Showing papers in "Journal of Global Security Studies in 2016"

The Dynamics of Global Power Politics: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract: We call for a research program focused on the dynamics of global power politics. Rather than link realpolitik to structural-realist theoretical frameworks or the putatively anarchical character of world politics, the program treats power politics as an object of analysis in its own right. It embraces debate over the nature of global power politics among scholars working with distinctive approaches. It sees the structural contexts of power politics as highly variable and often hierarchical in character. It attenuates ex ante commitments to the centrality of states in global politics. And it takes for granted that actors deploy multiple resources and modalities of power in their pursuit of influence. What binds this diverse research program together is its focus on realpolitik as the politics of collective mobilization in the context of the struggle for influence among political communities, broadly understood. Thus, the study of the dynamics of collective mobilization—the causal and constitutive pathways linking efforts at mobilization with enhanced power—brings together approaches to security studies in a shared study of power politics.

Spaces of Global Security: Beyond Methodological Nationalism

Abstract: The changing political and social meanings of space under conditions of advanced globalization point to the need to analyze security – or the deployment and management of violence -- as a socio-spatial practice. This article draws attention to the “methodological nationalist” bias that has traditionally characterized mainstream security studies, and discusses its effect on how security issues are studied and conceptualized. Building on insights from political geography and sociology, the article makes the case for a “spatial turn” in the field. It discusses how a socio-spatial approach can help make sense of evolving state security practices, and presents examples of non-national spaces of security -- including cities, cyberspace and the global polity. Such spaces are increasingly objects of security practices, but the implications of this remain largely under-theorized in security studies.

Nuclear Weapons Scholarship as a Case of Self-Censorship in Security Studies

Abstract: Security studies scholarship on nuclear weapons is particularly prone to self-censorship. In this essay, I argue that this self-censorship is problematic. The vulnerability, secrecy, and limits to accountability created by nuclear weapons (Deudney 2007, 256–57; Born, Gill, and Hânggi 2010; Cohen 2010, 147) call for responsible scholarship visa-vis the general public. This need for renewed and expanded scholarly responsibility is especially pressing given current plans among nuclear-weapon states to “modernize” their nuclear arsenals, committing their citizens and children to live in nuclear-armed countries and, a fortiori, a nuclear armed world (Mecklin 2015). Despite this need, the existing reflexive literature in security studies—calling for greater scholarly responsibility (see Steele and Amoureux 2016; Waever 2015, 95–100)—has neither specifically focused on nuclear weapons nor explored the forms of self-censorship identified here as shaping a modality of responsibility. In making this case, I define self-censorship in nuclear weapons scholarship as unnecessary boundaries on scholarly discourse within security studies. In this article, I identify three forms of self-censorship: an epistemological self-censorship that denies the normative foundations of nuclear studies; a rhetorically induced form of censorship that leads scholars to stay away from radical reorderings of the world (e.g., world government or the abolition of nuclear weapons) because of the joint rhetorical effects of the tropes of nonproliferation and deterrence; and, finally, a “presentist imaginal” form of self-censorship that leads scholars to obfuscate the implicit bets they make on their considered possible futures and their constitutive effects on the “present” they analyze. I do not claim that these are the only forms of self-censorship. I also leave aside the nondiscursive structures of knowledge production and the institutional and political constraints on nuclear studies. However, as I show in the concluding section, these three forms of self-censorship result in an unduly narrow sense of scholarly responsibility, which does not meet the requirements of democratic politics in the age of global nuclear vulnerability. One should not expect this problem to be solved by a disciplinary division of academic labor in which historians tackle the issue of responsibility while security studies scholars do not. As a result, identifying these forms of self-censorship allows us to both expand the scope of responsibility and exercise it as security studies scholars. In the current configuration, we think of ourselves, at best, as responsible managers of the nuclear present, a present expected to be extended into the future. If we become aware of our self-imposed blinders, we could conceive ourselves as responsible citizens of a future in the making.

