-how and train nuclear physicists and engineers. More
concrete plans emerged in the late 1970s. Several locations for at least
three initial nuclear power plants were explored, with _Zarnowiec near
Gda�nsk, Klempicz near Pozna�n and Lake Kopa�n on the Baltic coast near
Darłowo finally selected. The decision to start the construction of the
first plant at _Zarnowiec was taken during the Martial Law, the “state of
emergency” introduced by the Communist authorities cracking down on
the “Solidarity” trade union in December 1981. The Martial Law, apart
from introducing a curfew and taming any political opposition, militarized
workplaces and allowed more top-down governance without any
sort of societal consultation – so the decision to build an NPP was
initially not contested.
However, when opposition movements re-emerged and began to
take up environmental issues as new, seemingly apolitical platforms for
protest, particularly in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe
in the Soviet Union, the Polish nuclear program became a key issue
around which domestic dissent mobilized. After a campaign of unprecedented
length and scale, the authorities first abandoned the plans to
build at Kopa�n and Klempicz, and then, after the negotiated regime
change in 1989, the _Zarnowiec NPP construction was stopped in 1990
even though significant parts of the site were already built (Szulecki
et al., 2015). This resulted in a moratorium on nuclear energy, and all
projects were shelved for fifteen years.
The idea of building an NPP returned in 2005, first only as a suggestion
in a document by the Ministry of Economy. The way the issue
was introduced turned out to be symptomatic of the technocratic energy
governance approach, which would later become characteristic for
Poland’s nuclear energy projects (Stankiewicz, 2014). First, the need for
nuclear as a guarantor of energy security and decarbonization was
stated, a provisional date for building the first reactors (2020–21) set,
and then the problem of societal resistance signaled as a major challenge
(Ministerstwo Gospodarki i Pracy, 2005, p. 1454). A five-year social
communication campaign was envisaged to deal with that obstacle.
Poland’s political elite, though usually quite polarized, appeared to
be unanimous in its support for the country’s nuclear ambitions, seeing
them as “progressive” and important for modernizing the economy. The
right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party leader, Jarosław Kaczy�nski
declared before the 2005 elections where his party took power: “Poland
needs a nuclear power plant, because nuclear energy has a future, and its
generation occurs under safe conditions. That is why, the things that the
environmentalists are doing can be called hysterical. A modern state,
caring for its energy security, should have an atomic power plant”
(Dudała, 2005). When PiS stepped down and the centrist Civic Platform
(PO) took over after snap elections in 2007, the course and broader
mind-set did not change. The only visible difference between the two
parties in the emerging political duopoly was on how to finance the NPP.
The liberal PO leader Donald Tusk, introducing intensive work on the
nuclear project, claimed that the plant would be financed from private
sources: “I do not believe that the state would build such a plant with its
money. We know that the energy sector is increasingly a domain of
private investment” (Money.pl, 2008). Those hopes turned out futile and
the state soon stepped in, following the strategic document Poland’s
Energy policy until 2030 published in 2009 (Rada Ministr�ow, 2009),
which again proclaimed nuclear energy as key for power source diversification
and state energy security.
Early on, the policymakers became aware that achieving the goal of
constructing Poland’s first nuclear power plant required a number of
measures going beyond the usual practice of liberal democratic politics.
Security was to justify these. The exceptional measures proposed fell
into three categories: undermining the transparency and good practices
of public administration in the energy sector, active measures to limit an
open debate on nuclear energy and finally, increased competences of the
state secret service – the Internal Security Agency.
In 2012 Tusk nominated his long-term colleague, Aleksander Grad,
for the post of director in Poland’s major utilities – Polish Energy Group
(Polska Grupa Energetyczna – PGE) daughter companies PGE Nuclear
Energy and PGE Nuclear Plant 1. Moving an active politician to a
(partly) private business company created a peculiar personal publicprivate
union, and the PM justified it by saying that the “state’s
engagement and strict political oversight on nuclear energy development
is absolutely necessary” (Wprost, 2012). To the growing concerns
about the project’s economic viability, the Prime Minister replied:
“building security has to come at a cost and the role of the state is to
design market regulation that will minimize economic risks” (Forbes,
2013). This case of passing through the metaphorical revolving door
between politics and business and between the legislative, regulating the
energy sector and a company under regulation, was not entirely unusual
in Poland (Szulecki, 2018), but it did violate important norms of
transparency in governance.
