the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

60 the driving forces behind the evolution of issfor its culture of scholarly communication and engagement. We addressthis explicitly in chapter 9, where we discuss whether ISS has become adelta connecting a variety of approaches or whether it has retreated intoa series of inward-looking camps.InstitutionalisationTo identify institutionalisation as a driving force is to further highlight thatacademic debates do not unfold in an economic and structural vacuum.Simply put, for there to be an academic discipline (Political Science), ora field (IR), or a sub-field (ISS), there has to be a set of supporting institutionalstructures and identities. Academic disciplines and fields are notobjective representations of reality, but rather particular ways of lookingat, and generating knowledge about, the world (Foucault, 1969, 1970).As a consequence, it is essential for there being a field of study that thereis an academic community that self-identifies as, for instance, securityscholars or IR theorists. The institutionalisation of any subject involvesnot only the allocation of resources and the embedding of a certain processof reproduction, but also brings with it the bureaucratic dynamicsof organisations. Since organisations, once established, are often hard tokill, institutionalisation also creates a type of inertia (which could be seenas momentum) carrying the past into the future. The institutionalisationof ISS through generations of hiring practices might easily breed a certainconservatism as far as broadening the concept of security is concerned.Institutionalised conceptions might also ‘slow down’ the impact of keyevents, as when Neorealism managed to reinvent itself after its failure topredict the end of the Cold War. But other aspects of institutionalisation,for instance a change in funding programmes, may also speed up theeffect of other forces.Surprisingly little has been written about this in relation to IR and ISSso we need to explain it at greater length than for the other driving forces.Simply put, institutionalisation may be seen as comprising four overlappingelements: organisational structures, funding, the dissemination ofknowledge, and research networks. These are summed up in Table 3.1and will be laid out in more detail below.First, institutionalisation identifies the way in which ISS is conductedwithin – and hence supported by – a set of organisational structures.Organisations range from the academic ones of universities through