Contesting Security

Strategies and Logics

Thierry Balzacq

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136162725
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contesting Security investigates to what extent the 'logic of security', which underpins securitization, can be contained, rolled back or dismantled.

Featuring legitimacy as a cement of security practices, this volume presents a detailed account of the "logic" which sustains security in order to develop a novel approach to the relation between security and the policies in which it is engraved. Understanding security as a normative practice, the contributors suggest a nuanced, and richer take on the conditions under which it is possible, advisable or fair to accept or roll back its policies.

The book comprises four sections, each investigating one specific modality of contesting security practices: resistance, desecuritization, emancipation, and resilience. These strategies are examined, compared and assessed in different political and cultural habitats.

This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, securitisation theory, social theory, and IR in general.

1 Legitimacy and the “logic” of security

Thierry Balzacq

Introduction

The choice between critical and traditional approaches to security is often treated as one between a constructivist and a realist ontology, between the conviction that security follows one unique script, and the view that security is a derivate property (CASE Collective 2006). In other words, security is either a given or a constructed state of affairs; either immutable or variable. The debate boils down, I argue, to whether security has a "logic" or none or, alternatively, admits to a plurality of logics, whose meaning depends on context, and whose effect is indeterminate. For Jef Huysmans (1998a) there is a logic of security, which can be seen in the fact that security pronouncements often produce a specific social order. Cai Wilkinson (2011), on the other hand, is less enthusiastic about the existence of such a logic. Be that as it may, the discussion on security's logic presupposes if anything else that there is an agreement on the content of the word "logic." This is far from the case, however. Yet only when this has been done can we properly capture the logic of a particular practice. My view is that before we start enumerating the number of logics that would underpin security, a basic, that is. preliminary enquiry has to be undertaken: what do we mean when we say that security has "a" logic?¹

To answer this question, I want to make a slight detour. It is now a commonplace not only of security studies but also of IR that security is a social practice. Yet, as simple as it is, this claim has stronger implications than it might first appear. That is, what is often referred to as "the logic of security" is, in essence, an attempt to ascribe a logic to an abstract concept. However, the logic I have in mind is not of this sort. Instead, if anything, the logic of security is always already the logic of a concept as expressed by, or engraved in various practices. Huysmans (1998a: 232) argues, for instance, that the logic of security is "an ensemble of rules that is immanent to security practice and that defines the practice in its specificity." In other words, the logic of security is parasitic upon security practices. Therefore, in this chapter, I use the "logic of security practices" to delineate both the scope and horizon of my investigation. In this respect, I deliberately sacrifice the economy of expression to the precision and, hopefully, clarity of the argument. Drawing on Glynos and Howarth (2007: 136). I argue that the logic of security practices articulates two main elements: the "rule or grammar of the practice," on the one hand, and the "conditions which make the practice both possible and vulnerable," on the other hand.

Constitutive features of the “logic” of security

Theories of security differ over their understanding of this logic, its demands and effects. For instance, a realist rendition of the logic of security practices would hold that military rules inform the characteristic grammar of security practices and the concept of "existential threats" provides the background condition, which enables the different components of security practices to operate in a distinctive way. Securitization theory, in particular Ole Wæver's formulation, has adopted this view of the logic of security, while attempting to nest security pronouncements in a constructivist ontology (Wæver 1995). However, the constructivist influence has stopped at the doors of the realist logic of security practices. It is as if the construction of security remains impervious to the social conditions which allow security practices to discharge their meaning and function. Thus, in this version of securitization theory, the logic of security practices is reduced to the rules and grammar of the practices; conditions that surround the practice are dropped out of the framework. If they were introduced back into the equation, the constitutive parts of the logic would have to be clothed in a decisively constructivist fabric (Buzan and Hansen 2009: 215).

