Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen

New 'Schools' in Security Theory

and their Origins between Core and Periphery

Ole Wver
Professor of International Relations
Department of Political Science - University of Copenhagen
Rosenborggade 15, DK-1130 Copenhagen K, Denmark
Phone: +45 3532 3431 Fax: +45 3532 3399
e-mail: ow@ifs.ku.dk
www.polsci.ku.dk/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 almost
completely apart. In Europe it is common to present the theoretical landscape in
terms of, 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 being the one between offensive realism and defensive realism! Previously,
almost all theoretical inventions in IR were made in the U.S. Currently, distinct
theories are widely associated with places like Aberystwyth (Critical Security
Studies), Paris (Bigo's Bourdieu-inspired work) and Copenhagen (securitization). The
new European approaches differ not only from security studies in the US, they also
stand apart from most 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 European security theories. The explanation draws partly on the political
context in the different regions, 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
the other parts of the world in a helpful role?

Recently, a number of theories or research programmes often called schools have

emerged within European security studies. Although security studies is habitually seen as a
sub-field within International Relations (IR), these schools have not been sectorial
manifestations of the main theories as defined by the over-arching landscape or grand
debates of the discipline at large. Nor have 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. The debate within and among and
across these schools has regularly been characterised as particularly fruitful. As noted by
amongst other Mike Williams, it is with some surprise that the discipline receives new
impulses from security studies, a corner expected to represent the most reactionary and
policy obsessed (of a generally reactionary and policy obsessed discipline):
over the past decade, the field of security studies has become one of the most dynamic and contested
areas in International Relations. In particular, it has become perhaps the primary forum in which
broadly social constructivist approaches have challenged traditional largely Realist and nonRealist
theories on their home turf, the are in which some of the most vibrant new approaches to the
analysis of international politics are being developed, and the realm in which some of the most
engaged theoretical debates are taking place. 1

This has largely been a European debate. Important contributions are

increasingly coming from both non-Western and American scholars, but
the emergence of these distinct theories is widely associated with places
like Aberystwyth (Critical Security Studies), Paris (Bigo's Bourdieuinspired 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 to assume that there is something inherently good or preferable about this particular
family of theories and that therefore the causes found should be taken as guidance about what
to do in order to emulate this development. On the contrary, it is very likely that theoretical
developments elsewhere are either generally superior or locally more relevant. The intention
is exactly to get a clearer sense of the context-boundness of these European theories and
schools.
Are these theories peculiarly 'European' and if so, why? The paper aims at explaining the
emergence of these European security theories. The explanation draws partly on the political
context in different regions, 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 the other parts of the world in a helpful
role?

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 in Eriksson 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, The Increasing 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.
1

Security studies as a field or sub-discipline

The focus of the present paper is on security theory as a distinct phenomenon, defined as
theory development for the use in security studies. Relatively little has been written on the
history and evolution of security studies2, and the recent waves of sophisticated,
methodologically self-reflective writings 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 in security studies regarding main
theories and almost nothing in terms of explanations for their development. This paper will
therefore be in relatively uncharted waters and it certainly should be seen as a highly
preliminary attempt.
Security theory is often linked to IR theory, but correspondence is far from complete. For
instance in the 1970s when interdependence theory came close to being the dominant IR
theory, it left relatively limited marks on security studies. Therefore, parts of the discussion
below will overlap with discussions about IR theory, but the defining criteria will throughout
not be the discipline of IR but those theories that are drawn upon in security studies. Much of
this happens not in IR/political science departments, but in think tanks, foreign policy
research institutes and similar places. Often such policy oriented research is relatively atheoretical or draws on some common sense mix of theoretical fragments, 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 independent
variables 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
studies exhibits 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 IR about rationalism and constructivism, where clearly
constructivists and reflectivists have an easier time in Europe than in the US, and hard core
rational choice is far more influential in the US than in Europe, 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, with the 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 on
either 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 mentioned in
David Baldwin, Security Studies and the End of the Cold War, World Politics, vol 48, Oct 1995, pp. 117141; Ken Booth, 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 Studies at 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 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;
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 of
International 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 and Phil Williams, Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Policies, London: Croom Helm
1975, pp. 3-21.
2

a similar overview on the other side and vice-versa. (Obviously, this does not mechanically
and fully follow geographical criteria, but the trend is nevertheless clear.)
In Europe there is a vibrant debate over a number of competing schools in security studies:
critical security 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 the majority of American scholars. (In this case, Canada is more European
than American and partly simply itself with its own literature on human security3, and
therefore the main contrast is not Europe 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.
theses written in the US), these debates register only very marginally.4 The leading debate is
instead likely to be seen as the intra-realist debate between offensive and defensive realism 5
(and other distinctions within 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 over particular hypotheses like the democratic peace6 and
increasingly a debate that looks more like the European debates: the meta-theoretical debate
between constructivists and rationalists.7 However, the latter is also the one that most clearly
C. Thomas and P. Wilkin (eds.) Globalizaton, Human Security, and the African Experience, London: Lynne
Rienner 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 Security Agenda, The University of British Columbia: Institute of International
Relations, Working Paper No. 30, April 2000; Kanti Bajpai, 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 Global Security, vol.
15:3, 2001, pp. 277-294; Roland Paris, Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?, International Security,
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 and Matt McDonald, The Utility of Human Security: Which Humans? What Security? A Reply to
Thomas & Tow, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(3), September 2002, pp. 373-377; Thomas and Tow, Gaining
Security by Trashing the State? A Reply to Bellamy & McDonald, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(3), September
2002, pp. 379-382. See also Canadas Human Security Web Site: www.humansecurity.gc.ca, Human
Security Network: www.humansecuritynetwork.org, the Commission 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 Barry Buzans People States and Fear (1983, 1991). It never made a big impact in the US, while
it became a cenral reference, a standard 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. The Perils of Anarchy: Neo-realism and International Security. Cambridge: MIT Press 1995. Pp
ix-xii; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: 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: Columbia University 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 Papers 42/2001, 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 in International Security and elsewhere.
7
Peter J. Katzenstein, Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security in Peter J. Katzenstein
(ed.) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University
3

shows the differences, as it will be explained below.

