Security community: A future for a troubled concept?

Abstract

This article offers first a brief commentary on Karl Deutsch and his collaborators’ development of the concept of security community, before moving to a critical review of constructivist attempts by Adler, Barnett and their colleagues at resurrecting it. The article makes the case that while the serious effort to give security community a new life is laudable, the appropriation also renders the concept at once theoretically complex and methodologically superficial. Drawing constructive lessons from the previous research, it seeks to demonstrate the potential of the security communities research provided that it (1) restores the Deutschian ethos of rigorous, transparent, collective and transdisciplinary research; (2) takes seriously the challenge to the realist paradigm by zooming in and out of the modern state when thinking about security community; and (3) in addition to processes of integration investigates more thoroughly also the processes of disintegration.

Democracy, Donald Trump and the Canada-US Security Community

“…The question of whether Canada and the United States actually form a PSC has been teased before, as when Wæver (1998: 72) noted that while Canada-US and the Nordic countries both exemplify PSCs, “only the latter avoids the possible counter-arguments of quasi-imperial hegemony explanations.” In some ways, the issue is unresolvable, reflecting deep ontological questions on the nature of Canada, the bilateral relationship and international politics—even the very existence of security communities (Ditrych, 2014). Scholars have argued for decades whether Canada is an autonomous principal power; a middle power that operates with coalitions of like-minded states; or a satellite, colony, or penetrated minor power dominated by the United States (Clarkson, 1968; Dewitt and Kirton, 1983; Hawes, 1984; Bow and Lennox, 2008).…”

“…PSCs are not static and may regress from non-war to violent conflict; Adler and Barnett (1998: 58) cite examples of security communities “disintegrating” during periods of imperial decline, after the Cold War and due to other systemic shocks. Others expressly challenge security scholars to more carefully examine the conditions under which PSCs might dissolve (Wæver, 1998: 76; Ditrych, 2014: 359). Declarations of peace and friendship, even long-standing conditions of non-war, demonstrate neither the existence nor durability of a PSC, since “formal commitments can be breached, and the low probability or absence of war might be due to the balance of power or other dynamics unrelated to a security community” (Nathan, 2006: 293).…”

From geopolitical anomie to a syncretic metamodel of the Greater Black Sea Region – “Five Sea Region”

“…While developing Deutsch's concept, Emanuel Adler E. notes that "from the perspective of pluralistic security communities, real "positive" peace does not require the transcendence of the nation-state or the elimination of existing cultural and ethnic loyalties and identities or full integration into a single state" (Adler, 2011). Henceforth, various aspects of "security community" have been analysed in the works of Bellamy (2004), Tusicisny (2007), Valters, Rabinowitz, and Denney (2014), and Ditrych (2014.…”

Explaining the European Union's Security Role in Practice

“…Scholars who take their point of departure in the security community literature (Adler and Barnett, ; Deutsch, ) attempt to explain the EU's security role as one of fostering a new type of transnational security community as a result of broadened security objects and threats (; Bremberg, ; Boin and Ekengren, ; Ditrych, ; Ekengren, ; Porter and Bendiek, ). However, this assumption has found little support in existing empirical research, which has mainly exposed the challenges of the emergence, survival and spread of the classical ‘non‐war' communities around the world (Acharya, ; Adler, ; Bjola and Kornprobst, ; Pouliot, ; Williams and Neumann, ).…”