Other scholars working within critical studies on security take a different tack. Felix Ciuta (2009: 311-314) argues, for instance, that the contextual thickness of security practices undermines Wæver's logic of security practices (cf. also Bubandt 2005: 276,291). In this sense, both the rules and circumstances that hold security practices are contextually bound. In many ways, I have some sympathy for this proposal. However, the most disturbing problem with Ciúta and Bubandt otherwise compelling readings of securitization's shortcomings is that, they seem to follow, in various modulations, the path well trodden by many contextualists who tend to argue that context exhausts the rules of a practice (DeRose 2009). This is bizarre. The point is not that I subscribe, let alone defend, the logic of security laid out by the initial formulation of securitization theory (Balzacq 2011b: 11-15). Instead. I only want to argue that the rules of security practices are not reducible to the features of specific empirical contexts. To imagine a contextual influence on security practices, is one tiling; to drain rules from content because context matters, is quite another. In fact, one does not lead to the other.

To some extent, this only restates the problem, but does not solve it. Thus, in order to better appropriate the status of "logic" in securitization theory, I propose to build my reasoning on one assumption, from which I derive two sets of arguments. The assumption is that security practices result from securitization. No security practices without a prior securitization. Though security practices can, in turn, generate new securitization patterns, I postulate that securitization predates security practices. For practices to be acknowledged as "security" practices, there needs to be an intersubjective assent on the fact that they bear on "security"; that is, they call for a form of securitization. Of course, when I investigate security practices, the concern is with practices which happen within a securitized site and that, as such, either sustain or transform securitization.

Now, the two arguments I want to extract from this assumption take the following schematic forms. First, security practices somewhat negotiate their content and meaning with the context and other practices therein. Second, security practices owe their logic to processes of securitization. If we understand this move in relevant terms, the question becomes, therefore, what (if any) is the logic of securitization? To start, it is often argued that the aim of securitization is to transform the "status function" of a problem into a security issue (Searle 2009:19). Securitization is a moment of political agonism, out of which a security problem is instituted (Balzacq forthcoming; Williams forthcoming). Security practices that result from securitization remain socially binding so long as they respond to commonly accepted values. That is, so long as they are regarded as legitimate. In other words, the logic of securitization comprises a specific grammar or rules of the political and the principle of legitimacy, that is, a necessary (not sufficient) condition by which security practices are sustained and without which they lose their moral grips on the subjects. As Julia Vuori (2008: 68) puts it. "security is a strong legitimator." In turn, I posit, arguments for contesting security are closely related to justifications of legitimacy.

Legitimacy and the silos of security practices

Security practices draw their efficacy from legitimacy, as legitimacy confers them a normative status. People may have many ideas about security practices, but only those deemed inappropriate or illegitimate would be contested. I do not claim, obviously, that legitimacy is the sole basis for enduring security practices. Indeed, naked coercion can equally sustain a body of security practices. Take Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. If security practices are so effective there, it has less to do with their legitimacy than with the ability of Robert Mugabe to muster a range of coercive means to crack on any attempt to challenge his policies. In this respect, I argue that the greater capacity leaders have in generating and maintaining the legitimacy of security practices, the less opposition these will encounter. This means that the very existence of a security practice depends on a sufficient number of people believing that it is the most appropriate way to secure what they commonly value. I understand, of course, that "sufficient number" remains open to a diverse range of interpretations. The idea I want to convey, however, is that a number is insufficient to the extent that it is unable to fundamentally undermine a policy. In this light, "number" should not be read in terms of sheer arithmetic; instead, it is a matter of the quantum of "alienative motivational elements" that the contesting group is able to concentrate around critical points of disagreement (Parsons 1951: 521). "Conscientious objection can become politically significant", says Hannah Arendt. "when a number of consciences happen to coincide and the conscientious objectors decide to enter the marketplace and make their voices heard and public" (Arendt 1971: 219-220). On the face of it, the erosion of security practices' legitimacy would weaken their power to oblige people to conform to their prescriptions. In this sense, then, legitimacy is an important factor for both the effectiveness and survival of sets of security practices, though its impact on outcomes takes "complex causal forms" (Gilley 2007: 145). I follow Robert Dahl who holds that legitimacy "is not any more reliable and durable than naked coercion but it also enables rulers to govern with a minimum of political resources" (Dahl 1984: 54).