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 in general
Power and Institutions in International
Order (not really anymore the classical IR liberalism
debate over the role of institutions, but more questions
related to the challenges of building a unipolar order - or
empire)

Possible avenues for explanation

Elsewhere, I have elaborated more complicated and extensive explanatory models for the
developments within IR theory in a particular region or country 8. Others have made parallel
arguments or 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 the delineation 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 the traditional, semi-positivist view, that reality rests in itself and theories only
mirror this, nor the general 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

Press 1996, pp. 1-32; Ronald L. 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 in Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture, op.cit., pp. 498-537;
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, "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? How Americas National Security Concerns Shaped Political Culture Research, European
Journal of International Relations, vol. 6:4, 2000, pp. 543-573.
8
'The Sociology of a Not so International Discipline: American and European Developments in International
Relations', in International 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 Henrik Breitenbauch, Understanding National IR Disciplines Outside the
United States: Political Culture and the Construction of Internatinoal Relations in Denmark, draft March 10,
2004, G. Holden several articles and papers; etc.

the raise of idealism and somehow the next world war II with equal necessity explained
the victory of realism; icy cold war periods caused realism and neo-realism, while dtente
led to interdependence and Keohane. I and Brian Schmidt have explained elsewhere
why this kind of explanation does not hold. The interpretations and conclusions reached
do not follow from events but can only be understood through the discourse internal
debates cf. the two world wars that cause opposite theoretical orientations. However,
the kind of issues a political community is faced with surely does influence the nature of
the debate. Therefore, the formulation about practical usages: IR and (more so) security
studies are surely used (in any sense of the term) and it is important to have a sense of the
challenges and debates a community is preoccupied with in order to understand the nature
of the debates and thereby 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 the theories. 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 these theories and the emergence of which therefore needs to be
understood. To what extent the theories are good, useful, scientifically satisfactory,
progressive, etc, is a question for another or rather many other days.
Aberystwyth has been one of the most important sites for the development of so-called
Critical Security 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 this case, the metaphor of a town is therefore more problematic, but
especially for the emancipatory wing of CSS, the two main figures are located at the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth Ken Booth and Richard Wyn Jones. The defining work
of the school, the anthology Critical Security Studies, was edited by two post-Canadians
Keith Krause (Geneva) and Mike Williams (then Portland, Maine), but Mike Williams
moved to Aberystwyth in 1998. The name Welsh School has occasionally been used about
this approach.11 CSS has had non-Western participants involved in the development of the
theory, and as we will see below (last part of the paper), it is probably the one of the three
that most easily works in a non-Western context.
CSS argues, that we as researchers should avoid seeing the world through the eyes of the
state as implied by using the concept of national security as key category. The state is often
the problem as much 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 the state is to define it in terms of emancipation.
Ken Booth, "Security and Emancipation", Review of International Studies, 17:4, (1991), pp.313-327; Keith
Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.) Critical Security Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
1997; Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies: Politics and
Methods, Mershon International Studies Review, vol. 40, supplement 2 (1996), pp. 229-254; Keith Krause
"Critical Theory and Security Studies: The Research Programme 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. Remapping Security Landscapes", European
Journal of International Relations, 4:3 (1998), pp.327-346; Bradley S. Klein, Strategic Studies and World
Order: The Global Politics of Deterrence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Lene Hansen, "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
interventionist claims in international society, Review of International Studies, vol. 29:3, 2003, pp. 321-40.
10

By implication, the concept of security becomes used in a rather classical sense, but on a
different referent object: it is about real threats, only the real-real ones against real people
and not the allegedly real ones voiced by the state. In this respect, CSS sometimes comes to
sound rather objectivist in its concept of threats and security, and its political agenda comes
close to classical critical peace research of the 1970s Galtung-Senghaas brand that used to
be strong in Northern Europe (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 and maybe 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 is not Critical Theory, i.e. feminism, normative theory and
post-structuralism. In practices, the majority of 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 is artificial to have Krause, Williams and Wver located in different schools13,
whereas the difference between the approaches of Booth and Buzan is probably clear enough.
Therefore, at the cost of downplaying in this context some of the most interesting crosscutting writings, focus will when discussing schools be on the most distinct versions and
therefore on the Welsh school in its emancipatory format. Writers like Williams,
Huysmans, Krause and Hansen are however important to keep in the picture not least as
representatives of the broader debate around and across these schools.

Bradley S. Klein, Strategic Studies and World Order, Cambrdige Univesity Press 1994.; Simon Dalby,
Creating the Second 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 Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, University of Minnesota Press 1992 and
not least the epilogue to the second, revised edition (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 and Mike 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 narrow concept of security meant to restrict the resort to violence and
defence to only the state and only in relation to physical threats which was an important element of the order
creating process of removing these instruments from diverse groups and individuals in the feudal order and
from religious and identity referents in the religious and civil wars of the 16 th and 17th Century. That is: to
limit violence and establish peaceful order, it was imperative to narrow the security logic to the minimalist
reference of state and war. Thus, the concept of security is not an isolated question and certainly not a purely
academic one of post-positivist progress, but a thoroughly political question tied in with the whole modern
political language of state, sovereignty, community and identity. To widen or in other ways redefine the
concept of security is therefore not an innocent matter of simple conceptual improvement, but a political
move not to be carried out light-heartedly but with full awareness 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.
12