More far-reaching exceptional measures were to be taken against the
project’s potential political opponents. In the Polish media, nuclear
energy was predominantly presented through the lens of security, as an
answer to the country’s energy dependence problems – often in relation
to Russia (though gas and nuclear are not necessarily substitutes in the
Polish energy mix). The fact that nuclear fuel would also have to be
imported is of lesser importance, since “in case of uranium we have
many import directions, and among these ones that are secure, from
countries which are fellow members of the same defensive and economic
alliances”.2
However, the two key problems mentioned in the media
discussions were low societal acceptance of nuclear energy and
mounting investment costs (Szulecki and Kusznir, 2017, p. 135).
As proposed already in the 2005 and 2009 strategies, to tackle the
problem of societal acceptance, the Polish government initiated a wide
media campaign. It was meant to persuade the relevant societal groups
(local communities and parts of the undecided citizens) to support the
2
Interview with two Energy Department experts, Warsaw, 3 July 2015.
K. Szulecki
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
5
project and accept the national security and modernization rationality
(Stankiewicz, 2013).
In 2009, the Ministry of Economy hired a PR agency to create the
framework for the nuclear project’s communication strategy, focusing
on persuasion much more than dialogue. The strategic document that
emerged from this collaboration was entitled Security that pays off –
encapsulating the main rationale of the nuclear project.3
Society should
be shielded from facts which undermine the rationality of the nuclear
project, i.e. “emphasizing costs that Poles would have to carry in relation
to nuclear energy expansion might be a reason for diminishing the
number of supporters” while “the question of nuclear waste storage will
be a contentious issue”.
In the strategy, the relevant audiences were divided into “friends”
and “enemies”, an example of explicit Schmittean securitized language.
A dialogue with “the enemies” is impossible, states the report, since they
have “contradictory interests and goals”. The only actions that can be
taken are “communicative security” for governmental information
campaigns and the “complete elimination” of “enemy” communiqu�es.
The recipe for public debate presented in the document is that “absolutely
crucial is to take actions that will eliminate or tame the influence
of enemies on the communicative sphere and will use our friends for
information support and pushing through the positions that we want to
see.” Particularly dangerous “enemies” include environmental organizations,
as well as scientists and journalists skeptical towards the nuclear
project, but having expert authority and good media contacts. Open
debates are to be avoided, because they can “give platform to ardent
nuclear-sceptics”.
The campaign’s rhetoric resulted in a peculiar situation, in which
securitization occurs around the nuclear project, where the future nuclear
plant is the referent object to be protected, while societal actors –
local communities, environmental NGOs, or the general uninformed
public – become the threats. On the other hand, external threats, such as
terrorism, are dismissed by nuclear energy experts as exaggerated.
This was also visible in the legislative process introducing changes to
the Atomic Law, which took place in 2011 and 2012. The planned
construction of nuclear facilities required not only communicative but
also physical security – yet the main threat, it appears, was not terrorism
but anti-nuclear dissent. The amended legislation increased the competences
of the Internal Security Agency, which was responsible for
protecting new nuclear facilities. For the Agency, trespassing on nuclear
sites, no matter what the motivations were, was an offence equal to
terrorism. As one parliamentarian pointed out, these new powers given
to the Agency apparently collided with other legislation, which suggested
that the Governmental Security Center, rather than the secret
service, should be responsible for critical infrastructure (Kancelaria
Sejmu, 2011, p. 11).