In other words, it is possible to explicate demands for emancipation, desecuritization, resilience, and resistance, by resorting to the operation of legitimacy. However, the relation between resilience and legitimacy is a bit more complicated. While resilience might be sponsored by a state as a complement to traditional measures of security policies, resilience can also be regarded as state's recognition that existing mechanisms of ensuring security are not the most appropriate or are potentially ineffective. One of the results is to undermine the belief in the legitimacy of those extant security practices. I spell out the distinctive relationship between legitimacy and the constitutive components of this book, under the different "editor's introductions."

My argument on legitimacy extends the current effort within critical studies on security to redeem the concept of security (Gjørv 2012). In fact, the reactionary impulse of its origins led a sizable number of critical scholars to entertain an ambiguous if not negative relation with the concept of security (Browning and McDonald 2013). Confusing security and securitization, it became a fairly common place to assume that security necessarily released negative outcomes. Not only do such attitudes elevate one kind of potential result of a practice to the rank of unavoidable rules of security, they also somewhat made more difficult the dialogue with traditional approaches to security. In this light, some of the reactions raised by Rita Floyd's (2011) attempt to establish a just securitization can be understood in the context of a negative attitude toward security. While an important point of Floyd's view has been to provide a more sophisticated basis to Elbe's (2006) argument. I want to interpret the criticism leveled at it in two ways. The first line of argument, which is important but not entirely justified, is that Floyd subverts the original idea of securitization theory, which did not admit of any "objective" threat (de Wilde 2012; Wtever 2011). Probably, the main bone of contention rests with the specific understanding of the word "objective." If objectivity refers to the positivist separation between subject and object, critics have a point. However, if by "objective threats" Floyd means the intersubjective solidification of a social fact, then the ground for quibble considerably shrinks (Neufeld 1995; Kompridis 2006). The second, less outspoken aspect of the reservation raised by Floyd's proposal might be that her thesis makes room for conceiving of securitization as a process that can rightfully instantiate security problems, under certain circumstances. In this respect, it has, so to speak, a positive relation with security. To me, the most important insight I retain from this discussion is that critical approaches to security should never have departed from the view that security is neither positive nor negative, a priori. Leaning on either side deprives one from developing a non-biased critical examination of security. Understanding security in exclusively negative terms amounts to a cheap ethics, of sorts, as it puts critical security scholars on the rather defensive position of having to resist anything that looks like a security practice. If this were so, then, critical approaches to security would become dogmatic security studies.

The concept of legitimacy enables us to determine the conditions under which security practices are likely to obtain or fail. Does it lead to the ethical argument that a legitimate security practice is necessarily a good security practice? No, but to a certain degree it would countenance the view that good security practices are legitimate. For the analyst, however, there are many problems with adjudicating that a security practice is legitimate. Political contexts, for instance, can modify what is treated as legitimate. In addition, the legitimacy of security practices is not a matter of all or nothing; in fact, it is more productive to characterize security legitimacy as a continuum. Therein lies the organic vulnerability of security practices, whatever the conventions of a specific context.

The texture of legitimacy

In social sciences, the study of legitimacy is peculiarly tied to the work of Max Weber (1978:213) who. to put it succinctiy, defined it as "the belief in legitimacy." Translated in our terms, a security practice is legitimate if people concerned believe it to be so. It is because people who partake in security practices hold these to be legitimate that they are. This definition raises several difficulties for the analyst. It tends, for instance, to treat legitimacy as a given phenomenon in which people can believe or not. That is, legitimacy is seen as an article of faith. Moreover, Weber's legitimacy principles (charismatic, rational-legal, traditional) also rely on the subjective belief of people in each of them as they constitute the basis of three separate types of legitimacy: the belief in tradition, is the basis of a traditional legitimacy; the belief in rules and procedures sustains rational-legal kind of legitimacy; and the belief in charisma offers grounds for charismatic legitimacy (Beetham 1991: 24-25).