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 on the first, because securitisation is what defines most distinctly the school in a metatheoretical 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
societal security. The concept of security complexes points to the importance of the
regional level in security analysis and suggests an analytical scheme for structuring analysis
of how security concerns tie together in a regional formation.16
Part of the background for the Copenhagen School was the debate in politics and security
studies in the 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 what makes a security issue a security issue, it is possible to extend the net
widely and look for security in all sectors and with all possible referent objects. It is
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: a response to Buzan and Wver", in
Review 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
European Security 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, Copenhagen Papers 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 for the 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 de
Wilde, 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 review of the school in this respect is Jef Huysmans "Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the
Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda in Europe", in European Journal of International
Relations 4:4 (1998), pp.479-506. For important reflections on the origins and context for the emergence of
the school, see also several chapters (and especially the editors introduction to) Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich
Jung (eds.) Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research, Routledge 2004. Especially in
Scandinavia but increasingly beyond, a lot of applications have been done, but also many critical comments
and revisions have been published. See Johan Eriksson, Observers or Advocates? On the Political Role of
Security Analysts, i Cooperation and Conflict, 1999:3; Iver B. Neumann, "Identity and the Outbreak of War :
Or Why the Copenhagen School of Security Studies Should Include the Idea of 'Violisation' in Its Framework
of Analysis", International Journal of Peace Studies, 3:1 (January 1998), pp. 7-22; Hansen, Lene (2000) "The
Little Mermaids 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 World Politics, International Journal of Peace Studies 3 (1): 23-46; Ceyhan,
op cit.; Williams, Words, Images, op.cit.
14

Sectors and regional security complexes stem from Barry Buzan altough the main reference now is to
collective Copenhagen 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 New Framework).
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 International Security, Cambridge University Press 2003.
15

necessary to be able to discriminate and separate security issues from non-security. Only by
having a clear sense of what is security, is it possible to open 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. This approach 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 actual linguistic 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
referent object (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 to legitimising the use of force, and more generally opening the way for the
state to mobilise or to take special 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 of the 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 that really endanger some object, rather it is to understand the processes of
constructing a shared understanding of what is to be considered and collectively responded to
as a threat. The process of securitisation is a speech act. It is not interesting as a sign
referring to something more real: it is the utterance 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 are security issues in
themselves and then afterwards possibly talked about in terms of security. 18 Thus the exact
definition and criteria of securitisation is the intersubjective establishment of an existential
threat with a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects.
A characteristic feature of the CS is its scepticism towards security. It has often antidemocratic and anti-creative implications. The usual critical strategy of widening security
has a problem when it accepts the underlying assumption of the mainstream approach that
the more security the better and extends this to still more areas. Securitising environment,
identity and religion subsumes these areas under a problematic rationality. In contrast, the CS
sees security as a negative, as a failure to deal with issues as normal politics. Ideally, politics
should be able to unfold according to normal procedures without 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 threats against which we have
countermeasures but to move them out of this threat-defence sequence and into the ordinary
public sphere (or the economy, or letting religion be religion19, or what other mechanisms it
is then left to). In a conflict resolution perspective, the way forward is often de-securitisation

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: Columbia University 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 and Derrida on the problem of founding a republic, American
Political Science Review, vol. 85:1, 1991, pp. 97-113; John Forrester, 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.
17

rather than the production of more security, cf. the case of European integration (the Monnet
method).20
Paris has been the main site of a distinct theoretical development, mostly inspired by
Bourdieu and other sociologists, with a dose of Foucault and a thorough commitment to
detailed, empirical investigations 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 figure in this development and his journal Cultures &
Conflits has published a number of important works in 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 the Paris approach.22
Empirically, Bigo has amongst other things shown how internal and external security merge
as agencies 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 crime and terror. In-security is largely a product of security
discourses and security policy. Bigo starts from a conception of a field and its actors and
ask what they do. If done simplistically, the actor-based approach could easily become
something close to conspiracy theory. But by now this work has evolved into a very elaborate
and unusually well documented mapping of practices notably also at the micro level by the
various agencies involved on the security field. An important advantage of this approach 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 quite
demanding task, if you have to penetrate these various agencies and agents from police and
other bureaucracies to private security companies and their more or less hidden,
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 Unlimited as chapter 10 in Wver, Concepts of Security, University of Copenhagen 1997.) On the
question of security dilemmas and security systems in the societal sector, see also Wver, Identity,
Integration and Security: Solving the Sovereignty Puzzle in E.U. Studies, in Journal of International Affairs,
vol. 48:2, Winter 1995, pp. 389-431, and European Security Identities in Journal of Common Market
Studies, vol. 34:1, March 1996, pp. 103-32. See also: Paul Roe, "The Intrastate Security Dilemma: 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 the Changing World System, International Studies Quarterly, 38:3 (1994);
Kristian Gerner, From the Black Sea to the Adriatic: 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 la scurit intrieure: penser autrement la scurit, in Anne-Marie Le Gloannec (ed.) Entre
Union et Nations, Paris: Presses de la 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, Security and 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. 171204; Bigo, Didier (2002) To Reassure and Protect, After September 11 on web-page by the Social Science
Research Council after 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, The Securitization 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 +
20

10

transnational networks, but it has the great advantage of being able to keep up with a society
increasingly characterised by professionalisation and technical rationalisation, where specific
social positions are privileged in relation 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 most actively criticise security as such. By linking more directly to Nietzsche and
Heidegger, they question why at all we are concerned about security. Only the timid and
unambitious strive for security better is to live interestingly and less predictably. Also the
point by Derrida and others about the typically modern 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
On the one hand, it is quite easy to ridicule this in the institutional setting of security studies,
because is 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 and experience difference. Not very promising. On the other hand,
exactly the post-911 debate shows the relevance of this radical position, because ultimately
an inescapable question in relation to terror is to what 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 risk which leaves us in mortal
and intolerable danger until removed is deemed to drive us all into a vicious circle of
increased insecurity and counter-productive security strategies. Terror can only be dealt with
if not totalised as a threat, and thus ultimately any promising strategy has to have an element
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 exception of James Der Derian) not been able to forge ties with policy research
and has thus remained a debate limited 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 strong influence of feminism on Booths thinking):
individual security should be given priority, state security is over-emphasised by traditional,
masculinist scholarship, and sometimes it is also stressed how the very 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 by Elshtain)26. This
scholarship is an important part of the broader debate, but it is not easy to define a distinct
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. The literature that developed originally among mostly sociologists and primarily in
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 Political Philosophy 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 Behnke, Postmodernizing Security, paper
presented at ECPR Joint Session of Workshops, Mannheim, 26-31 March 1999.
23