An additional boost of the Agency’s power resulted from combining
the new Atomic Law with earlier legislation on critical infrastructure
and crisis management. As a result, once the NPP was classified as
critical infrastructure, the Agency obtained the possibility of surveillance
of potential opponents of the nuclear project, to “protect” it. If the
director of the Agency interpreted an individual’s or organization’s actions
as a potential threat, defined as a “crisis situation” which may have
“terrorist” consequences, such measures were justified – calling into
question the possibility of any organized protest against the nuclear
plant’s construction. A left-wing commentator suggested that since it
will be up to the head of the Agency to decide what constitutes a “potential
crisis situation”, this opened the possibility even for infiltrating
environmental groups, justified as countering terrorism (Czarkowski,
2012). While the government denied such accusations, legal
commentators noted that this was part of a “new approach” which
“equates state interest with societal interest and private interest”
(G�oralski, 2010, p. 80). Most commentators, however, have not seen this
expansion of state power as problematic, and potential implications
remained under the radar of civil society groups dealing with rule-of-law
and civil rights questions.
If there was any lesson the post-Solidarity political elite (both the
Civic Platform and Law and Justice trace their roots to the pre-1989
opposition) drew from the intensive protest campaign against
_Zarnowiec in 1986–90 it was that societal dissent should be avoided as
much as possible. As a civil servant at the Ministry of Economy
emphasized: “The most fundamental risk is political. The risk of stopping
the nuclear project at a very advanced stage, the way we’ve seen it in
_Zarnowiec [in 1990], where large sums of money were spent and the
local population was left disappointed”.4
During earlier amendments of
the Atomic Law, the PO parliamentarian Jan Rzymełka inquired
whether the state was prepared enough for “crowd trouble” that could
emerge due to “intensified nongovernmental organization activity”
related to nuclear waste transport, “e.g. a radical environmentalist
groups blocking [it]” (Kancelaria Sejmu, 2008a, pp. 4–5).
4.2. Utilities as instruments of the state: security vs. the market
Poland’s major energyutilities are all State Treasury companies,
which means that although they are all joint stock companies whose
stock is traded on the exchange, the state owns a majority of their shares
or is legally controlling them in some way. In 2018 the State Treasury
held 70.83% of the shares of the national gas giant PGNiG, as well as the
major utilities in the power sector, PGE (58.39%), Energa (51.52%),
Enea (51.5%), Tauron (30.06%) and Bedzin (5%). State ownership is
also the cause of very unclear boundaries between the public administration,
politics and the energy sector. During the transition from
communism, Poland has seen only a gradual development towards a
professional civil service as most public institutions remain politicized
and each election brings significant staff changes on all levels. The political
system is also poorly institutionalized, with professional politicians
constituting only a small group. Since State companies are under
the control of the government, they are also used for different gratification
practices, which might be interpreted as nepotistic or corrupt
(Szulecki, 2018).
The status of these companies is permanently contested. Formally
market actors, they are under the arbitrary control of the government,
and often have to operate according to logics which are contrary to
profit maximization for shareholders and to economic efficiency. One
example is the way the Tusk government charged Krzysztof Kiljan, upon
his nomination as head of PGE, with the task of steering three energy
mega-projects at the same time. These were the building of Poland’s first
nuclear power plant, shale gas exploration and the finalization of the
construction of the Opole hard coal plant expansion. Kiljan was dismissed
when he decided to stand by the economic logic of the company
and the shareholders’ good rather than the government’s demands
(Wr�oblewski, 2013).
PiS politicians were quite open about their preference for statecentered
energy governance and skepticism towards market liberalization
already before the elections. Apart from a more statist vision of the
economy, the underlying rationale was the notion of energy sovereignty,
propagated by several important conservative and nationalist intellectuals,
analysts and politicians, among them Piotr Naimski, nominated
state secretary and government plenipotentiary for strategic
energy infrastructure. Naimski’s claim since the early 1990s has been
that Poland’s import dependence on Russian natural gas constitutes an
existential threat for the state as well as the nation itself (Naimski,
2015). Casting gas supply security in terms of the state’s and nation’s3
Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Ministerstwa Gospodarki, Koncepcja kampanii
informacyjnej dotyczącej energetyki jądrowej: Bezpiecze�nstwo, kt�ore się opłaca.