I spend some time on Weber's account of legitimacy because it is probably the most influential; it is often, indeed, the background against which alternative approaches to legitimacy are gauged. For all its appeal, however, it is misleading. This claim might sound presumptuous, but it is an argument that, I hope, is worth taking a moment to appreciate. To start, Weber's typology does not tell us how to aggregate the three kinds of legitimacy into a coherent understanding of legitimacy. In fact, we are left we three distinct kinds of legitimacy, each operating under a different rationale. Further, the definition of legitimacy as a subjective belief in one of the three principles obscures the different elements that provide the basis for this belief. But of what do these elements consist? A review of the literature returns three main features constitutive of legitimacy: legality, justification, and consent (Beetham 1991: 16-21; Gilley 2007: 6-8; Coicaud 1997: 10-25). In what follows, I briefly discuss the three principles in the light of security practices.

Legality. It is the starting point of discussions about legitimacy pointing, as it were, to the original meaning of the word legitimacy as it first surfaced in medieval documents (Merquior, 1980: 2). Security practices draw a parcel of their legitimacy from the fact that they are adopted and played out in ways that conform to the legal rules of the political system, which provides them with their normative conspectus. Specifically significant, of course, is the view that not all rules are strictly formalized; but the most important idea is that, in general, political leaders try to make security practices that they promote look legal. When a security practice seems to run counter existing rules, leaders are tempted to resort to transforming the legal order within which new security practices can thrive. Societies with strong formalized rules tend to have an ultimate authority that adjudicates between competing interpretations of the legality of a policy prescription. Nonetheless, the matters become complex if security practices conflict with the existing legal order to such an extent that it puts its validity at stake. Here, however, we come close to the edge of exceptionalism. Rules - whether exceptional or not - are not legitimate uniquely by virtue of their enactment. Arguing otherwise would suggest that any rule adopted and applied in accordance with the legal order is legitimate. Obviously, this is not true. The legal hierarchy of many modern societies does not mean that legality should be equated with legitimacy. Sometimes, rules are not enough; and people might be skeptical about their function and rightfulness. In other words, rules need to be justified (Onuf 1989).

Justification. Legitimacy belongs primarily to a constructivist analysis of compliance. Here, it is a willing acceptance of security policies for reasons other than structural constraints, physical or psychological violence that is the main vector of influence. In my view, this also means that politics (as a field of contestation) contributes to the textures of legitimacy. This is because without justification of why some practices of security should be followed, any measure the elites propose would probably face skepticism if not strong defiance. I have shown above that Vuori (2008). for instance, has conceptualized securitization as a form of legitimacy, that is, a process whereby security practices (and sometimes the elites who defend them) draw their political support from justificatory arguments. That is, justification is the mechanism that creates and sustains security practices. Put otherwise, the support of the public is acquired precisely through justificatory processes, and not exclusively from the legality of security practices. Leaders make security practices essentially by arguing their case that X counts as a threat. The mechanism of justification enables the public to weight the claims put forward by the political elites, in terms of the community's shared values and norms. It is at this particular juncture that the meaning and legitimacy of security practices are fixed. That is, the process of justification is legitimacy's political core (Unger 1976: 62). The success of justificatory claims depends, to a large extent, on the leaders' ability to persuade the public that security practices "contribute in a credible way to the achievement of society's values" (Coicaud 1997: 23). Once the acceptance is secured, two consequences follow. First, security practices acquire their collective nature. They are no longer a fact decided by a securitizing actor; instead, they express a kind of shared agency. Second, political leaders obtain the right to liber...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Legitimacy and the “logic” of security
• Resistance
• 2 Security and surveillance contests Resistance and counter-resistance
• Contesting and resisting security in post-Mao China1
• 4 Rebelling against biometrics in France
• 5 Poking holes and spreading cracks in the wall Resistance to national security policies under Bush
• Desecuritization
• 6 Security as universality? The Roma contesting security in Europe
• 7 The political limits of desecuritization Security, arms trade, and the EU's economic targets
• 8 Just and unjust desecuritization
• Emancipation
• 9 Emancipation and the reality of security A reconstructive agenda
• 10 Contesting border security Emancipation and asylum in the Australian context
• Resilience
• 11 Resiliencism and security studies Initiating a dialogue
• 12 Resilience as standard Risks, hazards and threats
• 13 Pandemics as staging grounds for resilient world order SARS, avian flu, and the evolving forms of secure political solidarity
• Conclusion Towards an ontopolitics of security1
• References
• Index