Traditional security
Cold War realist security studies focused narrowly on the state as referent, external military threats as the danger and armed force as the means. After the Cold War, economic crises, ethnic conflict, environmental damage and pandemics pushed scholars to broaden the concept.
Buzan's five sectors
- Military: states' armed offensive and defensive capabilities
- Political: the stability and legitimacy of states, governments and ideologies
- Economic: access to resources, finance and markets needed for welfare and power
- Societal: the persistence of language, culture, religion and identity
- Environmental: maintenance of the biosphere on which human activity depends
Securitisation
The Copenhagen School argued that an issue becomes a security issue not simply because it is objectively threatening but because an actor presents it as an existential threat and an audience accepts this, legitimising emergency measures. They also warned against securitising everything.
Human and cooperative security
The UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report made the individual rather than the state the referent, stressing freedom from fear and freedom from want. Cooperative security concerns pursuing security with rivals, while comprehensive security widens the range of threats; ASEAN and the CSCE/OSCE used the term actively.
Critiques
Critics say the concept loses analytical sharpness when stretched, and that securitising non-military issues can weaken democratic debate.
References
- Buzan, B. (1991). People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (2nd ed.). Harvester Wheatsheaf.
- Buzan, B., Wæver, O., & de Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner.
- United Nations Development Programme. (1994). Human Development Report 1994. Oxford University Press.