Available at: http://www.rozbrat.org/images/pdf/bezpieczenstwo.pdf (last
accessed: 28 March 2019). 4
Interview with two Energy Department experts, Warsaw, 3 July 2015.
K. Szulecki
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
6
ontological security created a permanently securitized commonplace of
energy sovereignty, on which political rhetoric in different areas could
build.
Securitizing gas, and potentially all energy sectors, with the state as
reference object, logically requires state responses to the perceived
threats. After taking single-party majority in 2015 elections, PiS politicians
were eager to consolidate executive power in the energy sector.
First, the Ministry of Energy was formed bringing together competences
previously spread between the Ministry of Economy and Ministry of
Treasury. The next move involved taking stricter control of the major
energy companies, subjecting them to direct governmental steering. For
that purpose, energy security proved the perfect justification.
In November 2016, the Ministry of Energy, using the fact that the
State Treasury was a major shareholder in the key energy companies,
proposed a change in their statutes. A new point was to be added, stating
that “the company is implementing the tasks related to guaranteeing the
energy security of the Republic of Poland”.5
This would allow the
companies to follow ministerial instructions, particularly related to new
energy infrastructure investments, even if that meant making decisions
that undermined their economic situation. The Ministry explained, that
in case of a conflict of interests, the state’s energy security should come
first, and that these companies, like PGE, carry “the core burden of
guaranteeing [Poland’s] energy security” (Wieczerzak-Krusi�nska,
2016). “I don’t see any problem here” – commented a PiS parliamentarian
– “political power always had influence on State Treasury companies.
Isn’t it better if that influence is confirmed in a document, than
unofficial, e.g. through meetings at a cemetery?” (Słowik, 2016). Przemyslaw
Piesiewicz, deputy-chairman of Energa nominated in 2016,
once an advisor to a PiS MEP, explained: “energy security of the country
should be a priority not only for the policymakers, but also utilities”
(Wieczerzak-Krusi�nska, 2016). While that statement was difficult to
challenge, the consequences of the move were debatable.
Commentators and particularly the minority shareholders were quite
disturbed. Many pointed out that political benefits were to be gained
under the energy security pretenses. The move was characterized as
contradicting not only the logics of a liberalized European energy
market, but also – against Polish commercial company code. “The aim of
a capital company is not to act in the name of the state, but first and
foremost to act for the benefit of its shareholders” – commercial lawyer
Szymon Syp pointed out (Słowik, 2016). The former head of Polish
Managers Institute suggested that the move was incompatible with the
character of anonymous societies (joint-stock companies). The only fair
solution would be to remove these energy companies from the stock
exchange, where they no longer effectively belong. Meanwhile, the head
of the Individual Investors’ Society claimed that while investing in
state-controlled companies has always carried a risk, the ambiguity of
the new statutes interpretations and uses visibly increases (Wieczerzak-Krusi�nska,
2016).
The reason for introducing state energy security into company statutes
and using security rhetoric to convince the shareholders was ultimately
linked to legal responsibility. Using energy companies to execute
exceptional measures in the sector – following the logics of security
rather than the market – required making uneconomic decisions, which
in the future could mean that politically nominated CEO-s and board
members could be sued by minority shareholders. The sanctions for such
economic malpractice – acting against the company’s interest – was
individual responsibility for losses (following Article 483 of the Code of
Commercial Societies) and potentially criminal charges and a sentence
of up to five years in prison (Article 296 of the Penal Code). Introducing
state energy security as a goal in the company’s statutes would protect
the managers from facing consequences of all such economically
dubious exceptional measures.