High Politics, Low Politics, and Global Health

Abstract: It has become commonplace to argue that global health has ascended from “low politics” to the ranks of “high politics” in international relations—those issues of existential importance to the state and which concern its very survival. Despite its ubiquity, the actual substance of such a shift in the framing of global health is largely unexamined. In this article, I argue that empirical evidence belies the idea that global health is a “high politics” issue. This dichotomy makes little sense, and efforts to reframe global health as a “high politics” or securitized issue rarely succeed. While it is undoubtedly true that global health has received significantly greater attention from the international community over the past twenty-five to thirty years, that attention does not spring from global health being reframed as a “high politics” issue for states.

Why Women Rebel: Greed, Grievance, and Women in Armed Rebel Groups

Abstract: Many scholars have sought to understand what drives recruitment in armed rebel groups. While theories focused on grievance and selective incentives have been the subject of a robust body of scholarship, large-N work in this area tends to focus primarily on male recruits, and often utilizes measures that fail to account for the differing motivations of male and female rebels. Moreover, existing studies of the motives of female rebels have been regionally focused or concentrated on a single case—calling into question whether the findings are consistent across the global population of females in armed rebel groups. Drawing on a data set measuring women’s participation in seventy-two active rebel groups since 1990, this work seeks to test hypotheses drawn from prior research to explain why women rebel. These tests indicate that some trends noted by previous researchers have explanatory power. Particularly, economic and ethnic or religious grievances are motivating factors that drive women to take up arms. At the same time, though, these findings cast doubt on the salience of other motivating factors, such as selective incentives and a desire for political participation.

Can We Predict Politics? Toward What End?

Abstract: In 1901, off the Greek island of Antikythera, a ship pulled into a bay to wait out a storm. After the storm was over, its divers discovered an ancient shipwreck containing many valuable antiquities, including jewelry, coins, statues, and pottery. One item was a lump of corroded bronze and wood. Everything was carted off to the National Museum of Archeology in Athens. In 1902, an archeologist noticed that the corroded lump had what appeared to be gears in it. He assumed that it was some sort of astrological clock, but it appeared to be too far advanced given the dating of the other items it was found with, which were initially dated to about 150 BCE, and it was ignored for five decades. Several years later, it was X and γ rayed, resulting in images of eighty-two different fragments of the device. By the end of 2014, it had been established that the mechanism dated back further, to about 250 BCE. Many consider it to be the first computing machine (Freeth et al. 2006). This device was able to calculate and display celestial cycles, including phases of the moon, as well as a solar calendar. Perhaps more importantly, it was able to predict eclipses—seen at the time as omens. In fact, many think of the Antikythera Mechanism as an omen prediction device , with all the other predictions it makes simply by-products of its true purpose. The main purpose of this mechanism was to generate accurate predictions, and whoever used it could do so without a detailed theoretical knowledge of Hipparchosian astronomy as applied to irregular phases of ellipsoid orbits. Thus, it was pure prediction and did not “explain” anything. At the same time, it embodied detailed engineering that was based on a theoretical mechanism that provided exquisite details of … mw160{at}duke.edu

Paying Attention to Dead Bodies: The Future of Security Studies?

Abstract: What does taking dead bodies seriously tell us about the state of global security studies? Dead bodies play different roles in conventional, human, and critical security studies and thus thinking about them opens conversations among these different approaches. This paper pushes further to argue that scholars should think about the global dead as an analytical category. It demonstrates that doing so will allow us to rethink the measurement of war casualties, and examine the assumptions embedded in quantitative casualty data, the ethnography of these numbers, and the politics of representing them. Establishing the dead as an analytical category also widens the lens of dead body management to examine how dead bodies are not only objects but also subjects of security. This should lead us to ask about the politics behind how they are secured and governed, as well as the political and legal structures in place to manage them. Corpses matter for how we define security and they matter a great deal for a wide variety of security behavior. Up until now, security scholars have treated them implicitly but we can understand much more about the politics of the dead if we make them an explicit category of study.

