The theory of “securitization” developed by the Copenhagen School provides one of the most innovative, productive, and yet controversial avenues of research in contemporary security studies. This article provides an assessment of the foundations of this approach and its limitations, as well as its significance for broader areas of International Relations theory. Locating securitization theory within the context of both classical Realism influenced by Carl Schmitt, and current work on constructivist ethics, it argues that while the Copenhagen School is largely immune from the most common criticisms leveled against it, the increasing impact of televisual communication in security relations provides a fundamental challenge for understanding the processes and institutions involved in securitization, and for the political ethics advocated by the Copenhagen School.

To date, most discussion of security privatization in international politics has been focused on the role of private military companies and mercenaries. This article seeks to shift the focus away from the battlefields and toward the less spectacular privatization and globalization of commercial private security. Drawing on Saskia Sassen's notion of state ''disassembly,'' we situate the growth of private security within broader shifts in global governance. Pointing to the weakness of seeing the rise of private security as an erosion of state power and authority, we show instead a re-articulation of the public ⁄ private and global ⁄ local distinctions and relationships into what we term ''global security assemblages.'' Analyzing the role of private security in two such assemblages in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, we show how a range of different security agents and normativities interact, cooperate and compete, to produce new institutions, practices and forms of security governance. Global security assemblages thus mark important developments in the relationship between security and the sovereign state, structures of political power and authority, and the operations of global capital. 1 We are grateful to the UK ESRC (grant no. RES-223-25-0074) for supporting the research on which this article is based.

No abstract

Realism is commonly portrayed as theory that reduces international relations to pure power politics. Michael Williams provides an important reexamination of the Realist tradition and its relevance for contemporary international relations. Examining three thinkers commonly invoked as Realism's foremost proponents - Hobbes, Rousseau, and Morgenthau - the book shows that, far from advocating a crude realpolitik, Realism's most famous classical proponents actually stressed the need for a restrained exercise of power and a politics with ethics at its core. These ideas are more relevant than ever at a time when the nature of responsible responses to international problems are at the centre of contemporary political debate. This original interpretation of major thinkers will interest scholars of international relations and the history of ideas.

Debates over how ideas matter in international relations have come to occupy a key place in the field+ Through a reexamination of the thinking of Hans Morgenthau, this article seeks to recover a tradition of classical realism that stressed the role of ideas in both the construction of action and in political and ethical judg-ment+ Locating Morgenthau's understanding of politics against the background of the oppositional "concept of the political" developed by the controversial jurist Carl Schmitt shows how Morgenthau's realism attempts to recognize the centrality of power in politics without reducing politics to violence, and to preserve an open and critical sphere of public political debate+ This understanding of Morgenthau's realism challenges many portrayals of his place in the evolution of international relations, and of the foundations of realist thought+ However, it is also of direct relevance to current analyses of collective identity formation, linking to-and yet providing fundamental challenges for-both realist and constructivist theories+ How and why do ideas matter in international relations~IR!? For at least a decade this question has been at the center of IR theory+ Constructivists, liberal institutionalists, poststructuralists, Gramscians, structural realists, and neo-or postclassical realists have all debated the importance of ideas, and while there is now some agreement among these competing positions that ideas matter, there is little consensus on precisely why or to what extent they do so+ 1 This article seeks to contribute to these ongoing discussions by exploring a position that has been notably absent within them: that of classical realism+ I argue that a reengagement with For helpful and insightful comments on this article in its wide variety of previous incarnations, I would like to thank