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
Conflict especially the Swedish one on conscription, etc etc.
24

11

relation to environment and production systems, obviously meet at some point the concerns
of security studies, especially as security widens beyond the international into various
domestic settings, and risk simultaneously spreads 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 only just begun, but it should tie in
relatively smoothly with some of the existing concerns in the European security debate.
--An aside on the term schools: The pattern is not totally consistent, and one can find the
term applied to e.g. realism (the realist school), but mostly the main theories that are seen as
constituting the core debates at the centre of the discipline (i.e. leading circles in the US) are
not referred to as schools. There is no constructivist school, Wendtian school or YaleChicago school. This is not only because these (American born) theories are seen as too
wide-spread i.e. going beyond any locality because it is generally understood also that
the English school is not about scholarship in England, but a specific tradition of work
referring to certain referent points (Wight, Bull, and the whole British Committee); and the
Copenhagen School keeps being used as a name despite the fact that with growth 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
efforts distinct enough that one could claim that school gets used when something is not
systematic enough to be a theory or a research programme. Probably, the implicit linguistic
rules here are that a school is not a 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 an element of repressive tolerance built into
the term.
--To sum up, what is characteristic of these European schools of security studies, the
following can be a first attempt28:
Shared:

Reflections on the concept of security as such, i.e. as interesting in itself and not only a
matter of delineation 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, and as such one face hard ethical dilemmas as security actor.

Niklas Luhmann: Risiko und Gefahr in Soziologische Aufklrung 5. Konstruktivistische Perspektiven.

Westdeutscher Verlag, Obladen 1990, pp. 131 169; Ulrick Beck, Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity,
London: Sage 1992; Mikkel Vedby 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, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and
Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press 1991; Franois Ewald, Insurance and Risk 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 international relations, paper presented at ISA and BISA 2003.
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.
27

12

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 be to 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.
The first level is almost too easy in this case. It is obvious, that the European debates are
more reflectivist or post-positivist than the American ones. The spectrum of metatheoretical positions probably does not differ much between the US and Europe (and many
individuals move back and forth), but the median point does. Therefore, the seemingly
similar debates, that could be seen as being about constructivism meets security studies on
both sides, turn out very differently. In US security studies, 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 with more
radical positions. Accordingly, the debate mostly in International Security over the role of
constructivism in security studies29, turns out to be about assessing the importance of ideas
in security studies, 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

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, "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; Theo Farrell, 'Constructivist Security Studies: Portrait
of a Research Program', International Studies Review, 4, 1, 2002, pp. 49-72.
29

13

constructivism as distinct from a critical constructivism.30 This striking contrast in the

elaboration of seemingly similar impulses illustrates the difference in context and normality.
This meta-theoretical difference in turn is already well-explained by previous contributions
to the literature on sociology of IR and other writings on the social sciences. The
explanation has many layers including deep ones around the historical constitution of
national identities, where Dorothy Ross 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 by naturalist social science and threatened by
historicist approaches.31 Abstract and scientific social science is therefore a repeated
preference in US, even when this comes in new forms for each wave. To this 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 factors
related to the formation and delineation of the different social sciences32. Finally, the Cold
War period strengthened 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 to this, it is necessary to pause a bit and complicate this simple and
familiar story about positivist Americans versus post-Positivist Europeans:
The two sides differ not only in terms of meta-theory (positivism/post-positivism) but also
about IR theory (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, security studies has its distinct style. In security studies (as
represented primarily by the journals International Security and Security Studies), the
dominant form of research is more historical, less oriented towards formal rational choice
than in IO-style IR.34 This is not an instance of traditionalism a la second debate (Hedley
Bull) where judgment is seen as integral to research35, because a journal like International
Security is at least as insistent as IO on strict causal and positivist social science. This
shows in the actual publishing record but maybe more revealingly in places like the
instruction sheet for contributors. It asks a potential author to sum up (at least for herself) her
argument in an arrow diagram because if this is not possible, the argument is not clear yet.
This implies that an argument necessarily takes the form of propositions about cause-effect
Here, it probably also plays a role, that the field of practiced policy research in the security field is more
closely disciplined and specialised in the US. Therefore there are few constructivists (very few radical
constructivists), whereas it is 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 less specialisation/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-securityoriented) discussions mostly as a ghost: Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, a very large part of
theoretical arguments were justified 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-direct way than within security studies, where it
remained something like the orthodoxy.
34
Michael Brown, Steven E. Miller and Seam M. Lynn-Jones (eds.) Rational Choice and Security Studies:
Stephen Walt and His Critics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Cf. also the statistics in Wver, The Sociology
of a Not so International Discipline, especially figure 3 (p. 702) and Table A1 (p. 727). Unfortunately, these
statistics include only IO and ISQ, not IS and SS, but I think it is clear that the distribution between different
meta-theories in the non-security journals differ markedly from what one would find in the security journals.
35
Hedley Bull, 'International Theory: The Case for the Classical Approach', in World Politics, 3 (1966), 361377. See also the recent attempt to elaborate this methodological stance: Robert Jackson, The Global
Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States, Oxford, Clarendon Press 2000(?).
30

14

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 of general 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 and to refine them by modifications, complications and often
combinations. The preference is -- in contrast 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 years especially: what should we expect of other
great powers and major regional powers? When will they turn aggressive and expansionist,
and when will they be status quo powers? In principle, the offensive/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
on historical 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. As we have seen above, questions about organisation and usage have already
started to creep into this first part of the discussion, and in order to get to grips with these
layers, lets first zoom in a bit more systematically at the differences in form between security
theory in the two settings (i.e. condense the results of the previous section) and from there try
to distil out the elements of an explanation, because to 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 that get gradually
clearer:

Contrast

36

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 selfdefinition and self-shaping.

See some elements of this in Mearsheimer, The Tragedy, op.cit.

