Copenhagen School
Petr Ocelík
•MEB401 Teorie bezpečnosti a metodologie / MEB427 Bezpečnost: teorie a koncepty
•2nd November 2017

Outline
•Assumptions
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•Securitization
•Security sectors
•Regional security complex
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Copenhagen school
•Context: traditionalists vs. revisionists
•Analytical framework for study of international security
•Currently: mainstream approach in security studies
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•Based on:
•(“radically”) idealist ontology
•interpretative epistemology (discourse analysis)
•“residual traditionalism”
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Security_A_New_Framework_For_Analysis.JPG

Security as a social construct
•There is no “essence”, no universal feature of security
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•Security is socially constructed and intersubjectively shared
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•Security is a self-referential practice: an issue becomes a security issue only by being labeled
as one
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•à Focus on discursive construction of security issues
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Securitization
•Framing
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•standard (depoliticized)
•politicized
•securitized
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•Audience acceptance
•Extraordinary measures
•Linkages
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14Ezn8Q http://flatrock.org.nz/static/frontpage/assets/terrorism/liberty_tray.jpg

Securitization
•Securitization actors: ones that declare – via illocutionary speech act – existential threat
towards a particular referent object
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•Functional actors: ones that significantly affect the dynamic of the security environment (sector)
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/bushjan2002.jpg
http://www.romea.cz/aaa/img.php?src=/img_upload/03ec66ac77713bab242255f6194ad3ff/konvicka-zeman.jpg
&w=630

Speech acts
•Constative act: the literal meaning of the utterance
•Appellative act: the social function of the utterance, for what purpose it is used in a given
context
•Performative act: the effect of the utterance in a given context
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•“I warn you, the oil is running out!”
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•Constative act: made vocal sounds, said that with a Czech accent
•Appellative act: making a warning about (an existential) threat
•Performative act: made you (audience) feel insecure (or amused)

degree of widening
modes of widening
                           (modified Weisová 2004)
horizontal
(sectors)
vertical
(referent objects)
values
threat sources
narrow concept
military-political
state
sovereignty,
territorial integrity
other states,
(non-state actors)
widened concept
societal
nation,
societal groups
national unity,
identity
(states),
nations,
migrants,
hostile cultures
economic
state, non-state actors,
institutions, individuals
development,
subsistence
states,
market failures
environmental
environmental systems, humankind
sustainability,
survival,
quality of life
states,
globalization,
humankind

Regional security complex
•Brings back geography to IR
•Structural characteristics:
•Boundaries: differentiation from the rest of the system
•Anarchy: number of actors in the complex
•Polarity: distribution of power within the complex
•Social construction: relationships of amity and enmity
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•Definition (Buzan and Waever 2003: 44):                                            “...set of
units whose major processes of securitization, desecuritization, or both, are so interlinked that
their security problems cannot be reasonably analyzed apart from one another.”
•Security constellation: an aggregate of all four levels of analysis

http://thepolicytensor.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/rsas.png



Copenhagen school and energy security
•Energy not considered as “a distinctive area of security interactions”
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•Typically included in an economic sector
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•Other options: energy sector as a new (additional) one? Energy sector as a supra-sector?
(Palonkorpi 2008)
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•à Let’s discuss this J

Summary
•A comprehensive framework for security analysis
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•Esp. theory of securitization now part of the mainstream
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•The objective: desecuritization of the debate
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•Criticism: state-centric, inconsistent use of constructivist and rationalist concepts, focus
mainly on discourse (omits context), conceptual and methodological doubts (audience)