Aiding Victims, Abetting Violence: The Influence of Humanitarian Aid on Violence Patterns During Civil Conflict

Abstract: Annual allocations of bilateral and multilateral humanitarian assistance to conflict-affected states total billions of dollars each year. Humanitarian assistance plays a vital role in sustaining vulnerable populations. However, inflows of such aid may also exacerbate violence by both threatening insurgents and creating incentives for these groups to extend or deepen control over the areas in which aid is concentrated. Insurgent efforts to ameliorate threats and co-opt resources ultimately raise the risk of conflict between insurgent and counterinsurgent forces. We use recently constructed geo-located data on both aid commitments and conflict events in a sample of twenty sub-Saharan African countries during the post–Cold War era to evaluate the impact of aid on violence. Even after accounting for the non-random assignment of aid within conflict zones, we find that humanitarian aid increases the frequency of subsequent violent engagements between rebel and government forces in the areas in which aid is concentrated. Importantly, however, we find no evidence that other forms of foreign development aid exacerbate or prolong violence in the areas in which they are allocated.

Centering Security Studies Around Felt, Gendered Insecurities

Abstract: This article draws on two decades of work in feminist security studies, which has argued that gender is necessary, conceptually, for understanding the concepts of war and security; important, empirically, for analyzing causes and predicting outcomes in the field of security; and essential to finding solutions to insecurity in global politics. The work of feminist security studies suggests that one of the most persistent features of the global political arena is gender hierarchy, which plays a role in defining and distributing security. The argument in this article moves from talking about the security of gender to discussing the gendered sources of insecurity across global politics. It then builds on existing work in Feminist Security Studies to suggest a felt, sensed, and experiential notion of the security/insecurity dichotomy as a new way to think about global security (studies). A (feminist) view of “security as felt” could transform the shape of a number of research programs in security studies.

Foreign Military Intervention, Power Dynamics, and Rebel Group Cohesion

Abstract: Third-party states use foreign military intervention as a tool to influence the outcome of intrastate conflict. The literature identifies other consequences associated with this intervention but has not yet examined its effect on rebel group cohesion. We might expect rebel groups to coalesce or splinter depending on the direction of the intervention. This paper tests this relationship on all intrastate armed conflicts during the period from 1975 to 2009. It finds that rebels tend to coalesce when a foreign power intervenes on their behalf. External interventions, whether supporting the rebels or the government, however, do not appear to influence rebel group splintering.

Repression, Education, and Politically Motivated Cyberattacks

Abstract: What factors drive politically motivated cyberattacks? Our research focuses on one particular kind of cyberattack: politically motivated, distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). We argue that denial-of-service attacks are a particular form of a larger category of political contention that is more similar to nonviolent than violent activism. We offer a country-level explanation that helps establish why some nation-states are more likely to suffer such attacks while most others are not. When we control for wealth and Internet penetration, the strongest factor explaining why a country is more likely to suffer DDoS attacks is the dangerous combination of repression and a highly educated population. The results have important implications both for the scholarly study of this form of contention, as well as for policymakers grappling with this new form of activism.

The Limits of the “Democratic Coup” Thesis: International Politics and Post-Coup Authoritarianism

Abstract: Recent studies have suggested that post–Cold War coups are more likely to be followed by democratic elections than their Cold War predecessors; analysts attribute this trend to international policies of democratic conditionality. Some go so far as to argue that we live in an age of the “democratic coup.” This paper raises questions over any optimistic view of the capacity of coups to contribute to long-term democratization. An analysis of countries’ post-coup trajectories after 1991 demonstrates that there is, consistent with previous studies, a clear trend of holding elections within five years of the coup. However, I show that most countries experiencing coups fail to go on to establish high-quality democratic rule. Instead, they often consolidate into some form of authoritarian rule. The paper ratifies the importance of the international political environment but highlights the role of international autocratic sponsors. When states are strategically important or have strong linkages to non-Western autocracies, coup leaders are likely to receive international support and protection rather than condemnation and sanctions. The article illustrates these arguments by examining post-coup authoritarian consolidation in Egypt and Fiji.

