Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2101886
R. Bellanova, Georgios Glouftsios
ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the security politics of EU database interoperability, inquiring how knowledge infrastructures underpin European security integration. Sitting at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and critical approaches to European security, we unpack the co-constitutive relation between database anxieties and interoperability mechanisms. By database anxieties, we refer to what European institutions identify as the main epistemic and operational concerns that emerge from the current use of databases by security authorities across Europe. These anxieties are expected to be resolved by mechanisms that foster interoperability. We argue that the relation between database anxieties and interoperability mechanisms shapes the novel conditions of possibility for European security integration in a datafied world. While far-reaching in technological terms, interoperability is not about introducing a new overarching system, but about the management, re-organisation and re-purposing of datasets. Such formatting matters politically because it eventually informs sovereign acts of policing and mobility control.
{"title":"Formatting European security integration through database interoperability","authors":"R. Bellanova, Georgios Glouftsios","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2101886","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2101886","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the security politics of EU database interoperability, inquiring how knowledge infrastructures underpin European security integration. Sitting at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and critical approaches to European security, we unpack the co-constitutive relation between database anxieties and interoperability mechanisms. By database anxieties, we refer to what European institutions identify as the main epistemic and operational concerns that emerge from the current use of databases by security authorities across Europe. These anxieties are expected to be resolved by mechanisms that foster interoperability. We argue that the relation between database anxieties and interoperability mechanisms shapes the novel conditions of possibility for European security integration in a datafied world. While far-reaching in technological terms, interoperability is not about introducing a new overarching system, but about the management, re-organisation and re-purposing of datasets. Such formatting matters politically because it eventually informs sovereign acts of policing and mobility control.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"31 1","pages":"454 - 474"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46532436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2101884
Bruno Oliveira Martins, Kristoffer Lidén, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert
ABSTRACT The European Union’s effort at controlling its external borders is an endeavour that increasingly relies on digital systems: from tools for information gathering and surveillance to systems for communicating between different agencies and across member states. This makes EU borders a key site for the politics of “digital sovereignty” – of controlling digital data, software and infrastructures. In this article, we propose a new understanding of how the concepts of digital and sovereignty interplay: sovereignty by digital means, sovereignty of the digital, and sovereignty over the digital. We do it by analysing three key manifestations within the EU’s borderwork: firstly, the expansion of EURODAC to include facial biometric data; secondly, the creation of the (future) shared Biometric Matching System (sBMS); and thirdly, the EU-funded West Africa Police Information System (WAPIS). These databases and systems exemplify three transformations of EU borderwork that invoke different dimensions of digital sovereignty: expansion of techniques for governing migration; interoperability of EU databases facilitating the internalisation of borders through domestic policing; and extra-territorialization of borderwork beyond the geographic limits of the EU.
{"title":"Border security and the digitalisation of sovereignty: insights from EU borderwork","authors":"Bruno Oliveira Martins, Kristoffer Lidén, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2101884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2101884","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The European Union’s effort at controlling its external borders is an endeavour that increasingly relies on digital systems: from tools for information gathering and surveillance to systems for communicating between different agencies and across member states. This makes EU borders a key site for the politics of “digital sovereignty” – of controlling digital data, software and infrastructures. In this article, we propose a new understanding of how the concepts of digital and sovereignty interplay: sovereignty by digital means, sovereignty of the digital, and sovereignty over the digital. We do it by analysing three key manifestations within the EU’s borderwork: firstly, the expansion of EURODAC to include facial biometric data; secondly, the creation of the (future) shared Biometric Matching System (sBMS); and thirdly, the EU-funded West Africa Police Information System (WAPIS). These databases and systems exemplify three transformations of EU borderwork that invoke different dimensions of digital sovereignty: expansion of techniques for governing migration; interoperability of EU databases facilitating the internalisation of borders through domestic policing; and extra-territorialization of borderwork beyond the geographic limits of the EU.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"31 1","pages":"475 - 494"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49349920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2101885
Andrea Calderaro, Stella Blumfelde
ABSTRACT EU Digital Sovereignty has emerged as a priority for the EU Cyber Agenda to build free and safe, yet resilient cyberspace. In a traditional regulatory fashion, the EU has therefore sought to gain more control over third country-based digital intermediaries through legislative solutions regulating its internal market. Although potentially effective in shielding EU citizens from data exploitation by internet giants, this protectionist strategy tells us little about the EU’s ability to develop Digital Sovereignty, beyond its capacity to react to the external tech industry. Given the growing hybridisation of warfare, building on the increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the security domain, leadership in advancing AI-related technology has a significant impact on countries’ defence capacity. By framing AI as the intrinsic functioning of algorithms, data mining and computational capacity, we question what tools the EU could rely on to gain sovereignty in each of these dimensions of AI. By focusing on AI from an EU Foreign Policy perspective, we conclude that contrary to the growing narrative, given the absence of a leading AI industry and a coherent defence strategy, the EU has few tools to become a global leader in advancing standards of AI beyond its regulatory capacity.
