Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Copenhagen School’s Concept of Securitization. - PO-248 - Louis Brookes
The Copenhagen school’s (CS) main contribution to the analysis of
security is the model of securitisation which is built from a constructivist
framework that the world is socially constructed. Born out of end of cold war, it
resembles a more reflective approach than the traditional state centric ones
within mainstream IR. Originally emerged from Ole Wæver (1995) and later Barry
Buzan who made important developments to the model. Securitisation theory is
a complex but vulnerable framework which widens the agenda by taking ‘politics beyond the established rules of the game.’ 33 After explaining the core concepts
of the CS analysis of security, a critique of the analysis will follow. This critique
will be split into three main parts which brings in criticism from the alternative
security paradigms of the PARIS School and Welsh school, as well as the
analytical shortcomings of societal security. The final section of the essay will
address these shortcomings by applying the analytical framework of
securitisation to other theoretical approaches, all constructivist in nature, to
offer a more conclusive account of securitisation.
Successful implementation of the securitisation approach developed
by Wæver rests on a concept of security that is constructed in discourse. And
three discursive preconditions are needed in order for this to happen. There
must first be an existential threat to a referent object, this threat then comes
into existence through a speech act, whereby a securitising actor convinces their
audience that an issue is an existential threat which ‘enables emergency
33 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework For Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 23.
16
Made with FlippingBook HTML5