The Perils of Self-Censorship in Academic Research in a WikiLeaks World

Abstract: For the past six years, the availability of WikiLeaks data—including the SIGACTS violent event data for Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the diplomatic cables—has posed an important challenge for international relations and conflict researchers. Despite the evident attractions of the vast trove of primary data involving US military and diplomatic interests, only a few peer-reviewed academic papers have been published. The reluctance to analyze WikiLeaked information is mostly due to self-censorship. Because of its character, we cannot reliably know why American academics engage in self-censoring, but worries about repercussions for career prospects or fear of prosecution are probable. Despite threats of legal consequences by governmental officials, none have occurred (to my knowledge). Academics who have publicly spurned analysis of WikiLeaks information have made two arguments, either a) that it is against US law to access the data and/or that it helps America’s enemies or b) that the materials in the leaks are not worthy of much attention since they are not earth-shattering or unexpected. Neither of these claims holds much validity.

An Ethics of Global Security

Abstract: The security agenda is going global. Key threats such as weapons proliferation, disease, terrorism and climate change cannot be addressed unilaterally by states, and require a global perspective to both understand and respond effectively to them. There are therefore powerful pragmatic reasons for embracing a global security perspective. This article, however, suggests that a compelling moral case also exists for viewing security in global terms. National and international security discourses are at odds with the realities of world politics and orient towards the preservation of a status quo that is failing much of the world's population, now and into the future. In this context, this article makes a case for cosmopolitan ethical principles underpinning a global security perspective. Only an ethics that does not discriminate between groups is defensible as a general set of principles. A global security perspective should be underpinned by three cosmopolitan ethical principles which dictate, firstly, that all security actors have responsibility (albeit differentiated) to create security for all; secondly, they should act with consideration of the future implications of their actions in mind; and, thirdly, they should proceed as if their actions will become global over time and space. While not without challenges and dilemmas, such a perspective is urgently needed in contemporary global politics.

Climate Change as a Global Security Issue

Abstract: This inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Security Studies , and the workshop that preceded it, covers a broad range of topics that push the traditional boundaries of international security studies. Yet, disappointingly, the subject of climate change was largely absent, with the exception of Burke et al.’s discussion of it as a case study in global ethics. At a point in history when the US president calls climate change “a serious threat to global security” (Obama 2015), this absence begs to be filled. In this essay, I offer some ideas on the connections of global warming with global security. Is climate change a global security issue? The answer depends on one’s concept of security, but in three ways, the answer could be “yes.” First, and least controversially, a changing climate will affect how and where military forces operate. The US administration has laid out the parameters of these effects in several recent policy documents (White House 2015).1 Perhaps most interesting from an International Relations (IR) perspective is the opening of the Arctic region as sea ice melts, requiring the adaptation of military forces to operate effectively there, especially if new shipping routes require protection or if conflicts develop over natural resources in this previously inaccessible area (White House 2013). An obvious example is the question of additional US heavy icebreakers, which currently number just two (lagging behind Russia with twenty-seven as well as Canada, Finland, and Sweden). The navy relies on the coast guard for icebreaking, but even one new heavy icebreaker at a billion dollars would consume the entire annual coast guard acquisition budget. The likelihood of sea-level rise, storm surges, and widespread extreme weather at home and abroad also affects military planning. Naval bases tend to be located on the coast (!) and …

Counter-Piracy in the Indian Ocean: A New Form of Military Cooperation

Abstract: This article examines how a group of loosely connected, often adversarial states have managed to conduct successful counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia. The traditional literature on multinational military cooperation assumes that such cooperation will be successful when it is hierarchically organized with a strong central command and unity of action. Counter-piracy has functioned well because it takes a fundamentally different, networked form. Counter-piracy operations are egalitarian, rather than hierarchical, and operate using informal links between militaries. This article considers the implications of informal military cooperation, and the extent to which lessons from counter-piracy can be applied elsewhere.