{"title":"Artificial intelligence and EU security: the false promise of digital sovereignty","authors":"Andrea Calderaro, Stella Blumfelde","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2101885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2101885","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT EU Digital Sovereignty has emerged as a priority for the EU Cyber Agenda to build free and safe, yet resilient cyberspace. In a traditional regulatory fashion, the EU has therefore sought to gain more control over third country-based digital intermediaries through legislative solutions regulating its internal market. Although potentially effective in shielding EU citizens from data exploitation by internet giants, this protectionist strategy tells us little about the EU’s ability to develop Digital Sovereignty, beyond its capacity to react to the external tech industry. Given the growing hybridisation of warfare, building on the increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the security domain, leadership in advancing AI-related technology has a significant impact on countries’ defence capacity. By framing AI as the intrinsic functioning of algorithms, data mining and computational capacity, we question what tools the EU could rely on to gain sovereignty in each of these dimensions of AI. By focusing on AI from an EU Foreign Policy perspective, we conclude that contrary to the growing narrative, given the absence of a leading AI industry and a coherent defence strategy, the EU has few tools to become a global leader in advancing standards of AI beyond its regulatory capacity.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"31 1","pages":"415 - 434"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43449617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2103370
Raluca Csernatoni
ABSTRACT Discourses around “strategic autonomy” and “sovereignty”, traditionally used at the state level, have been recently circulated within the EU supranational context regarding the European defence technological and industrial base, dual-use and disruptive research and innovation, and advances in the tech and digital domains. This article explores whether a high-politics logic intrinsic to “strategic autonomy” and “sovereignty” has been transplanted at the EU-level to enhance the strategic priority of various lower-politics policy fields across tech and digital policy initiatives and instruments. This logic has the hegemonic effect of shaping collective thinking and opening windows of opportunity for EU policymaking, by mainstreaming a security imaginary into broader technological governance processes. The article examines the EU’s scaled-up rhetoric around floating signifiers such as “strategic autonomy” and “technological sovereignty”, as well as the diffusion of overlapping “sovereignty” agendas enacted transversely in the defence, tech and digital sectors. The argument is that their meaning is not yet fixed but articulated via hegemonic interventions across different interconnected policy fields. This makes for conceptual “travelling” and “stretching” with a potential impact on the future of European security integration, by creating of a more unified security imaginary of the EU as a strategically independent and technologically sovereign space.
{"title":"The EU’s hegemonic imaginaries: from European strategic autonomy in defence to technological sovereignty","authors":"Raluca Csernatoni","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2103370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2103370","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Discourses around “strategic autonomy” and “sovereignty”, traditionally used at the state level, have been recently circulated within the EU supranational context regarding the European defence technological and industrial base, dual-use and disruptive research and innovation, and advances in the tech and digital domains. This article explores whether a high-politics logic intrinsic to “strategic autonomy” and “sovereignty” has been transplanted at the EU-level to enhance the strategic priority of various lower-politics policy fields across tech and digital policy initiatives and instruments. This logic has the hegemonic effect of shaping collective thinking and opening windows of opportunity for EU policymaking, by mainstreaming a security imaginary into broader technological governance processes. The article examines the EU’s scaled-up rhetoric around floating signifiers such as “strategic autonomy” and “technological sovereignty”, as well as the diffusion of overlapping “sovereignty” agendas enacted transversely in the defence, tech and digital sectors. The argument is that their meaning is not yet fixed but articulated via hegemonic interventions across different interconnected policy fields. This makes for conceptual “travelling” and “stretching” with a potential impact on the future of European security integration, by creating of a more unified security imaginary of the EU as a strategically independent and technologically sovereign space.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"31 1","pages":"395 - 414"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48380301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-21DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2085997
P. Cardwell, E. Moret
ABSTRACT Sanctions have become the “go to” mechanism for addressing foreign and security challenges in the international arena. The European Union’s willingness to impose autonomous (or unilateral) restrictive measures on third countries, and in particular on Russia, has come to the fore at a time when the uptake of new sanctions through the United Nations (UN) framework has stalled. This trend appears to reflect a growing ability to forge consensus among the EU's Member States and use its economic power to support its foreign policy goals. This article considers the extent to which the EU has succeeded in forging a leadership role in sanctions for itself among non-EU states. It examines the alignment or adoption by non-Member States with its sanctions regimes and finds that the EU has a demonstrable claim to regional, if not yet global, leadership.
