Theorising Security

Question 1

Exemplify an author who highlights the merit of security within IR:

Answer 1

Barry Buzan

Question 2

What is security like as a discipline within IR? How can it be interpreted?

Answer 2

Your definition of security depends on your theoretical or metatheoretical background:

• Economic
• Societal
• Environmental

Question 3

Describe the security dilemma:

2 points to mention here

Answer 3

• So called other minds problem
• Ambiguous weapons

policy makers must choose how to respond or understand the situation in an existential condition of uncertainty

Question 4

The security dilemma represents what?

Answer 4

A mainstream approach at the heart of IR which allows the understanding of security as post positive (theory from within as oppose to external value free analysis)

Question 5

Describe traditional / neo realist security

Answer 5

State centric analysis:

• focus on material capabilities
• how can we protect a state through military means

Question 6

Describe neoliberal security. Give two thinkers associated with the discipline

Answer 6

• Doyle
• Russett
• DPT, neoliberal institutionalism

Question 7

what did Buzan say about his theory of mature anarchy?

Answer 7

• “excessively self referential security policies are ultimately self defeating”
• Essentially a theory that says states should act maturely in a context of anarchy. *But the emergence of international society is a long and uneven process

Question 8

Describe Jarvis idea of security regime (1983) (variation of mature anarchy)

Answer 8

• Exemplified EU powers all moderate individualistic and competitive polices expecting others to reciprocate

Question 9

Describe Deutsche security community (1957) (variation of mature anarchy)

Answer 9

• Community or region where large scale violence has become very unlikely or even unthinkable

Question 10

Describe common security in Palme report (1982) (variation of mature anarchy)

Answer 10

• “joint survival” NOT “mutual descruction”

Question 11

What is Buzan and Weaver’s regional security complex theory? (1983)

Answer 11

• Interdependence within regions but not between regions

Question 12

What did the Copenhagen school do?

Answer 12

• Challenged view that military state centrism was the only way to view security
• Military, political, economic, societal and environmental security

Question 13

Buzan wrote what as part of the Copenhagen school?

Answer 13

• People, states and fear

- He made traditional security as subset of a wider definition of security in 1983

Question 14

Why was the end of the cold war significant for security studies?

Answer 14

• Security studies had failed to predict its end

Question 15

What did the end of the cold war mean for security studies?

Answer 15

• Questioning of the meaning of security
• Broadening the discipline: who or what was the threat now? How can we protect ourselves from new threats like the environment

Question 16

Give quote that exemplifies the influence that social constructivism can have on security from Booth

what does this quote tell us about the social constructivist view on security studies?

Answer 16

• “security is something we define, not something which we respond to”
• SCs argue we have created the idea of security
• Based on IR assumptions
• Those assumptions can be associated through socialisation for example

Question 17

Adler and Barnet apply social constructivism to what theory? (a variation of security communities

Answer 17

• Deutsch’s theory of security communities

- they say that security is what states make of it

Question 18

What did Katzenstein argue in the culture of national security in 1996?

Answer 18

• Security interests are defined by actors

Question 19

According to Katzenstein, what is social constructivism trying to do?

Answer 19

• Find a middle way between material structures like weapons and ideational structures and the influence they have

Question 20

In terms of securitisation who came up with the idea of security constituting a speech act?

Answer 20

• Buzan and Waever

- if we assume that securitisation is construciton of a threat then it is a duty to deconstruct it

Question 21

What is a speech act?

Answer 21

• The way we talk about IR has a specific function, to promote or legitimise a certain action in IR.

Question 22

Exemplify securitisation of an issue by speech acts

Answer 22

• E.g. UKIP want to leave EU, migrants security threat, media contribute to the securitisation of the issue
• Islamiphobia another e.g.

Question 23

How does Booth describe critical security studies?

Answer 23

• “united more by perceived defects in the orthodoxy than by any particular alternative vision”
• He saw the idea of studying security as an emancipatory activity

Question 24

What do critical security studies theorists argue?

Answer 24

• There is no concise alternate vision provided
• Argue that critical approaches to security studies deepen it
• they understand studying security as an emancipatory project to look and change international relations reflected in critical security studies

Question 25

Who was in the Welsh school? (formed in Aberyswyth)

Answer 25

• Booth, Richard, Jones, Smith

Question 26

Who influenced the welsh school?

Answer 26

• Gramsci, Habermas, Gramsci, Horkheimer

Question 27

The welsh school is based on what kind of study?

Answer 27

• Post positivist study
• No study is infallible, everything has an agenda
• Emancipatory motivations, to study security to improve the conditions of IR
• Disputes the epistemology, ontology and methodology of traditional approaches

Question 28

What does Campbell discuss?

Answer 28

• How US FP has constructed national identity

Question 29

What did Booth say about poststructuralist security?

Answer 29

• “it undermines the traditional conception of both security and its referent object”

Question 30

Who highlights the absence of women in interntional system?

Answer 30

Enloe

Question 31

What is the feminist theory of Hartsock?

Answer 31

Gendered roles, e.g. why do we view women as non combatant actors?

Question 32

Who said the security of the state is not the same thing as the security of the individual?

Answer 32

• Bilgin

Question 33

Natural feminist scholars made a distinction between?

Answer 33

• state and individual security

Question 34

What did Booth believe about women in IR?

Answer 34

• “only by showing where women fit into IR, can we understand where the power lies”
• The absense of women in IR does not allow us to fully comprehend power dynamics

Question 35

what is a criticism of securitisation?

Answer 35

• Everything becomes a security issue, it is too broad

Question 36

What does Hansen say about speech and narrative?

Answer 36

• In the same way we can use speech and narrative to define something, we may use it in the same way to desecuritise, something which is negelected

Question 37

Security studies is said to neglect what?

Answer 37

• Gender, it doesn’t fit into the framework

Question 38

what are moral and ethical criticisms of securitisation?

Answer 38

• Absence of a normative conceptualisation of securitisation/ desecuritisation
• Means it sometimes neglects the political consequences of theorising security