Censorship and Surveillance in the Digital Age: The Technological Challenges for Academics

Abstract: Technologically supported censorship and surveillance practices have become prominent topics and also affect the academic profession. In particular, the growing reliance on digital tools makes scholars as well as their research data and/or participants vulnerable to the consequences of potential censorship. As technological information control is interfering with basic principles of academic freedom, the current paper aims to systematically explore methods which can be used for digital censorship and surveillance as well as ways to resist them. The article is split into three parts. The first section discusses why academia and especially security studies are required to engage in debates on censorship. It touches upon the current societal and political climate, emphasising the need for the inclusion of cryptographic tools. The second section outlines how censorship is technically implementable and how these techniques can impact the academic profession. It discerns various practices of information control, referring to real-life examples. The final section examines what to do against technologically supported censorship and surveillance and is referring to common cryptographic circumvention methods. They can be applied to improve participants’ anonymity and ensure the secure storage, integrity, and transmission of data. Overall, the paper strives to stimulate a discussion about the inclusion of these tools within academia and students’ curricula. It further endeavours to foster a debate about the legal and technical protection of academics that allows for independent, critical research in the digital age to proceed.

Quantum Mechanisms: Expanding the Boundaries of Power, Space, and Time in Global Security Studies

Abstract: This inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Security Studies stakes out important new frontiers in security studies, pushing the boundaries of the possible in power politics (Goddard and Nexon), space (Adamson), and time (Ward). Goddard and Nexon attempt to wrest global security studies away from the traditional international relations (IR) perspective of states as primary actors acting within the structure of anarchy; Adamson calls for a “spatial turn” in IR, drawing attention to geographies that challenge the dominant conception of the world as a set of territorially defined entities; and Ward challenges the field to move beyond description and prescription. They offer a broad pluralistic view that focuses attention on collective mobilization processes rather than covering laws, erases boundaries between states, and promotes prediction as a goal for theories. However, expanding the boundaries of power, space, and time in global security studies cannot be fully realized within traditional IR philosophies of science. To reap these benefits requires a rejection of the traditional neo-Newtonian view of mechanisms in favor of a quantum mechanical perspective. Ward begins with a discussion of the Antikythera Mechanism, constructed to predict future events based on the Ancient Greek (pre-Keplerian) understanding of the motion of celestial bodies. The use of this (literal) mechanism as a starting place for discussing predictions in political science is quite apt, in that social science is still stuck with a neo-Newtonian conception of mechanisms for both prediction and explanation. Jon Elster aptly describes this orthodoxy in this paean to methodological individualism: “To explain is to provide a mechanism , to open up the black box and show the nuts and bolts, the cogs and wheels, the desires and beliefs that generate the aggregate outcomes” (emphasis in original; Elster 1985, 5). For Elster, as for many in social science, mechanisms are …

Non-state Armed Groups as a Threat to Global Security: What Threat, Whose Security?

Abstract: What kind of security threats do non-state armed groups pose, and to whom? The literature has tended to take the state as a reference point for the study of non-state armed groups: insurgents have long been regarded as domestic military threats, and since 9/11, terrorism has been increasingly treated as a major transnational military threat. Because literature on armed non-state actors typically situates them in the context of war or protracted conflict, the state-centric and militarized view of these groups is rarely contested. However, data on 232 armed groups in twenty-three Asian countries from 1985 to 2014 show that the primary threat such groups most consistently pose is to the human security of local civilian populations, rather than the military security of states. A human security perspective suggests alternatives to military responses, the need for more tailored non-military interventions, and the necessity of improved data collection on non-state armed groups that exist in- and outside the context of conventional war.