{"title":"The EU, sanctions and regional leadership","authors":"P. Cardwell, E. Moret","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2085997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2085997","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Sanctions have become the “go to” mechanism for addressing foreign and security challenges in the international arena. The European Union’s willingness to impose autonomous (or unilateral) restrictive measures on third countries, and in particular on Russia, has come to the fore at a time when the uptake of new sanctions through the United Nations (UN) framework has stalled. This trend appears to reflect a growing ability to forge consensus among the EU's Member States and use its economic power to support its foreign policy goals. This article considers the extent to which the EU has succeeded in forging a leadership role in sanctions for itself among non-EU states. It examines the alignment or adoption by non-Member States with its sanctions regimes and finds that the EU has a demonstrable claim to regional, if not yet global, leadership.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"32 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47222566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-16DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2082838
Lars Gjesvik, Kacper Szulecki
ABSTRACT The digitalisation of the energy system brings out the question of cyber threats. How this area is perceived and how cyber-security policy in the energy sector develops is driven by the most spectacular cyber-incidents. How do these events shape public perceptions about the dangers of digitalisation? To understand this, we look at the 2016 CrashOverride cyberattack on Ukraine’s grid. Hypothesising that cyber-energy security incidents are interpreted in the context of socio-technical imaginaries of the energy sector and security imaginaries linked to foreign policy, we distil four discourses that emerged around the Ukraine attack among Western experts and commentators. One represented it as evidence of an accelerating race towards disaster, another as merely a tip of the iceberg. The third portrayed it as less catastrophic than initially suggested, while the last one as part of Russia’s cyber strategy. Not all of these were picked up by the broader public debate in Western security circles, and only the more alarmist discourses had a visible impact beyond niche communities.
{"title":"Interpreting cyber-energy-security events: experts, social imaginaries, and policy discourses around the 2016 Ukraine blackout","authors":"Lars Gjesvik, Kacper Szulecki","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2082838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2082838","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The digitalisation of the energy system brings out the question of cyber threats. How this area is perceived and how cyber-security policy in the energy sector develops is driven by the most spectacular cyber-incidents. How do these events shape public perceptions about the dangers of digitalisation? To understand this, we look at the 2016 CrashOverride cyberattack on Ukraine’s grid. Hypothesising that cyber-energy security incidents are interpreted in the context of socio-technical imaginaries of the energy sector and security imaginaries linked to foreign policy, we distil four discourses that emerged around the Ukraine attack among Western experts and commentators. One represented it as evidence of an accelerating race towards disaster, another as merely a tip of the iceberg. The third portrayed it as less catastrophic than initially suggested, while the last one as part of Russia’s cyber strategy. Not all of these were picked up by the broader public debate in Western security circles, and only the more alarmist discourses had a visible impact beyond niche communities.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"32 1","pages":"104 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48787154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-26DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2076558
Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters
ABSTRACT With the growing density and the plethora of security organisations on the regional and international level, the research programme on interorganisational relations has received increasing scholarly attention. The complexity of European security – in light of the Ukraine conflict since 2014, Russia’s more assertive foreign policy behaviour, and on-going crisis management operations in the Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East – has revived EU-NATO cooperation. The analysis from the perspective of member states and how they can be positioned in the EU-NATO interorganisational relations, however, has received little exploration. This article, therefore, addresses the roles and positions of member states within the relations between the EU and NATO as Europe’s prime security organisations. Member states have numerous political strategies at their disposal to trigger, strengthen or obstruct interorganisational relations, ranging from forum-shopping to hostage-taking and brokering. Drawing on insights from regime theory, network analysis, organisation theory and interorganisationalism, this article proposes a typology of member states in EU-NATO cooperation. Against the backdrop of this special relationship, the typology is developed which aims to detect and illustrate member states’ positions and strategies.