15

One major difference is that on the US side, reflections on the concept of security play no
integrated role in research. Such considerations are at most involved in delineating the field
and thereby locating the questions about which then to gain empirical, causal, historical and
theoretical knowledge.37 If an article is defined as security analysis, this will typically mean
that at most the reflection on this status consists in defining security studies as being about
e.g. the study of the threat, use and control of military force38 and therefore a theoreticalempirical 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 not present in the analysis as
such. In the European debates, questions about the concept of security became the launching
pad for a general attention to the self-reflective nature of the discipline, i.e. that the discipline
not only studied security, but it also had its own concepts of security and thereby its own
security practices. Doing security therefore implied to reflect on the practice of speaking in
the name of 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 at first within and because of the particular questions related to security, but which
increasingly influences more general IR debates. In the US, influences clearly went the
opposite way: the theoretical positions within security studies derive from general IR debates.
This is probably most easily seen in the case of the debate on constructivism. The main salvo
from the constructivists, the Katzenstein volume39, was launched explicitly as a move in a
general IR debate where constructivists found that it was time to prove their worth on the
home ground of realism: security. Most of the contributors were not primarily working in
fields or institutions traditionally seen as security. In contrast 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 theory development.40 In the context of
American IR, this change is valued. It is generally assumed to be a sign of maturity to get
away from particular theories and debates in sub-fields and instead develop general theories
that are in turn applied to different fields like European integration, international security or
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 are already home turf for the new approaches. Implicitly, the question
of concepts of security is here reduced to a question of issues, 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 and suddenly the
discussion employs a logic very close to securitisation/desecuritisation when it explains why various issues
have 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",
International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1 (201), pp.--) show in a grand overview of 25 years of International
Security, how at best the widening debate register as a question of a re-drawing of the boundary of the issue
area and meta-theoretical pluralism is proven 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 debate on 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", International Security 8, 1 (1983):129-153. Famous anti-wideners
include Stephen Walt "The Renaissance op.cit. and through a mostly different route Daniel Deudney,
"The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security," Millennium, 1990, Vol. 19:
461-476.
39
Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New
York: Columbia University Press 1996.
40
The golden age is presented by David Baldwin as the 2nd of 4 phases of security studies, see: David
Baldwin, Security Studies and the End of the Cold War, World Politics, vol 48, Oct 1995, pp. 117-141.
37

16

trade disputes.41
The new European theories developed in relation to public discussions about security and
attempts to develop specific theorising for this purpose. Thus, these theoretical developments
were the product of complicated, personal processes of political and theoretical choices and
settling or coming to terms with ones role in-between academia, expertise and citizen/public
intellectual.42 It is often stated that IR 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 thinktanks) are very directly linked to policy. Also academic journals like International Security
have a more implicit policy orientation expressed by frequent discussions in terms of what
we (the US) should do, where equivalents are much more rarely found in any European
academic journal. However, the disconnect between large parts of academic IR and policy
circles is also very significant in the US, and European research typically has a broader
concept of politics, not only 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
struggling with security issues, the American ones much more detached as part of academic
debates between various explanatory theories. This in turn is in the American optic the most
policy relevant, because the role of the analyst is to provide the relevant knowledge of causeeffect relations that enable the optimal 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 the
relationship 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 the story. 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 between universities and think tanks.44 Theoretical research is the task of university
researchers, of which some try to be policy relevant, also do policy pieces and direct their
research towards those questions that are meaningful for key policy questions. Think tanks,
on the other hand, seem to be under a heavy pressure for doing extremely practical, straightforward research and researchers there usually do not stray too much into theorising, not
even in the application/utilisation sense. This pattern does not create the distance/interaction
tension which in the European case has often been the room for innovation, i.e. beyond the
grip of the discipline and its constant grand debate repetitions and yet enough in contact to
engage and influence. This is closely linked to patterns of funding, where in the US relatively
In relation to European integration studies, this argument is made forcefully by Andrew Moravcsik, The
Choice for Europe: 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 many leading 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 (Charles Kupchan, e.g.), or about units within established universities that
are designated to policy orientation and manage to attract money of the policy kind for research within
universities and drawing on faculty for that purpose (e.g. Harvard).
41

17

much is distributed via competitive grants. The individual researcher is therefore mainly
exposed to the pressure of a large market and weaker direct social presence pressure from
smaller institutions. 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 relevance is less located in small and medium sized (maybe ad hoc)
institutions, where in Europe the balance is more towards the latter. [I do not have data on
this, and I have to investigate it in more detail to see if this actually holds so far it is quite
impressionistic.]
In Europe, there seems to be much more of a continuum of academically oriented research
institutes that are nevertheless not part of a university. Places like the Max Planck Institute in
Germany and CERI in France, but maybe in the present context, most importantly the role of
peace research45. It was clearly more than influential in relation to Copenhagen and
especially relevant for Ken Booth in Aberystwyth, 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
oriented but not a-theoretical. It is of course a long story how peace research changed with
different intellectual and 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 who were 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 peace research as a grand project, this
probably has to do with the sociological micro-mechanisms, the social conventions within
peace research institutes roughly what kind of argument you can use towards each other
where questions of relevance and political implications are a legitimate part of the game in a
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 in itself 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 IR is 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 and see the alternative affiliation as coincidence.
But when it becomes common that a considerable part of the new ideas come from people in
odd locations, it becomes unconvincing to write this off as coincidence, and the mechanism
might have more to do with the way disciplinary mechanisms work within IR as a discipline
and therefore a need for distance. Totally trans-disciplinary institutes that refuse all
relationship to the old disciplines and insist on only the subject matter easily become too
instrumental and without a basis for self-reflection, but the situation with dual disciplinary
definitions can be helpful in both stimulating new thinking and delivering a disciplinary selfreference within which to express these ideas.
The third level of an explanation then is about the kinds of policy challenge that the different
research environments are exposed to. One can not fully and solely explain from there. The
Ole Wver, The Strange Successes of Scandinavian Peace Research: Why the inter-twined disciplines of
Peace Research and International Relations develop differently in the US, Scandinavia and other parts of
Europe, Presentation at the conference In Search of Peace in the Twenty-First Century in Seoul, January
25, 2000, organised by the Korean Peace Research Association the Korean National Commission for
UNESCO; Stefano Guzzini, The Cold War is what we make of 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 Peace Research,
London: Routledge 2004.
46
Wver, The Strange Successes, op.cit.
45