In December 2016, changes were introduced to the statutes of PGE
and Energa. In 2017, the State Treasury proposed an identical statute
change for Tauron, and put it on the agenda of the company shareholders’
General Meeting on 29 May that year. Despite the persuasion of
the Ministry of Energy and the large involvement of the State Treasury
(30.06%), other shareholders were not convinced. In a vote on the
suggested statute amendment, the Treasury together with another statecompany
holding Tauron’s shares, were not able to achieve the ¾ majority
required to push it through.6
The fact that the amendment was rejected was seen as “quite surprising”
(Ciepiela, 2017), though other shareholders, particularly investment
funds, but also individual investors, were quite open about
their lack of support for the proposed change. The Minister of Energy,
Krzysztof Tch�orzewski, tried to belittle the government’s failure,
claiming that “as far as investments are concerned” Tauron is not key for
state energy security anyway, and there is no pressing need for change in
statute (PAP, 2017). At the same time, the Minister “still believed that
the passage on energy security should be introduced in Tauron’s statute”
and said that it “is the last remaining energy company, where I need to
persuade the shareholders” to accept the change (Money.pl, 2017).
Following the outcome of Tauron’s General Meeting vote commentators
suggested that the Ministry might have problems pushing the amendment
through at the fourth major utility – Enea. However, by the end of
2017 Tauron was left as the only major energy company without state
energy security obligations.
5. Discussion and Comparison
Both cases are examples of securitization attempts – as we have seen,
relatively rare in energy governance. Both contain speech acts, which
call up security, with the state as the main referent object, and on the
surface either directly point or at least allude to an external threat. Most
importantly, they contain proposals from the securitizing actors, which
go beyond usual practices, and can be classified as exceptional measures
“in the name of security”.
In the case of the nuclear project, the extraordinary measures are
varied. Security was used by PM Tusk to justify the blurring of legislative,
regulatory, and executive roles in the energy sector resulting from
the political appointment of his colleague as utility CEO. More radical
measures, resembling Schmitt’s state of exception, were visible in the
communication campaign strategy prepared by the government. The
idea of labelling political opponents as “enemies” and the dehumanizing
language used, with open suggestions for taming public
debate, should be alarming. But arguably, they opened up the horizon of
possibility for the third set of exceptional measures: the increased role of
secret service agents and the ambiguous new competences of the head of
the Internal Energy Agency, giving it surveillance tools , and potentially
disarming societal dissent. Although that last move raised some questions
among opposition parliamentarians and a handful of journalists,
there was no de-securitization attempt within the Sejm. the lower house
of the Polish parliament, and the measures were introduced,
unchallenged.
In the second case, state security is used as a reason and justification
for centralizing power and expanding the executive’s competences in
the energy sector. Changes in companies’ statutes are introduced to
allow direct political steering of utilities – which can be used for
different purposes. However, the change itself is legally debatable, and
the governmental steering constitutes a direct challenge to the usual
5
Point 1 in: “Proponowane zmiany w Statucie TAURON Polska Energia S.A.
będące przedmiotem obrad Zwyczajnego Walnego Zgromadzenia zwołanego na
dzie�n 29 maja 2017 roku”. Available at: https://www.tauron.pl/-/media/repor
tattachments/zmiany-w-statucie-tauron-polska-energia-sa-20170525202032
9574.ashx (last accessed 29 March 2019).
6
The recording of the 29 May 2017 General Meeting is avilable at:
https://www.tauron.pl/tauron/relacje-inwestorskie/nagrania (last accessed:
29 March 2019).
K. Szulecki
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
7
practices of companies on a liberal market. That incompatibility was
cited as a reason for rejecting the government’s proposal in one case
where the State Treasury was not able to introduce changes singlehandedly
(as a majority shareholder), indicating the lack of broader
audience acceptance.
There are, however, important differences between the way securitizing
moves are constructed in those two cases – elements which can
account for their ultimate acceptance. While similar on the surface, as
viewed on the level of official political rhetoric, both making references
to “national energy security”, with the nation-state as the referent object,
the direct referent objects are different. The exceptional measures
in the nuclear energy sector are introduced to protect the nuclear program
itself. With the shifting referent object so shifts the actual threat
indicated or implied. While still possibly external (terrorists, spies), the
main focus is on domestic “enemies”: “extreme fanatics for whom
dissent is the reason for being”.7
Securitization in the nuclear sector aims
at strengthening the state administration in its struggle with civil society
organizations, much more than external threats. The ultimate referent
object, on which the nuclear project is built, is a particular vision of
technocratic modernization and a socio-technical imaginary (Jasanoff and
Kim, 2013) of Poland’s energy future: centralized, with close
state-utility bonds. Since that socio-technical imaginary is shared by the
political elite and sectorial experts, there is broad audience acceptance
for securitizing moves which ultimately lead to safeguarding it.
