This is the fifth contribution in our forum on securitization theory in the U.S. Sirin Duygulu recently got her PhD in political science from UMass, Amherst and currently teaches at Okan University, Istanbul. Her research focuses on the use of security language by transnational advocacy campaigns.
I believe when questioning the reasons behind the limited traction that securitization literature has so far had in American IR, three set of factors worth consideration. These factors are: the historical development of IR scholarship; the relatively close ties between the policy world and the academic world in the US; and the limited dialogue between framing and securitization literatures.
Whether IR is an American field of study (one dominated by American scholars/ way of thinking) has been a matter of debate for the last four decades. Some scholars, like Hoffman (1977), claimed that particular conditions created a fertile ground in the US for IR to become a discipline and others argued that such historical roots turned IR into a “hegemonic” (Smith 2002) or a “not so international” discipline (Waever 1998).
As a reflection of the Western roots of the discipline, IR has evolved to traditionally concern itself with great power politics and focused on understanding/ explaining/predicting the priorities and concerns of these actors. The issues and concerns pertaining to non-great powers (as well as non-state actors) have only gradually found their ways into the discipline. Despite the efforts to make the field more global in its focus, great power politics remained largely at the core of the discipline. As such, the acts, perceptions and policy choices of great powers, especially in the study of international security, are largely approached as “causes” or “dynamics” of international affairs to build analyses on rather than “consequences of particular processes” to be analyzed. Thus, when Obama called “Ebola a ‘global security threat’” or when Clinton administration declared HIV/AIDS as a “threat to national security,” the fact that these issues are health problems in their essence and not security threats do not necessarily get noticed, rather they get embedded into what is referred to when talking about “threats to American security.”
The reason why American security concerns do not get questioned is also related to the close ties between the academic world and the policy world in the US. The nature of the issue at hand and the epistemological approach of the securitization theory require the scholars to have some distance from both the “author” and the “audience” of the security frame in order to be able to reflect on the process of securitization. When the ties between those who securitize an issue and those who analyze it are close, analyzing the process gets even more difficult. This echoes Oren’s (2002) discussion on how the intertwined nature of the policy and the academic worlds in the US led the literature’s perception and depiction of America’s chief enemies to change over time with almost no acknowledgement of such change.
While securitization theory is yet to attract significant attention in American scholarship, the questions of how agendas get set; how, why and through which mechanisms different issues get prioritized on political and social agendas is a well-developed line of study within the field of American politics. The strategic packing of issues with the purpose of triggering public attention and political action is studied through the lenses of framing theory. Most of the insights of the framing literature show parallels with the insights of the securitization theory. The attention paid to framing theory could have potentially provided a fertile ground for securitization theory to find itself a receptive ear in American scholarship. Despite such potential, as an increasing number of scholars (such as Watson 2012) highlight, the limited dialogue between framing and securitization literatures curtailed both literature’s ability to learn from each other’s’ insights and also limited the traction securitization theory had in American scholarship.
Naturally the factors I highlighted above are broad generalizations and the increasing attention that both securitization theory and other critical theories get from American IR is a testament of how IR is evolving, albeit slowly, toward becoming a more global discipline both in its focus and also in its methodological and epistemological approaches. Yet, bringing securitization theory to the center of American IR would require conscious efforts to tackle a number of intertwined obstacles.
Hoffman, S. 1977. An American Social Science: International Relations, Daedalus 106(3):41-60.
Oren, I. 2003. Our Enemies and US: America’s Rivalries and the Making of Political Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Smith, S. 2002. The United States and the discipline of International Relations: ‘‘hegemonic country, hegemonic discipline’’. International Studies Review 4(2):67 – 85.
Waever, O. 1998. The sociology of a not so international discipline: American and European developments in International Relations. International Organization 52(4): pp 687 – 727.
Watson, S. D. 2012. “Framing” the Copenhagen School: Integrating the Literature on Threat Construction. Millennium 40(2):279-301.
I think you raise an interesting point regarding the apparent lack of dialogue between framing and securitization literatures. In an earlier post, Goddard notes that securitization theory struggles in its efforts to establish causality. Though it seems a daunting task indeed to attempt to demonstrate empirically how or why “magical incantations” lead to extraordinary measures, perhaps framing theory does offer some insight. Goddard’s observation that securitization theory is “apolitical” in that it fails to account for contentious processes surrounding security claims leads her to argue that securitization theory downplays the agency of the audience (a potentially fruitful locus from which to launch into enquiry). By focusing attention on media, and the fact that “audiences exist in embedded power structures in which they face limitations on their sources of knowledge and in which certain actors hold a privileged position in signalling important developments,” framing theory helps draw our attention from the speech act itself to the conditions under which the act occurs (Watson 2012, 286). This helps us understand why some securitization attempts fail while others succeed. It also broadens the discussion, as you mention. At the same time, securitization theory and framing theory share much in their approaches. Some similarities are rightly disregarded and/ or unaccounted for. For example, thinking about security as a kind of “master frame,” is interesting but ultimately unhelpful.
you need to read foucault. or at least, kenneth waltz.
Perhaps you have a more specific reason for thinking that I haven’t.
Thank very much for your comment, Cameron. I do agree with you on your comment that dialogue between securitization and framing literatures should not be in the form of creating redundancy or confusion in terminology. What I had in mind
when writing this point was the potential benefits that can be gained by using framing theory to shed light onto the spots that securitization theory has so far not
done necessarily a good job at. You have already mentioned the problems of the literature in accounting for the agency of the audience in the securitization process. I would like to add the lack of necessary attention being paid to the reasons and
motivations that the audience (or audiences) has in accepting the claims made
about security threats. I believe assuming that securitization succeeds if and when the audience simply gets convinced of the claims of the author(s) overlooks various calculations that the audience might have (which sometimes have nothing to do with security) in accepting such claims. I believe the most important contribution that a dialogue between securitization and framing literatures would make is to help us better evaluate how unique or different securitization is from human rights-ization or environmental-ization etc. which in return would help us better understand the dynamics of securitization.