18

first and second level have carried much of the long-term effects, whereas the third is more
time-bound, but it is a more recent re-enforcement of patterns, and it is worth a thought to
what extent even these critical European approaches are helped along by being politically
useful and relevant.
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 face Americans 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
whose security problems are so closely intertwined that they can not meaningfully be
understood independently of each other.48 More recently, it has been reformulated in
securitisation terminology as A set of units whose major processes of securitisation,
desecuritisation, or both are so interlinked that their security problems cannot reasonably be
analysed or resolved apart from one another.49 The basic idea is to look at the regional level
formations that are often the level which mediates global and domestic 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 prone to see unified global interpretations of the world after the Cold War
comes the Clash of Civilisations, unipolarity, the war on terror or globalization.
However, such neat summaries of world politics will increasingly fail as the world becomes
more diversified there will be no alternative to taking the detour around the different stories
from different regions where security increasingly unfolds in different forms in terms of the
dominant units, the main sectors and the nature of 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 the main threats come from
neighbours or other local forces, because most threats travel more easily over short than over
long distances, and only great powers transcend this logic to some extent, and even they have
to grasp the regional dynamics because otherwise they do not know how to engage other
actors who are tied to this logic. A major claim of the theory is that the interaction between
global and regional actors happens on terms set by the regional actors to a much larger extent
than expected by IR theories that usually privilege the top-down perspective. In contrast to
the emphasis on global powers in understanding e.g. Middle East politics, it is usually the
lines of conflict generated by actors in the region that open the possibility of penetration by
external actors and then typically along lines defined 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) which is quite fortunate, because the theory would be less informative if the
Thus it is an explanation based on a Copenhagen School interpretation of the world, which implies a certain
element of circularity or maybe a fractal format, where a pattern re-appears at different levels. The different
theories with special attention to US-European differences are partly explained by a security analysis
carried out by one of the European theories, a theory which is not only European in origin, but where the
European (or at least the non-Americanness) can be clearly 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. -47

19

RSCs where constantly mutating, or for that matter is they were totally static. Regarding
internal order, it is striking that quite a 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 become increasingly 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 future course. 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
1 + 4 + regions
. The debate on global structure has become constricted by a simplistic conception of
polarity that stems from the failure to distinguish regional from global that derive from the
Eurocentric period when 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 did not 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 global level 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 will not do. The US
is not dominant enough to constitute unipolarity, and especially not, if that is to imply that
e.g. China and the EU are purely regional powers. Nor is multipolar very appropriate when
Super powers: 1 (USA):
Has global reach and all-round power
Great powers: 4 (China, Russia, EU, Japan)
Potential super power.
Included in considerations about global power (possible coalitions).
Has influence beyond its own region.
Regions with regional powers: currently 11.
The powers in each region constitutive of regional polarity are regional powers.
one power is so much more equal than everyone else. It is necessary to distinguish between
super powers and great powers.50 A super power has global reach and power in all sectors
and there is only one such 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 all others, 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 is probably neither
bi- nor multipolarity but 0+x, a non-superpower structure coming about most likely by US
abdication from a global role).51 Finally, regional powers are all those who define the
Buzan and Wver, Regions and Powers, chapter 2 and in more developed in Buzan, The United States and
the Great Powers, forthcoming Polity Press.
51
Huntingtons concept of uni-multipolarity captures some of the same dynamics of 1+4: it is not only a
mix of unipolarity and multipolarity, but a very particular one: the unipole thinks the system is unipolar and
acts accordingly, while the great powers thinks it is multipolar or surely: should be and they act
accordingly. Obviously, this promises trouble!
50

20

polarity structure of a RSC, be that as the central power in a centred complex or as the two or
more in a bi- or multipolar region.
The US position is clearly unique and it defines a quite particular agenda. The US is not a
member of other regions than North America, but as a swing power it will pretend to be
member of other regions like Europe and East Asia. It generally resists narrow
regionalisation that excludes it from regions and tries to counter this with thinner hyperregionalism (FTAA against South American regionalism, APEC against exclusive Asianism,
and increasingly usage of NATO and other trans-atlantic attempts to weaken the EU).
Similarly, a global agenda serves to maintain the pre-eminence of the US and avoid the
gradual strengthening of other centres of power. Equally, it serves to maintain US
mobilisation of global involvement, which is no simple thing given the deep-seated domestic
suspicion against foreign involvements and strong stateness. Intensive securitisation of some
global level 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 politicaleconomic strategy has proven remarkably successful in creating a security community.52
Thus, it is understandable as pointed out with a negative twist by Kagan53 that Europeans
tend to favour in this respect a broad concept of security, i.e. look for political-economic
means and regional formats for security when thinking about e.g. ways to deal with violence
in and from the Middle East. Simultaneously, Europeans are often security sceptical when
faced with the American agenda about a global war on terror. The European constellation
of security issues is among the most non-conventional of the worlds region: many different
issues are on the agenda from environmental over ethnic identity to integration as either
problem or solution, but the one that is almost totally missing is classical state-threatens-state
security issues. Therefore, Europeans are on the one hand involved in complicated security
issues within the broad agenda, and on the other hand used to having to select and judge
among issues that are controversial as to their securityness. Thus, a debate about what are
security issues and what are not has become an open and active part of the security order
itself.
Beyond Europe, the EU as a great power has unavoidably effects on neighbouring regions in
terms of power spill-over. Therefore it has to decide how to administer this not whether to
have effects. It further
has to decide whether and what global role to play. The structural preference will most likely
be for an inter-regional rather than global role, but the war on terror and US policy might
change this.
The tension between the one super power (the US) and the four great powers is structural
not only as the press usually depicts it a reflection of envy, navety or arrogance. NATO
will increasingly be influenced by the power struggles between American anti-regional and
Ole Wver, The EU as a security actor: reflections from a pessimistic constructivist on post-sovereign
security orders in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds.) International Relations Theory and the
Politics of European Integration: Power, security and community, London: Routledge 2000, pp. 250-94;
'Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community' in Emanuel Adler & Michael
Barnett (eds.) Security Communities, Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 69-118; Europes Three
Empires: A Watsonian interpretation of post-wall European security, in Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins
(eds.), International Society After the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered, published by Macmillan
(in association with Millennium) 1996, pp. 220-60.
52

