This article proposes that in addition to physical security, states also seek ontological security, or security of the self. Ontological security is achieved by routinizing relationships with significant others, and actors therefore become attached to those relationships. Like its physical counterpart, the ontological security motive is a constant. But states may adhere to routines rigidly or reflexively, and variation in attachment style has implications for security-seeking. This article conceptualizes the individual-level need for ontological security, scales it up to states, and applies the ontological security-seeking assumption to the security dilemma. Realists argue that states want to escape security dilemmas but uncertainty prevents them. Ontological security-seeking suggests that states may not want to escape dilemmatic conflict. Because even dangerous routines provide ontological security, rational security-seekers could become attached to conflict. Ontological security-seeking sheds new light on seemingly irrational conflict, and suggests lines of research into the stability of other outcomes in world politics. KEY WORDS ♦ attachment ♦ intractable conflict ♦ ontological security ♦ routines ♦ security dilemma ♦ uncertainty The security dilemma is the heart of structural realist theory: in anarchy, actions taken for one's own security can threaten the security of others, leading to arms races, conflict and war. The fundamental cause of the security dilemma is uncertainty. As Randall Schweller (1996: 119-20) points out, a world of known greedy states generates no 'dilemma', but insecurity, while a world of known security-seekers generates no 'dilemma', but security (also Glaser, 1997: 191ff.). But states' intentions (or 'type') are hard to know and easily misperceived. Moreover, even accurate perceptions today give little information about intentions in the future, so states always must

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While the EU has long been understood as a postnational political project, stressors like migration have prompted "neo-Westphalian" responses. For insight into such backsliding, I focus on the concept of home. A psychological need for home as a place of "being" is central to an ontological security approach to subjectivity, and home qualities that resonate psychologically underpin political projects such as the Westphalian homeland. At both levels, home is understood as an enclosed refuge. But home is not necessarily that way, and that monological discourse, which privileges borders, limits our political imagination. To reclaim a plural notion of home, drawing on Winnicott and others, I propose that home is a space of "being with becoming." Scaling up, this makes room for a new macro political idea, homespace. EU migration governance reproduces ideas of the home as homeland. I propose reorienting the imaginary of home to homespace, which focuses on centering and emplacement practices and locales of encounter, to help capture the promise in the EU's post-Westphalian territoriality.

The research community of ontological security scholars is vibrant and wide-ranging, defined by a conceptual core and by the themes through which scholars register their disagreements. In this special issue we have collected some of the work that has been produced or inspired by discussions and meetings during the last few years. The goal is to showcase some of the breadth of insights and possibilities on the topic of ontological securities and insecurities in world politics. Thus far, International Relations scholarship on ontological securities in world politics has been varied, focusing on different referent objects (individual, society, group, state), different political outcomes (cooperation, conflict, violence; stability or change) and different methods (quantitative, qualitative, discursive). While on the face of it such differences would seem to pose a challenge to the goal of developing a coherent research agenda, we have found the range of work and diversity among ontological security scholars to be exceptionally productive, leading already to cross-fertilisation and the deepening of our own approaches, while also inspiring new collaborations. The articles in this special issue discuss the subjective and foundational dimensions of ontological security in philosophical, existential and empirical terms and approach the ‘level-of-analysis’ problem from new perspectives.

S tates routinely justify their policies in interstate forums, and this reason-giving seems to serve a legitimating function. But how could this be? For Habermas and other global public sphere theorists, the exchange of reasons oriented toward understanding--communicative action--is central to public sphere governance, where political power is held accountable to those affected. But most global public sphere theory considers communicative action only among nonstate actors. Indeed, anarchy is a hard case for public spheres. The normative potential of communicative action rests on its instability: only where consensus can be undone by better reasons, through argument, can we say speakers are holding one another accountable to reason. But argument means disagreement, and especially in anarchy disagreement can mean violence. Domestically, the state backstops argument to prevent violence. Internationally, I propose that international society and publicity function similarly. Public talk can mitigate the security dilemma and enable interstate communicative action. Viewing multilateral diplomacy as a legitimation process makes sense of the intuition that interstate talk matters, while tempering a potentially aggressive cosmopolitanism.

Research on ontological security in world politics has mushroomed since the early 2000s but seems to have reached an impasse. Ontological security is a conceptual lens for understanding subjectivity that focuses on the management of anxiety in self-constitution. Building especially on Giddens, IR scholars have emphasized how this translates to a need for cognitive consistency and biographical continuity – a security of ‘being.’ A criticism has been its so-called ‘status quo bias,’ a perceived tilt toward theorizing investment in the existing social order. To some, an ontological security lens both offers social theoretic foundations for a realist worldview and lacks resources to conceptualize alternatives. We disagree. Through this symposium, we address that critique and suggest pathways forward by focusing on the thematic of anxiety. Distinguishing between anxiety and fear, we note that anxiety manifests in different emotions and leaves room for a range of political possibilities. Early ontological security scholarship relied heavily on readings of Giddens, which potentially accounts for its bias. This symposium re-opens the question of the relationship between anxiety and subjectivity from the perspective of ontological security, thinking with and beyond Giddens. Three contributions re-think anxiety in ontological security drawing on existentialist philosophy; two address limitations of Giddens' approach.

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