The Future of Global Security Studies

Abstract: If the field of Global Security Studies is approaching a rather messy and yet stratified crossroads, the Journal of Global Security Studies (JoGSS) aims to direct traffic flows at that intersection toward more meaningful destinations. Doing so effectively will mean thinking broadly about the field and our conduct of inquiry, even as we establish new ways of bounding our topic and mobilizing a community of scholars to follow suit. In reflecting on the journal theme, I’ll develop this argument by unpacking and reflecting on each of the terminologies in its title and suggesting some propositions about how they might be repackaged. The “future of global security studies,” I argue, will be determined by whether and how we instantiate a renaissance in thinking about studies, security, globality, and the future. Study is scholarship: it is scholars who constitute this field. Who are we? How do we identify ourselves and against whom? How do we cluster, where do we network, and whom do we cite? The answers to these questions tell us something about which ideas about “security studies” anchor us as a community of practice and why. In the past, security studies was a community of somewhat disparate sub-communities, fractured by substantive emphases on (say) great power politics or human security or arms control. As Ashley Leeds notes in her Research Innovation in this issue, these sub-communities exist not only in the International Security Studies section’s contributions to the ISA’s Compendium project, but stretch into many parts of the ISA. We see this in themes used by different sections, in new books and who reviews them, in forums and points of debate. Part of the journal’s mission is to bring them under a big tent and get them talking to one another. I suspect security studies scholars will need to begin …

Catalyzing Conflict: The Internal Dimension of the Security Dilemma

Abstract: Realists are accustomed to thinking about security competition between states in terms of the security dilemma: each state's efforts to improve its security can be taken as a threat by others, sparking competition that destabilizes the system and increases the likelihood of conflict. By focusing almost exclusively on external threat dynamics, however, common thinking about the security dilemma misses how domestic vulnerabilities can also be a catalyst for security competition. This is particularly the case in “weak” states that lack internal legitimacy. Weak developing states see intervention (whether perceived or real) targeted at their domestic vulnerabilities as an existential threat to political survival. When the targeted state responds to minimize or negate the threat, its response may be perceived as a threat, warranting a counter response. Particularly, when a targeted state possesses significant national power—as in the cases of China and Russia—a security competition is born. This article develops the logic behind this modified version of the security dilemma focused on internal vulnerabilities. Managing these internal fears will be of critical importance if we are to avoid the reemergence of security competition between great powers in the future.

Ideational and Material Forces in Threat Perception: The Divergent Cases of Syria and Saudi Arabia During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)

Abstract: How do states perceive threats? Why are material forces sometimes more prominent in shaping threat perceptions, whereas ideational forces are the motivator in other instances? This article aims to move beyond the task of determining whether material or ideational factors matter to offer an integrated framework based on analytical eclecticism that specifies the conditions under which one of these two factors becomes salient in regimes’ threat perceptions. When regime identity is fixed and the material structure provides multiple strategic options to ensure a state’s physical security, leaders perceive challenges to their identity as more salient. When a state's identity is fluid, providing multiple narratives, and the distribution of military capabilities constrains strategic options for physical security, leaders perceive threats to their physical security as more prominent. As a result, the regime’s identity narrative is reframed to adapt to the constraints of the material structure. To examine the validity of this argument, I analyze the divergent Syrian and Saudi threat perceptions during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). Keywords: threat perception, ideational forces, material forces, Syria, Saudi Arabia

You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception

Abstract: A common assumption in international relations (IR) theory is that threat perception involves the very deliberate and painstaking task of processing information. Costly signals, movements toward rapprochement, conciliatory gestures, speech acts, intentioned behavior, and other actions are interpreted and consciously analyzed in order to answer the simple question: Does the relevant actor pose a threat? Yet, a wealth of evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests that rather than consciously evaluating others, we tend to make quick judgments within milliseconds of meeting. First impressions, it turns out, are critical to judgments of threat as well as trustworthiness. And crucially, first impressions are sticky in that they last long into a relationship and color future interactions. This article elaborates this cognitive bias in IR threat perception, posits a theory of first impressions at the individual level of analysis, and outlines its importance in diplomacy. In particular, I connect the literature on first impressions to the problem of first encounters in constructivist theorizing, suggest links to the proliferation of symbolic violence, and find an antidote to symbolic violence in the practice of digital diplomacy.

