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Security: A New Framework for Analysis.

Article in American Political Science Association December 1999

DOI: 10.2307/2586187

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Author(s): David Skidmore
Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Dec., 1999), pp. 1010-1011
Published by: American Political Science Association
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Book Reviews: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
the North American support of the military in Central
America to assure order rather than progress in their back-
yard.
Relations between the military and civilians hinged on the
autonomy that the military attained. Its indisputable-control
of political power assured its complete economic and cultural
dominion in the society. As the authors explain, the relation-
ship was not always cordial. At various times the military
attempted reform, the most important of which occurred
after the coup of 1948, when it introduced economic reforms
and accepted a limited political party system of government.
By the beginning of 1960, it had established its own party, the
National Conciliation Party (Partido de Conciliacion Nacio-
nal), which was situated in the center of a narrow electoral
space. In 1973, the military attempted agrarian reforms, but
the program was impeded by the rural oligarchy. This high-
lights the difference between control of the government (by
the military) and direction of the state (by the large economic
interests), an issue that could have been given more attention
by the authors.
An important axis of the work is the conceptualization of
militarization/demilitarization. This involves not only rela-
tions between the armed forces and the government but also,
and more important, how these are manifested in society.
This relationship was most important in rural areas, where
the military maintained strict control with its own forces as
well as the National Guard, various police forces, and more
than fifty paramilitary organizations, the most important
of which was the Nationalist Democratic Organization
(ORDEN). In the early 1970s, this organization had more
than 100,000 members, who collaborated with the rural
patrols (patrullas cantonales) to maintain order in the coun-
tryside. It was this control and its effects that produced
militarization in the society.
For this reason, the concept of militarization used by the
authors is not always satisfactory. It is not enough to examine
the "colonization" of the state by the military. It could
relinquish political control, as occurred with the first demo-
cratic election in 1985, and still maintain a militarized social
International Relations
Security: A New Framework for Analysis. By Barry Buzan,
Ole Weaver, and Jaap de Wilde. Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner, 1998. 239p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
David Skidmore, Drake University
This reconceptualization of the field of security studies
proposes to broaden the scholarly agenda beyond the tradi-
tional focus on states and political-military competition. The
authors argue for a constructivist approach that extends the
analysis of international security to culture, economics, and
the environment. They contend that a rethinking of the
boundaries and tools of security studies is badly needed, but
the alternative route proposed in this volume is likely to lead
to a dead end.
The authors argue that the label security should be at-
tached to issues that are "staged as existential threats to
referent objects by a securitizing actor who thereby generates
endorsement of emergency measures beyond rules that
would otherwise bind" (p. 5). This compact but jargon-laden
definition turns on three elements: the concept of security, the
nature of referent objects, and the role of securitizing actors.
1010
December 1999
life. One needs to examine, in light of the peace accords, the
changes in the military's political influence and veto capacity,
its tutelary power, the absence of military privilege (fuero
militar), equality before the penal law, and other aspects.
Did the civil war that dissolved in 1980 revitalize or weaken
the role of the military? The authors believe it was strength-
ened and exaggerate this characteristic, but I do not agree.
First, the military left the government, and its absence in the
political arena revitalized the role of the parties and civil
forces. Second, the military was under total North American
hegemony during the war, to the point that the conflict was
directed by high officials from that country. Third, the
military failed to win despite the tremendous aid it received.
For these reasons, the peace accords forced President Cris-
tiani to accept a 50% reduction in the military and to institute
a Truth Commission, which denounced more than 100 offi-
cials as violators of human rights and recommended their
dismissal.
Today-and I say this with caution-El Salvador is in a
relatively advanced stage of demilitarization, which cannot be
said of other countries in the region. In my opinion, the
military has lost its traditional control in the rural sector,
which was its base of power. It was over this power that it
fought the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti para la Libera-
cion Nacional). With democratization, this power has shifted
to the political parties. The dependency on the United States
has ended and has deprived the military of an important
source of financial and technical resources. Finally, develop-
ments within society have weakened traditional forms of
control in the rural areas and have made it unnecessary to
replace this iron yoke on the peasants with another.
In light of these changes, as Williams and Walker indicate
in the final part of their book, we can understand the new role
that the military will play in the next period of El Salvador's
history. The signing of the peace accords and democratic
advances have established a different situation. What remains
to be seen is whether the civil power has the ability to design
a military policy in open consultation with all the other actors
in society.
Security is defined to involve perceived threats to the
survival of some highly valued referent object. The objects
can be varied, including not only territorial states but also
nonstate actors (e.g., nations, tribes, classes), sets of abstract
principles (e.g., the rules of the liberal international eco-
nomic order), or even nature itself (e.g., the global environ-
ment). Similarly, threats can arise from any source, including
aggressive states, unfavorable social trends (e.g., rapid pop-
ulation growth), or cultural imperialism (e.g., westerniza-
tion). Existential threats can manifest themselves across a
number of different policy contexts or "sectors," including
economic, environmental, cultural, and the more traditional
political and military spheres.
Security threats, however, exist only to the extent that they
are experienced subjectively. A new issue is placed on the
security agenda after a leading actor has successfully carried
out a securitizing speech act. The latter term refers to
discursive practices designed to persuade a given target
audience that some valued referent object faces an existential
threat. If successful, such an appeal transforms a merely
political problem into a security problem. The normal rules
and procedures governing politics and decision making give
way to extreme responses in recognition of the special
American Political Science Review