Robert Kagan, Power and Weakness, Policy Review, June & July 2002, Number 113, pp.; cf. Ole Wver,
Widening the Concept of Security -- And Widening the Atlantic? in Bo Huldt, Sven Rudberg & Elisabeth
Davidson (eds.) The Transatlantic Link: Strategic Yearbook 2002, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence
College 2001, pp. 31-48.
53

21

European anti-unipolarism. Because the security problems in Europe are unconventional, it

looks from the US where security is always linked to military concerns like the
Europeans are without security problems and therefore it is a question only if they will face
up to the new risks beyond Europe or insist on their European non-security oriented
paradise.
Europe is not just a slower part of the West. It has a different kind of security problems,
driven internally and internal/external like all other regions. This will continue to disappoint
the US!
The US Agenda is to protect the position as the one super power, which means to avoid peer
competitors and define a global agenda, which keeps regional agendas in check. To
securitise terror is therefore a key instrument.
The substance of knowledge needed (especially before 911) was first of: When will regional
powers turn aggressive? (Second probably came: How will our power work? Can we build a
stable empire? On power alone?) One should maybe expect more interest in terror as such, its
roots. But with the outlook before 911, it was understandable that the debate on how powers
decide whether to be status quo seekers or expansionist would be central, i.e. the
offensive/defensive realism debate.
From a perspective of top-dog and potential intervenor in various parts of the world, the form
of knowledge needs is empirical knowledge through case studies and cumulative, general
theory. (The concept of security serves only to delineate the field of empirical knowledge.)
This in contrast to the European agenda, where there is a need to reflect and select among
various claims about security status for various issues. On the one hand, one needs a cautious
widening and securitisation/desecuritisation constellation in order to create Europe and hold
it together, but on the other hand as a power that watches 1+4 from below, there is also an
interest in avoiding to be controlled by a global agenda, i.e. to want less securitisation.
The concept of security is therefore at the centre of reflection - and self-reflection, which
involves then the role of the security analyst, because security becomes defined as an
inherently problematic practice.

22

And the rest of the world?

The theme of this paper is not the global situation and I do not intend to pretend any general
expertise or a total overview of the situation in the whole world. However, I
will try in this final section to reflect briefly on the relevance of the above
categories and explanations as developed for the US-European differences.
Do they explain the situation in the periphery regarding the amount and
character of security theory and what would be the most relevant and
realistic forms of security theory to emerge outside the core?
What about the first level: Intellectual, meta-theoretical and theoretical traditions? It is
obviously impossible to summarise in a few paragraphs what general
intellectual outlooks are influential for the different segments of the major
part of the world. One way to get closer to an answer is to merge this with a
discussion of the second layer, organisation. As pointed out by most of the
surveys done of the state of IR in the third world, a major feature is the
dominance in many places of a relatively narrow security agenda. Some
pressing policy challenge India-Pakistan conflict for instance creates a
demand for policy research delivering classical strategic studies work of
utility for this strategic relationship. In a situation of limited funds for
research, it has often been the situation, that more luxury concerns were
marginalised in the more targeted part of research by hard core strategic
studies, which has meant until recently a dominance of low theory,
common sense realism.54
Simultaneously, on the university side, the situation was determined by the status of IR as an
imported discipline and therefore a predominance of a copy format for IR
theorising. This has been most systematically shown by Kal Holsti 20 years
ago55, but more recent case and country studies generally confirm the relevance
of this observation.56
Thus, returning to the question of intellectual orientations: Obviously
there are powerful philosophical traditions in many countries and regions
that are at variance with US style positivism, just think of strong cases
like Indian philosophy or Islamic thinking about international affairs. The
implications of such traditions for international thought was occasionally
touched upon, but this basically, unfolded separately in other
departments and institutions, while IR remained Western oriented and
defined by Western theories. Several countries have witnessed more
recent attempts to develop self-consciously independent schools within
IR theory. Obviously it has been a strange experience for Chinese
Stephen Chan, Cultural and Linguistic Reductionism and a New Historical Sociology for International
Relations and Beyond the North-West: Africa and the East in International Relations Theory, both
reprinted in Chans Towards a Multicultural Roshamon Paradigm in International Relations: Collected
Essays, Tampere Research Report no. 74, 1996.
55
K. J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory, Boston: Allen &
Unwin 1985; -56
Hiroshi Momose, International Studies as an Educational System in Postwar Japan an interpretation,
N.D.; Vinay Kumar Malhotra and Alexander A. Sergounin, Theories and Approaches to International
Relations, New Delhi: Anmol Publications 1998; Takashi Inoguchi and Paul Bacon, The study of
international relations in Japan: towards a more international discipline, International Relations of the AsiaPacific, vol. 1:1, 2001, pp.1-20; Ersel Aydnl and Julie Mathews, Are the Core and Periphery
Irreconcilable? The Curious World of Publishing in Contemporary International Relations, International
Studies Perspectives, vol. 1:3, Dec. 2000, pp. 289-303.
54

