European Union security governance: putting the ‘security’ back in

European Civil Security Governance

“…There are already some attempts that apply discursive and sociological approaches to understand and disentangle overlapping and/or competing discourses in areas like crisis and disaster management . It has also been suggested elsewhere that we need to reflect more how specific representations and logics of security shape specific modes of governance, such as securitized, politicized or functional forms of security governance (Christou et al, 2010). The broadly constructivist orientation of critical security studies offers a rich toolkit for the analysis of respective security discourses and practices and their manifest political and normative implications that can be brought to be bear on the study of EU civil security governance.…”

“…As sketched out above, there are significant transformations in the broader field of crisis and disaster management at the EU level and beyond, which cannot readily be captured by familiar labels from security studies. On a theoretical level, we expect that the way security governance is organized and executed strongly depends upon the underlying representations and understandings of 'security' -and these representations and understandings can lead to, or accommodate, different logics of governance ranging from functional technocracy over 'normal' politics to states of emergency (Christou et al, 2010). So it matters whether a field is structured by representations that are associated with internal security, human security or civil security, but the resulting consequences do not have to automatically be read from the perspective of securitization (in its many critical variants).…”

“…Security studies scholars have long highlighted that the way security governance is organized and executed strongly depends upon the underlying representations and understandings of 'security', including respective prefixes (Christou et al, 2010). Framing security in specific ways shapes the political and public assessments of pressing threats, responsible actors and reasonable solutions.…”

The changing role of NATO: exploring the implications for security governance and legitimacy

“…Security governance has been conceptualised as non-hierarchical interaction between different types of actors that are formally or informally institutionalised and share a joint goal (Webber et al 2004). The concept has been applied to different empirical contexts, most often the European Union (EU), but remain undeveloped theoretically (Kirchner and Sperling 2007, Wagnsson et al 2009, Christou et al 2010. Krahmann (2003) makes a distinction between government and governance Á roughly characterised by ideal types of centralisation/integration or fragmentation/ differentiation Á and provides an analytical framework in which the presence of either is analysed according to seven dimensions; the geographical scope of policymaking (which may consist of different actors/levels), the functional scope of policymaking (the extent to which issue areas are part of a single system and authority), distribution of resources (who controls them and what does the coordination look like), interests (common or diverse interests), norms (supporting or questioning the authority of the state), decision-making (authority organised around a democratic government or horizontally around various actors and levels) and policy implementation (centralised or decentralised) (Krahmann 2003, p. 12).…”

The European Union: A Peace Actor in the Making? Reflections Based on the ESDP Crisis Management Operations in Africa

“…Has the Union been able to develop a link between crisis management efforts and relevant capability development? Given its focus, this analysis examines security governance structures, and does not consider the notion of security (Christou et al, 2010).…”