seriousness and stakes attached to what is now perceived to
be an existential threat.
Security studies, the authors contend, should focus on
identifying, locating, and measuring the salience of securitiz-
ing moves by leading actors. They illustrate this proposed
framework by applying it to both traditional and nontradi-
tional policy contexts or sectors. This exercise leads to a
gridlike map of contemporary security problems, each situ-
ated along several dimensions defined by spatial characteris-
tics (local, regional, and global), sectoral location (military,
political, economic, cultural, and environmental), actor iden-
tity (states, societal actors, international organizations), and
the nature of the referent objects (states, nations, principals,
nature).
Several facets of this approach to reconceptualizing the
study of security deserve critical scrutiny. The most important
shortcoming stems from the way in which the purposes are
framed. The best starting place for pursuing theoretical
innovation is with a compelling and concrete puzzle: a real
world problem or anomaly that cannot be adequately solved
through the employment of existing theoretical tools. The
authors of this book never identify such-a puzzle. Instead,
they begin with definitional and methodological questions,
such as whether security should be narrowly or broadly
defined or whether analysts should proceed from objectivist
or subjectivist assumptions. The end result is a "framework
for analysis" that lacks clear direction or purpose. A solution
proposed in the absence of a clear question is bound to lead
to the sort of unfocused conceptual wandering found here.
The consequences of this way of framing the problem can
be seen in the schematic nature of the proposed framework.
Given the complexity of the multidimensional security grid
constructed by means of their conceptual framework, the
authors largely eschew causal analysis. The number of vari-
ables and the complex nature of their relationships to one
another render efforts to specify cause and effect far too
difficult in such a broadly gauged exercise. Instead, the
authors focus on weighing the perceived relevance of security
to various policy sectors and in specifying the salience of
security issues along the spatial dimension (i.e., whether
security dynamics primarily congeal at the local, regional, or
global level). This approach produces a snapshot of which
issues dominate concerns over security in various countries
and regions at a given time. Without a complementary causal
theory, however, we are left with little understanding of why
certain issues evoke security concerns, why they are ad-
dressed at one level rather than another, and how these
dynamics change over time.
The emphasis on discursive practices also raises problems.
Language matters. But it matters more if closely tied to the
capacity for action. What political actors say is typically
judged by what they are able and willing to do as a predict-
able consequence of their words. Yet, the language of
security is here privileged over action and the material bases
for power and interests. A preoccupation with what actors say
to the near exclusion of what they actually do (or have the
potential to do) leaves out much of what we want to know
about international relations.
The distinction between politicization and securitization is
also problematic. In the space of two sentences, the authors
variously characterize securitization as "a special kind of
politics," "beyond politics," and an "extreme version of
politicization" (p. 23). The notion that security issues are
somehow elevated beyond "the normal political rules of the
game" (p. 24) presupposes that politics is indeed a rule-
governed realm of social life.
Successful securitization, according to the authors, re-
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Vol. 93, No 4
quires widespread acceptance among a target audience that
an existential threat to some valued referent object does in
fact exist. This seems to rule out the possibility that security
issues can be subject to serious political contention, since an
issue cannot, by definition, carry the security label until a
societal consensus has been achieved. Securitization serves to
justify "emergency measures" (p. 21) to cope with the
perceived threat, but the authors do not insist that such
measures actually be taken before an issue can be considered
securitized. They strive to present a clear distinction between
the realms of politics and security, but the threshold at which
an issue becomes a candidate for treatment under the rubric
of security remains fuzzy in conceptual terms, not to mention
the difficulties of applying such standards in practice.
Given that the authors choose to build their framework
around the anchors of language and intersubjectivity, some
questions that might seem to flow naturally from such an
approach are virtually ignored. In the only extended applica-
tion (as opposed to brief glosses) of their conceptual frame-
work to an empirical case, the authors search selected
documentary records of the European Union for evidence of
securitizing moves. They forswear any interest in the motiva-
tions, intentions, or interests of the political actors who make
rhetorical maneuvers. They propose instead to treat the
scrutinized texts (e.g., speeches, expert reports) as disembod-
ied discourse. Similarly, they say relatively little about why
securitizing moves either succeed or fail. This approach
renders it virtually impossible to explore why some issues are
posed in terms of security while others are not. It also
detaches the analysis from the rich political context in which
security issues arise and are debated.
The most useful aspect of this analysis is the initial insight
that perceptions of threat and insecurity are not limited to
states alone or to military competition. Intimately shaped by
the Cold War context in which it was born, the field of
security studies should indeed broaden its horizons and
sharpen its analytical tools. Yet, the contribution of this study
to that broader goal is not very significant.
World Power Forsaken: Political Culture, International In-
stitutions, and German Security Policy. By John Duffield.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. 408p.
$49.50.
Thomas U. Berger, Johns Hopkins University
In this closely reasoned and informative volume John Duf-
field gives us the most comprehensive review to date of
German defense and national security policies since the end
of the Cold War. Eschewing the use of any single analytical
paradigm, Duffield develops instead a comprehensive explan-
atory framework that incorporates a range of variables-
including the military security environment, international
institutions, domestic political institutions, and political cul-
ture-that have shaped German foreign policy in recent
years. After explicating this framework and the theoretical
traditions on which it draws, Duffield then carefully analyzes
key aspects of German national security policy between 1990
and 1997: arms control, foreign aid programs, policies toward
the various multilateral security structures in which the
Federal Republic finds itself, military force structure, and its
responses to such international crises as the Gulf War and
the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
The book is to be especially commended for its meticulous
and impressive empirical research. In addition to surveying a
large and growing body of literature in German and English
on the topic, the author makes extensive use of journalistic
1011