23

scholars to hear about schools named after still more marginal places
like England or Copenhagen, while there was still no generally recognised
Chinese school.57 There is a clear trend at present towards developing in
still more places distinct approaches that are both related to the IR
tradition (as defined by the centre) and drawing on unique cultural and
political conditions. So far, however, this has mostly been quite top
down in terms of what schools to foster sometimes for almost
representational or prestige reasons whereas actual work on specific
security issues have mostly happened with in the traditional policy
oriented circles and these have been dominated in many major countries
by old-style strategic studies.
Much of the pressure for change out of this pattern has come from policy or maybe more:
politics reflections about relevance. As argued by several of the papers in our series of
panels at this ISA conference, we are faced with a striking misfit between IR theory and third
world reality.58 The disciplines focus on sovereignty, inter-state war and abstract theory is
confronted by a reality of multiple over-lapping political and social systems, conflicts that
are primarily internal or transnational and a need to integrate everyday life and IR
knowledge.59 The traditional concept of security is obviously questioned in this process too.
However, it is less clear what kind of security studies is growing out of
this. Some has linked up to and indeed contributed to Critical Security
Studies. And indeed there should seem to be many connectors here,
notably the focus on the actual lives of people, and the organising
concept of emancipation.60 As noted by Donald J. Puchala, By far the most
prominent, and indeed the most powerful, theme in Non-Western narrative today is
Emancipation.61 This should imply quite a good fit with CSS. On the other hand, the
implicit opening for all kinds of widening is often problematic in situations where security
arguments are often (mis)used by rulers and elites for domestic purposes. There is a need to
be able to counter this, which should point to a Copenhagen School attitude to securitisation
and desecuritisation. Especially in Latin America, there is a wide-spread consciousness about
the ways security rhetoric has been used repressively in the past, and therefore a wariness
about opening a door for this by helping to widen the concept of security.62
Chinese school paper .; see also Gerald Chan, Chinese Perspectives on International Relations: A
Framework for Analysis, Macmillan 1999, notably ch. 10 on Towards and IR theory with Chinese
Characteristics.
58
Stephanie G. Neuman, International Relations Theory and the Third World: An Oxymeron? in Neuman
ed. International Relations Theory and the Third World, Macmillan 1998, pp. 1-30; Kevin C. Dunn and
Timothy M. Shaw (eds.) Africas Challenge to International Relations Theory, Palgrave 2001; Amiotav
Acharya, The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies in Krause/Williams, Critical
Security Studies, op.cit., pp. 299-328; Arlene B. Tickner, Seeing IR Differently: Notes from the third world,
forthcoming. For a somewhat contrasting view of the relevance of different Western security and IR theories
for Asian security, see Muthiah Alagappa (ed), Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences,
Stanford Univesrity Press 1998, especially Alagappas own chapter (a book in the book): pp. 1-111 and 611700.
59
For the latter point, see particularly Tickner, Seeing IR Differently, op.cit.
60
Ayoob and Acharya in Krause/Williams; Acharyas book;
61
Donald J. Puchala, Some Non-Western Perspectives on International Relations, Journal of Peace
Research, vol. 34:2, 1997, pp. 129-134, quoting p. 131.
62
G. Pope Atkins, Latin America and The Caribbean in the International System, 4th edn, Westview 1999, p.
103; Rut Diamint, Demilitarization and the Security Agenda, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Buenos Aires,
September
11-12,
2000;
Universidad
Torcuato
Di
Tella
Working
Paper,
N10,
http://www.utdt.edu/cei/papers/papers_seguridad/diamint.pdf; Ole Wver, Security agendas old and new,
and how to survive them, paper prepared for theWorkshop on The Traditional and the New Security
Agenda: Inferences for the Third World, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Buenos Aires, September 11-12,
2000;
Universidad
Torcuato
Di
Tella
Working
Paper,
N6;
57

24

More interesting than these attempts to export European security schools to the third world is
the question whether the conditions are ripe for indigenous security theory cf. the
reflections above about the contrast between US and Europe and the role of specific kinds of
research institutions and environments and what kinds of theorising are emerging in
relation to the specific kinds of challenge facing non-Western countries.
[And this, I will surely be much better able to write some lines about after our panels and the
many promising papers, I look forward to reading.]
Security Studies between core and periphery between power and peace?
This paper has shown how a European family of security theories has emerged that differs
quite markedly from the form of security theory that dominates in the US. This has been
explained partly from the general intellectual climate with more hospitality to historicist and
reflectivist approaches, partly from the institutional and financial structure with more room
for institutes in-between full policy orientation and clean university theory. Partly driven by
the specific policy challenges of the European situation, and enabled by the institutional set
up, forms of knowledge are deemed relevant that are very different from what counts as
knowledge in the US. In the latter case, it is primarily generalisations about cause-effect
relationships validated by historical case studies, whereas the European security theory are
much more part of the ethico-political dilemmas related to reflection and self-reflection
around the inherently contradictory and problematic concept of security.
One, maybe overly elegant, conclusion could be established by linking back to an old Buzan
article from 198463: Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of
International Relations". Here, Buzan argued, that the discipline of IR had been excessively
driven and torn by the extreme concepts of power and peace, both making the condition
of anarchy a too extreme and black-boxed factor: either an absolute condition to surrender to
(and play circular games of power) or a condition to be removed before any meaningful aims
could be set (peace). Against this Buzan posited the possibility of degrees of anarchy (mature
and immature) and a policy and theorising of security as the most fruitful agenda. Bringing
this rather abstract and general argument into historical and geographical specificity could
lead us to this conclusion about the differences between theorising in the US, Europe and the
non-Western periphery:
The guiding stars differ: In the US, power is (increasingly!) the measure that shapes policy
(whether the overwhelming US position of power is a possible source of order, is a key
discussion and has become the panacea for major parts of the US research community); in
the periphery it is peace not that it is at hand, but narrow security is often seen as
unrealistic, because un-stable, and only with a realisation of broader and deeper aims peace
can actual security be realised. Only in Europe, the concept of security in all its
contradictory character works well as a paradoxical guiding star?

Word Count: 10.306

http://www.utdt.edu/cei/papers/papers_seguridad/paperWaever.PDF.
63
Barry Buzan, Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations",
Journal of Peace Research, 21(2), 1984, pp. 109-25.

25

26