Historical Perspective on Public Support for the Draft: War Costs and Military Service

Abstract: The military draft was once an important element of American national security policy with widespread popular backing. The collapse in public support for it is an important historical puzzle. Public opinion about the draft also offers an arena for assessing the role of war costs, such as military casualties, in shaping attitudes toward national security policy. The costs of the draft fall on a readily identifiable segment of the population. However, surveys administered during several different historical periods provide only limited evidence that these costs affect individual opinion. Draft eligibility reduced support for conscription during peacetime but not during major wars, when the cost of being drafted was greatest. By contrast, military service had a more consistent socializing effect, with veterans and their families expressing greater support for the draft. Together, these and other individual-level processes suggest a possible explanation for the decline in aggregate support for conscription that has more to do with changing force structure and elite leadership than with public aversion to the costs of war. The results also suggest that war costs have more complicated effects on public opinion than most research on public support for war implies.

Failing and the Seven Seas? Somali Piracy in Global Perspective

Abstract: This article reconciles the conflicting evidence on the relationship between governance and maritime piracy at the macro (state) and micro (sub-state) level using original data (2000–2011) and a study of piracy’s emergence in and around the Horn of Africa. It finds a consistent, positive relationship between state weakness and increased piracy production cross-nationally. However, Somali piracy belies the “anarchy as opportunity” mechanism implied by the large- N study. The pirate industry there received substantial support from local authorities, more consistent with a quadratic, “stability-enabled” argument regarding governance. I conclude that each is half-right. At the macro level, anarchy presents permissive conditions for simple banditry, but limits the potential for robust organized crime unless corruptible sub-state authorities exist and can be co-opted. Policy-wise, efficient pirate deterrence programs should concentrate on regions within failed states with this mix of characteristics. Methodologically, the results point to the limitations of existing metrics of state fragility and governance, and recommend that more nuanced measures be used.

What Is Global in Global Security Studies

Abstract: The mission of the Journal of Global Security Studies is to solicit and publish a variety of methodological, epistemological, theoretical, normative, and empirical studies in the field of global security studies. The emphasis on, and commitment to, diversity of voices and approaches is a welcome addition to the international relations journal landscape and, in particular, to security studies. But, it is a broad and ambitious charge—a charge made all the more ambitious and potentially ambiguous by the identifier “global.” What exactly is global security studies and how is it distinguished from security studies? In this brief comment, I provide some suggested ways to think about, and conceptualize, the term global in global security studies. Before turning to the concept of global security studies, it is worth a quick review of security studies so that we can see the distinction. Twenty-five years ago, at the end of the Cold War, Stephen Walt wrote a thorough state-of-the-field essay on the evolution of security studies up until that point (Walt 1991). Walt championed the “renaissance” that had occurred throughout the 1970s and 1980s in security studies and noted that while the field had always been an “interdisciplinary enterprise,” it was easily definable because of its focus on the “phenomenon of war,” with a particular mission of increasing our collective understanding of the role of military force in international relations (IR). In addition, the “renaissance” of which he wrote was attributable to the surge in positivist social science theorizing (principally realism) of security issues. In the twenty-five years since, security studies has grown well beyond the traditional focus on guns, bombs, and rockets and beyond the issues of conventional warfare, nuclear weapons, and grand strategy. To be sure, the field still focuses on war and conflict, but the nature of war and conflict has …

