Security: A New Framework for Analysis

Citation

Buzan, B., Wæver, O., & de Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Chapter Summary

The book is short, about 240 pages, in nine chapters followed by a bibliography and a list of acronyms. After an introduction and a chapter setting out the conceptual apparatus, five sector chapters, each of roughly twenty to twenty-five pages, apply that apparatus in turn, and two closing chapters bring the sectors together and draw conclusions.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Frames the debate that the book enters. According to the publisher, traditionalists in security studies restrict the subject to politico-military issues, while wideners want to extend it to the economic, societal and environmental sectors, and the book sets out to establish the case for the broader agenda.

Chapter 2: Security Analysis: Conceptual Apparatus

The theoretical core, at nearly thirty pages. The publisher describes the central move: the authors argue that security is a particular type of politics applicable to a wide range of issues, and they offer a constructivist operational method for distinguishing the process of securitization from that of politicization. This answers the traditionalist charge that a wide agenda makes the subject incoherent. The same description says the approach shows that the theory of regional security complexes remains relevant.

Chapters 3–7: The Military Sector; The Environmental Sector; The Economic Sector; The Societal Sector; The Political Sector

One chapter for each sector. The military sector is the traditional core of security studies; the environmental, economic and societal chapters cover the sectors the publisher says wideners want to include, and the political sector completes the five. Each chapter applies the apparatus of Chapter 2 to its own sector.

Chapter 8: How Sectors Are Synthesized

Returns from the sector-by-sector analysis to the whole, asking how the separate sectors combine. The publisher says the approach incorporates the traditionalist agenda and dissolves the boundary between security studies and international political economy.

Chapter 9: Conclusions

The closing chapter, about twenty pages, followed by the bibliography and acronyms.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: Wide and narrow security

• Traditionalists and wideners: the two camps whose dispute opens the book, over whether security should be limited to politico-military issues.
• Securitization: the process by which an issue becomes treated as a security matter, the central concept of the book.
• Politicization: the process the authors distinguish securitization from, through a constructivist operational method.

Chapters 3–7: Sectors

• Sector: the book's unit for dividing the security agenda into military, environmental, economic, societal and political parts.
• Regional security complexes: the theory that the publisher says remains relevant.

Chapters 8–9: Synthesis

• Synthesis of sectors: the combination of the sector analyses into one account.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A framework designed for use. The structure is a conceptual apparatus followed by one application per sector, so a reader can take the apparatus and apply it to an issue in any sector. The final chapters bring the sectors back together.
• Takes the traditional agenda in rather than dismissing it. The publisher stresses that the approach incorporates the traditionalist agenda while widening it, which answers the main objection to a broad definition of security.
• Published reception. Paul T. Hart in the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management called it a sophisticated attempt to synthesize political realism, a widened security agenda and a constructive approach. April Carter in Political Studies described it as an ambitious and valuable attempt to engage the analysis of security with contemporary social theory and current political issues. Chris Smith in International Affairs wrote that a careful and precise reading is enormously rewarding and a re-read probably more so.
• Compact. At about 240 pages, with chapters of roughly 20 to 30 pages, the book can be read in full in a short period.

Limitations

• Dense for its length. Smith's remark that a re-read repays the effort points to a demanding text; readers should expect to go over the conceptual chapter more than once.
• Sector chapters are short. Each sector chapter is about twenty to twenty-five pages, so it cannot treat every issue in depth; its function is to show the framework at work, not to survey the literature of each sector.
• Published in 1998. The book predates later developments in security studies, and applications to more recent issues must come from other sources.
• A framework rather than a survey. It argues for one approach to security, and readers who want the range of positions in the field need a textbook alongside it.

Where It Fits in the Course

The security studies list begins with textbooks. Contemporary Security Studies and Security Studies: An Introduction are edited introductions covering theories, concepts and issues; International Security: A Very Short Introduction is a brief account of the debates that define the field. Any of these gives the background in which Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde's argument about widening makes sense.

Among the theory books, Waltz's Man, the State, and War organises explanations of war around three images, and Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics states offensive realism, so both are concerned with states and war, the traditional agenda that this book seeks to widen. This book is the main alternative in the list: it asks how issues come to be treated as security matters in the first place, and it extends the agenda to non-military sectors. Reading it after Mearsheimer, or after Waltz, makes the contrast clear.

How to Use This Book

It is for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in international relations and security studies who have already met the traditional realist approaches, and for anyone working on non-military security issues such as the environment, the economy or identity.

A practical plan:

• Read Chapters 1 and 2 first and slowly. They contain the argument that the rest of the book applies.
• Choose sector chapters by topic. Read the chapter on the sector that matches your subject, then read the military chapter to see how the framework treats the traditional agenda.
• Finish with Chapters 8 and 9 to see how the sectors fit together.
• Apply it. Take one contemporary issue, work out the sector it falls in, and write out who is presenting it as a security matter and what distinguishes that from ordinary politics.