Copenhagen School Petr Ocelík ESSn4007 / MEBn4001 Outline • Assumptions • Securitization • Security sectors • Regional security complex • Revisions 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 • Emergency measures • Linkages Securitization • Securitization actors: 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 • Constative act: the literal meaning of the utterance • Appellative act: the social function of the utterance, for what purpose it is used in a given context • Performative act: the effect of the utterance in a given context “I warn you, the oil is running out!” • Constative act: made vocal sounds, said that with a Czech accent • Appellative act: making a warning about (an existential) threat • Performative act: made you (audience) feel insecure (or amused) • Facilitating conditions Facilitating (felicity) conditions 1. The speech act is following the grammar of security (i.e.: existential threat to referent object requires emergency measures) 2. The relationship between speaker and audience (i.e.: the speaker has a privileged/authoritative position in relation the audience) 3. Features of the alleged threats that either facilitate or impede securitization (i.e.: information about the alleged threat outside of the speech act) Buzan et al. 1998 in Stritzel 2007: 364 degree of widening modes of widening (modified Weisová 2004) horizontal (sectors) vertical (referent objects) values threat sources narrow concept military-political state sovereignty, territorial integrity other states, (non-state actors) widened concept societal nation, societal groups national unity, identity (states), nations, migrants, hostile cultures economic state, non-state actors, institutions, individuals development, subsistence states, market failures environmental environmental systems, 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 Revisions (Stritzel 2007) • Distinguishes between internalist and externalist position (compare with Balzacq 2005). • Internalist position: speech acts are capable to transform understanding of a certain issue (if the felicity conditions are fulfilled): “By saying the words, something is done.” (Buzan et al. 1997: 26) • Externalist position: securitization is a process – not just a particular speech act - that takes place in concrete socio-temporal context. • Broader discursive environment • Production of “threat-texts” • Power positions (field) Stritzel’s revision Discursive context / embeddedness • The speech acts and texts (“threat-texts”) are embedded within a network of constitutive rules and narratives that surround them. (Stritzel 2006: 369) • The (security-related) meanings do not come “out of nowhere” or just from securitization actors’ heads. → involved actors/audiences need to understand a speech act (or a threat-text) • Actors exploit discursive contexts as stocks of ideas, images, analogies, metaphors or – historical/cultural traumas (Sztompka 2000). Historical/cultural trauma (Sztompka 2000) Stritzel’s revision “Threat-texts” (Stritzel 2007) • In contrast to exceptional speech acts, threat-texts evolve over longer periods of time and have performative force that shapes discourse as well as (consequently) power-relations. • Again, “fit” of the threat-text with the existing discourse (its resonance) is crucial for its influence. • → localization (Stritzel 2011): re-interpretation of a threat-text in a particular context where it meets a new (local) audience. • Thus: what counts as a security practice in one period or locale, does not necessarily count in the same way in other periods/locales (ibid.). Threat-texts Stritzel’s revision Power positions: embedded agency • Agency is embedded sociopolitical context where actors occupy different power positions defined by access to cultural (knowledge), moral (legitimacy), and formal (capability to make decisions) resources. • → There is an uneven distribution of opportunities and constraints to the actors. • → This embeddedness poses objective (in sense actor-independent) limitations (objective context according to Balzacq) to securitization moves. Power positions: embedded agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations Summary • A comprehensive framework for security analysis • Esp. theory of securitization now part of the mainstream • The objective: desecuritization of the debate • Criticisms: state-centric, inconsistent use of constructivist and rationalist concepts, focus mainly on discourse (omits context), conceptual and methodological doubts (audience)