Self-Censorship in International Relations and Security Studies

Abstract: If we take the definition of censorship as the control of information and ideas circulated within a society through the suppression of words and images, you have part of the answer. But we should not only think of overt forms of control and suppression, but also more indirect forms that occur through socialization. In all communities, individuals are socialized to act in accord with established norms and practices. Those who do not may be labeled deviants and stigmatized. Anxious to avoid stigmatization, but also to gain from acting in acceptable ways, people engage in self-censorship. They monitor what they say and do, and perhaps even what they allow themselves to think. Broadly speaking, we might say self-censorship can take two forms: a choice made and an unintended practice, a sort of disciplinary blindness that we don’t even recognize. So self-censorship has obvious advantages to society and individuals alike. For individuals, it may help to avoid harm and advance one’s career. And societies rely on self-censorship even more than shaming or punishment to reduce the frequency of threatening and destabilizing behavior. But it also can be damaging when it is too effective, as it discourages freedom of thought and expression, both of which are critical to personal and social adaptation and development. As with so many things, there is a happy medium, although it is invariably difficult to find, sustain, or logically justify. The study of international relations (IR) and foreign policy, and the social sciences more generally, are rule-governed like all other forms of human activity. Those rules and related practices evolve, but in different ways from more ordinary social behavior. There is widespread agreement among philosophers and scientists that science is a set of shared practices within a professionally trained community (Kuhn 1970; Rouse 1987). And while we …

A Brief Reflection on Conversations about Security

Abstract: A few years ago, I agreed to write an entry for the International Studies Association (ISA) Compendium entitled “Alliances and Arms: The Quest for Security” (Denemark 2010). The submission was requested by the Scientific Study of International Processes (SSIP) Section editors, Paul Diehl and Jim Morrow. My colleague Cliff Morgan and I were tasked with reviewing the literature on alliances and arms, with a focus on the contributions of SSIP style work. When the volume containing our contribution arrived in the mail sometime later, I discovered that the very next entry alphabetically in the compendium was entitled “Alliances and War,” and was written by Patricia Weitsman, commissioned by the International Security Studies Section (ISSS). Until the volume came out, Cliff and I were unaware that Patty was working on a similar entry, and I expect she was not aware of our contribution either. After reading the two entries, I was struck by the separation of communities concerned with similar problems. Weitsman’s compendium entry cites 156 studies. Leeds and Morgan’s cites ninety-six studies. The two share twenty-nine citations in common—19 percent of the Weitsman citations and 30 percent of the Leeds and Morgan citations. The topics of the two essays are not identical, and we were specifically told to focus on literature related to the traditions of our sections, which surely helps explain some of the differences. Still, it seems that the two essays attempt to answer similar questions relying on different bodies of work. But do they reach the same conclusions? The answer is yes and no. In explaining alliance formation, both essays begin from the same starting point—balance of power theories. The first major difference between the two essays is that Weitsman concludes that “balancing is a central role that alliances …

Introduction to JoGSS Forum “Censorship in Security Studies”

Abstract: > Do You Know That Newspeak is the Only Language in the World Whose Vocabulary Gets Smaller Every Year? Winston Did Know That, of Course. > > –George Orwell, 2013 (1949) The idea to organize a forum on censorship—the control of information and ideas circulated within a society through the suppression of words and images—emerged among the editorial team in summer 2015. In July, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, gave an interview to the German news magazine Der Spiegel in which he suggested that English-speaking IR scholars are reluctant to use material made public by WikiLeaks for their research (Assange 2015). This was picked up in blogs, and a sort of debate ensued among American commentators because, indeed, very few articles had been published in ISA journals using WikiLeaks sources (The Ben Norton Blog 2015). Why? On one side, Dan Drezner argued that academics are simply indifferent to WikiLeaks, because the material it contains is not very interesting (Dan Drezner 2012; 2015). Others disagreed and suggested that “the academy has been extremely cautious” and that self-censorship is at work, fanned by concern that the US government would take legal action against those who used WikiLeaks material (Gabriel 2015). Either way, positions of “indifference” and “caution” support each other or, at least, meet in the view that dealing with WikiLeaks is not a risk worth taking. However, evaluations regarding the usefulness, legality, and risk of engaging classified sources touch on fundamental questions IR scholars cannot escape: the relationship between academia, politics, and the state; the scope of academic freedom and the nature of “responsible scholarship”; and to what extent research can and should …