Analyzing the parliamentary debates around nuclear energy shows that
unlike in almost any other political issue in Poland, the consensus
around the need to safeguard and advance the nuclear project united the
governmental coalition and opposition, and there were “practically no
issues of contention” (J. Rzymełka in Kancelaria Sejmu, 2008b).
Audience acceptance was thus conditioned by two factors: both the
political salience of the issue and the degree to which it was picked up e.
g. by the media were quite low. Additionally, the socio-technical
imaginary shared within the political elite meant that the identity and
values of the securitizing agents and the most relevant audiences were
shared rather than conflictive. There is an additional element to be
highlighted here. Although the direct referent object of the securitizing
moves was the nuclear program, this cannot be clearly abstracted from
the broader energy security discourse. As discussed in Section 4.2, the
notion of “energy sovereignty”, and the more lasting, deep securitization
of Poland’s energy policy debates, providing additional legitimacy to all
invocations of “national security” in the energy sector, cannot be easily
separated from the securitization attempts in particular sub-sectors. This
returns to Wæver’s insistence on the illocutionary effect of the securitization
speech act – meaning what is "done in saying", and rearranging
the security imaginary within a community (here, national) by redefining
the rights and responsibilities of actors (Wæver, 1999, p. 122). On
a deeper level, the initial securitization "event" is co-produced by the
audience and conditions all further actions. This can suggest that securitization
in these sub-sectors is at least partly "derived", as opposed to
"primary". It is therefore possible to see the nuclear project as a placeholder
for state energy security and not "only" a referent object in itself.8
In the case of the proposed changes in utilities’ statutes, the referent
object is indeed the state and energy policy needs which are defined by
the government. However, the direct threat against which these
exceptional measures are to be introduced is again not external, but
related to the governance process, the state’s ability to control existing
and future energy generation, and implementation of the centrally
planned strategy. Here, the obstacle and threat is not the civil society,
but the free market, with its logics that can and very often do go against
governmental strategic planning. The challenge from Tauron’s
shareholders was launched from a market-focused position, and could
count on broad media support, drawing on the free market orthodoxy
deeply rooted in Poland’s economic circles. The de-securitizing rhetoric
of the media and experts representing minority shareholders has also
exposed the motivations of the Ministry of Energy, which apparently
used the security façade to mask political party interests. In this case, the
issue became immediately politicized, and there was no common value
or identity platform for the securitizing actors and the audience.
The surprising finding, given the hypothesis based on Poland’s
"geopolitical" energy paradigm, is that there is no link between external
threats, and the two cases of actual energy securitization. This suggests
that beyond the surface of "primary" securitization of the energy policy
discourse, this second-order, "derived" securitization is very much an
internal, domestic affair, not explained by the geopolitical context –
which is not even an important element of the political rhetoric around
securitizing moves.
6. Conclusions and Policy Implications
This paper set out to answer why governmental actors engage in
securitization attempts and seek to obtain exceptional means for dealing
with alleged threats in the energy sector, as well as why some of such
attempts succeed while others are met with resistance. In this
concluding section, I first sum up what we have learned from the analysis
of the Polish case, then point to the limitations of this knowledge, as
well as some methodological constraints that the proposed approach
faces. Having discussed these, I turn to the added value of employing
Securitization Theory with its political-normative edge in energy policy
analysis, and suggest that it can lay ground for a new research agenda of
Critical Energy Security Studies.
