Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SECURITY AND SECURITIZATION
Social Constructivism
In the 1990s dissatisfaction with the three main paradigms of International Relations,
and their myriad offshoots and hybrid theories, produced a range of theoretical
challenges which coalesced into a fourth paradigm known as Social Constructivism.
The way in which the Cold War ended and the panning out of the ‘New World Order’
which followed, prompted a number of scholars to challenge many of the assumptions
of the discipline across the paradigms. In particular Social Constructivism argued that
understanding political events in the world necessitated more introspection and less
grand abstract theorizing. The paradigm favours a more sociological approach and
advocates a greater appreciation of the cultural dimension of policy-making. It began
to be argued that maybe the actors on the world stage do not really follow any kind
of rational script, be it written in the language of self-interest, mutual interest or
dictated by economic circumstance. Perhaps, at least some of the time, foreign policy
reflects parochial ideological or moral guidelines rather than objective gains. By the
1990s Ruggie, a lifelong Pluralist, contended that that paradigm and Neo-realism
had come to share so much common ground, in assuming states to be rational gaindriven
actors, that they should henceforth be considered as a single paradigm of
‘neo-utilitarianism’ (Ruggie 1998: 1–39).
The USSR’s voluntary ‘defeat’ in the Cold War, when Gorbachev negotiated
a ‘surrender’ with the enemy for what he considered to be the good of his country,
appeared to defy the logic of Realism and the national interest. 2 In the proceeding
years the reluctance of the newly reunified Germany to seek to use its enhanced
physique to exert greater power in Europe appeared to offer greater evidence of a
government acting according to ideas rather than interests. Constructivists consider
that the three established paradigms all downplay the normative element of politics
in attempting to build ‘value-free’ ‘scientific’ models to explain the actions of international
actors.
Whereas Pluralists and Marxists tended to focus on other aspects of
International Relations, leaving Security Studies to the Realists, Social Constructivists
mounted the first concerted attack on the logic of Security Studies as it had developed
during the Cold War years. Ontological questions largely ignored between 1940 and
1990 began to be asked. Who is being secured? Who is doing the securing? What is
it to be secure?
Wide and narrow conceptions of security
This book adopts a broad and deep interpretation of security encompassing a
varied range of perceived threats to humankind, which takes the subject area well
beyond the framework of traditional treatments of international security politics that
have tended to focus on military threats emanating from other states. This broader
approach to conceptualizing global security gained ground in the 1990s when the
ending of the Cold War seemed, to many statesmen, academics and members
of the general public, to herald a new era of international politics. In this ‘new world
order’ the threat of global nuclear Armageddon had subsided, allowing previously
marginalized issues to emerge from the shadow of superpower rivalry and register
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