While geopolitical considerations are creeping in the background, an
important conclusion from this analysis is that securitization is a
mechanism playing out differently at different levels, and it is necessary
to inspect not merely what the securitizing actors say, but also what they
do, how that relates to energy system vulnerabilities as well as politicaleconomic
interests, and also – what the implications of securitization
and policy change are. Beyond the strategic behavior of individual actors,
there is the practical logic of state-centered energy governance.
What both presented cases share is the visible encroachment of state
power on those areas of energy governance where previously the state’s
role was reduced or systematically challenged. Securitization, contrary
to its superficial understanding, does not need to be a strategic move, but
instead a social mechanism triggered under specific conditions (Guzzini,
2011), the motivations of individual actors are less relevant than the
compound outcome of securitization practices. The lesson from the
Polish case is that governmental actors – acting in the name of the state –
can display a tendency to treat energy governance as a core state power,
along with the traditionally acknowledged core powers: military security,
fiscal policy, and public administration (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs,
2016). Thus securitization, moving a particular energy
governance issue, or a sector, or the entirety of energy decision-making
competences, outside the realm of deliberation and under the control of
the state apparatus, appears as an attractive option for sustaining or
constituting energy policy as a core state power.
Contemporary energy policy challenges, most importantly the
imminent decarbonization and energy transition, exert pressure on the
state to surrender much of its competence to forces from two directions.
From below, civil society actors demand more transparency and participatory
governance in the spirit of "energy democratization" (Szulecki,
2018), while others justify their pressure with the need to speed up
climate action. Additionally, distributed energy generation, mostly
renewable, re-arranges the political economies of national energy sectors,
breaking incumbent oligopolies or state monopolies. From above,
particularly in Europe, EU institutions have sought to expand their energy
governance competences at the cost of member state sovereignty
and economic globalization as well as global structural rearrangements
7
Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Ministerstwa Gospodarki, Koncepcja, op cit.,
p. 11.
8
I thank Trine Villumsen Berling for pointing this out and suggesting and one
of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting the idea of “derived securitization”.
K. Szulecki
Energy Policy 136 (2020) 111066
8
resulting from the ongoing energy transition added to the pressure on
states.
To be sure, safeguarding or reclaiming the control over energy
governance by legitimate, democratically elected governments is not in
itself a negative process. Just like securitization, which, as Williams
(2015, p. 115) emphasizes can lead not only to the politics of exception,
but also the politics of the extraordinary. Drawing on Kalyvas, he suggests
this can also result in popular mobilization, self-determination and
the self-assertion of a democratic sovereign. However, in the Polish case,
both securitization attempts raised significant normative doubts. This
might partly be the specificity of Polish energy security discourses,
which, as we have seen, contain readily available and permanently
securitized commonplaces, making it easier for securitizing actors to
construct "derived" securitizing moves.
As Wæver points out, “politics never takes the form of someone
‘capturing power’ and ‘producing’ an output from a plan – it is always
about action that relies on others’ actions before it generates some
result, and therefore the ‘meaning’ and ‘goodness’ of a particular act is
never known beforehand but only as history is told afterwards” (2011, p.
468). In the Polish case, particularly with the nuclear project, it is easy to
argue that overall intentions of the governmental actors involved were
not malign. However, in an already securitized context where politics of
exception becomes less "exceptional" and authoritarian temptations
become easier to realize, good intentions can also pave the road to
gradual democratic backsliding.
Although reasons why in some cases governmental actors can
attempt to securitize energy policy debates are understandable,
answering why some attempts are accepted and others not is more of a
challenge, methodologically speaking. As Williams notes, we can often
identify the structural and discursive conditions that make certain
securitizing acts more likely to succeed than others, “here we confront a
key dilemma for the sociology of securitization. It is simply impossible –
not only sociologically, but existentially – to grasp definitively its
myriad potentialities” (2015, p. 116). While it is possible to use interpretive
process tracing to reconstruct individual cases and provide singular
causal analyses which explain such outcomes, like in the Polish
case, generalizable knowledge and prediction of conditions for (de)
securitization is limited. There are also significant methodological
challenges involved in measuring audience acceptance. Rather than
focusing on the acceptance of a single move, we can instead look at the
wider acceptability of expressing energy issues in the language of security,
which results from already existing dominant security logics visible
in a particularcontext (Judge et al., 2017).
Given these limitations, what is the benefit of applying Securitization
Theory to energy policy? There are at least three gains visible: explanatory,
descriptive, and normative. Firstly, looking at energy security
through the reflexive lens of securitization allows us to see beyond the
taken-for-grantedness of the policy world, and explain why different
actors construct energy security in such different ways. The conceptual
framework of Securitization Theory organizes comparisons between
sectors, actors, and polities (Heinrich and Szulecki, 2017). Secondly,
even if we accept that energy security can be objectified, e.g. as the low
vulnerability of vital energy systems (Cherp and Jewell, 2014), securitization
helps us map how material vulnerabilities are represented by
different actors, and understand how the "vitality" of energy system is
ranked and perceived in different contexts.
Last but not least, the normative dimension of securitization opens
up new fields of inquiry in and ought to be a stepping stone for a broader
research program of critical energy security studies, of which we already
have some early examples (Judge et al., 2017; Kester, 2018). Like critical
security studies broadly, this is meant to imply “more an orientation
toward the discipline than a precise theoretical label” (Krause and
Williams, 1997, pp. x–xi). The common denominator for this proposed
agenda is, as Kester proposes, “to come to an understanding of what
energy security does” and this “comes with a call to take security more
seriously, with its logics, politics and use” in order to flesh out how
energy security differs from broader security realm (Kester, 2018, pp.
223, 229).
Scholars of energy policy should not be restrained by the normative
undertone that researching securitization in these contexts visibly
carries – understanding that such work aims at uncovering power
structures which escape the eye of traditional energy security analyses
and identifying mechanisms, which potentially undermine democratic
politics as well as taking the broader societal good and important
democratic values as benchmarks.
The normative thrust of securitization in energy studies has two
logical goals: studying what is allowed because of securitization and
studying what securitization prevents. This paper focused on the former.
When securitization attempts do occur, and exceptional measures
bypassing or bracketing off liberal democratic norms are proposed, such
instances should be investigated with great attention. The focus on
politics of exceptionality (and possibly of the extraordinary), invites
questions about political sovereignty – if the sovereign is who decides on
the exception, who is the sovereign in energy policy? is that legitimate
and justified? whose interests does it serve? are exceptional measures
justified and targeted at those vulnerabilities in the energy system that
are most pressing etc. Those are some of the questions Critical Energy
Security Studies should begin to answer. But there is also the other goal.
“Securitization is a mode of intervention that blocks something specific
and in a specific way: by defining what is not allowed to happen and can
therefore be prevented by all means necessary” – argues Wæver,
emphasizing that securitization is “the selection of non-change” (Wæver,
2019). The question of what change is enabled and what is prevented
becomes particularly salient in the light of the imminent energy transition
and decarbonization of the economy for the purpose of mitigating
climate change. Securitization is central to understanding the political
(in)feasibility of necessary transition, and critical energy security studies
have all the necessary tools to study this “production of non-change”,
identifying where, why, and by whom change which is not only possible
but needed – is stalled.
Acknowledgements
This paper emerged thanks to the discussions and research conducted
as part of the project "Towards a common European energy
policy? Energy security debates in Poland and Germany," funded by the
Polish-German Science Foundation. I thank Aleh Cherp and Jessica
Jewell, who pointed out the significance of “real securitization” as
opposed to ritual energy security talk, as well as Åse Gornitzka, who
directed my attention to core state powers and their link to securitization.
For their comments on earlier drafts I thank Julia Szulecka, Trine
Villumsen Berling, and Ole Wæver, as well as the participants of the
2018 workshop “Imagining Energy Security” at the Centre for Advanced
Security Theory, University of Copenhagen. I am also very grateful to the
three anonymous reviewers for very constructive critique, and to James
Longbotham for the final copy editing.
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