{"title":"Positioning member states in EU-NATO security cooperation: towards a typology","authors":"Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2076558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2076558","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With the growing density and the plethora of security organisations on the regional and international level, the research programme on interorganisational relations has received increasing scholarly attention. The complexity of European security – in light of the Ukraine conflict since 2014, Russia’s more assertive foreign policy behaviour, and on-going crisis management operations in the Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East – has revived EU-NATO cooperation. The analysis from the perspective of member states and how they can be positioned in the EU-NATO interorganisational relations, however, has received little exploration. This article, therefore, addresses the roles and positions of member states within the relations between the EU and NATO as Europe’s prime security organisations. Member states have numerous political strategies at their disposal to trigger, strengthen or obstruct interorganisational relations, ranging from forum-shopping to hostage-taking and brokering. Drawing on insights from regime theory, network analysis, organisation theory and interorganisationalism, this article proposes a typology of member states in EU-NATO cooperation. Against the backdrop of this special relationship, the typology is developed which aims to detect and illustrate member states’ positions and strategies.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"32 1","pages":"22 - 41"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46258807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-09DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2069464
Sarah Backman
ABSTRACT In a relatively short time, cybersecurity has risen to become one of the EU’s security priorities. While the institutionalisation of EU-level cybersecurity capacities has been substantial since the first EU cybersecurity strategy was published, previous research has also identified resistance from member states to allow the EU to have more control over their cybersecurity activities. Despite a growing literature on EU cybersecurity governance, there are currently extensive gaps in the understanding of this tension. This study suggests that an explanatory factor can be found in the so-far overlooked dynamic of the relative prevalence of risk vs. threat-based security logics in the EU cybersecurity approach. By distinguishing between risk and threat-based logics in the development of the EU cybersecurity discourse over time, this study highlights a shift towards an increasing threat-based security logic in the EU cybersecurity approach. The identified development highlights securitising moves enacting to a larger extent than before objects and subjects of security traditionally associated with national security. The study identifies specific areas of member state contestation accompanying this shift and concludes with a discussion on the findings in relation to the development of the EU as a security actor in the wider international cybersecurity landscape.
{"title":"Risk vs. threat-based cybersecurity: the case of the EU","authors":"Sarah Backman","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2069464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2069464","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In a relatively short time, cybersecurity has risen to become one of the EU’s security priorities. While the institutionalisation of EU-level cybersecurity capacities has been substantial since the first EU cybersecurity strategy was published, previous research has also identified resistance from member states to allow the EU to have more control over their cybersecurity activities. Despite a growing literature on EU cybersecurity governance, there are currently extensive gaps in the understanding of this tension. This study suggests that an explanatory factor can be found in the so-far overlooked dynamic of the relative prevalence of risk vs. threat-based security logics in the EU cybersecurity approach. By distinguishing between risk and threat-based logics in the development of the EU cybersecurity discourse over time, this study highlights a shift towards an increasing threat-based security logic in the EU cybersecurity approach. The identified development highlights securitising moves enacting to a larger extent than before objects and subjects of security traditionally associated with national security. The study identifies specific areas of member state contestation accompanying this shift and concludes with a discussion on the findings in relation to the development of the EU as a security actor in the wider international cybersecurity landscape.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"32 1","pages":"85 - 103"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43575473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-09DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2070006
Anne Heyerdahl
ABSTRACT Protective security management aims at protecting against malicious acts. It has, in a relatively short period, undergone substantial changes. One such change is the introduction of risk management. This article investigates a debate about a standard for security risk assessment (SRA) in Norway. It focuses on sense-making by security professionals, drawing on a unique interview material. The analysis utilises Michael Power’s theory on risk governance, as well as insights from security studies. A central finding is that the SRA approach was introduced to create more analytical security management. The importance of analysing one’s values (assets) makes it key to scrutinise the organisation’s characteristics, goals and vulnerabilities, regarded as moving security management in the direction of corporate governance. The article investigates how understanding of risk assessment and security interplay, and identifies a tension between risk (assessment) and the goal of protection, which makes security management risk averse. A requirement of creating sound security is viewed as a potential for burdensome organisational responsibility and blame. The analysis identifies elements of what is often described as resilience (attention towards vulnerabilities), but without the political reading (neo-liberal abdication of the state), thus contributing to the literature on resilience.
{"title":"From prescriptive rules to responsible organisations – making sense of risk in protective security management – a study from Norway","authors":"Anne Heyerdahl","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2070006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2070006","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Protective security management aims at protecting against malicious acts. It has, in a relatively short period, undergone substantial changes. One such change is the introduction of risk management. This article investigates a debate about a standard for security risk assessment (SRA) in Norway. It focuses on sense-making by security professionals, drawing on a unique interview material. The analysis utilises Michael Power’s theory on risk governance, as well as insights from security studies. A central finding is that the SRA approach was introduced to create more analytical security management. The importance of analysing one’s values (assets) makes it key to scrutinise the organisation’s characteristics, goals and vulnerabilities, regarded as moving security management in the direction of corporate governance. The article investigates how understanding of risk assessment and security interplay, and identifies a tension between risk (assessment) and the goal of protection, which makes security management risk averse. A requirement of creating sound security is viewed as a potential for burdensome organisational responsibility and blame. The analysis identifies elements of what is often described as resilience (attention towards vulnerabilities), but without the political reading (neo-liberal abdication of the state), thus contributing to the literature on resilience.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"32 1","pages":"147 - 169"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45562384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-12DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2022.2057188
Sten Hansson, Mari-Liis Madisson, A. Ventsel
ABSTRACT Governments spread strategic narratives via media to influence foreign audiences and policy makers. A frequent but understudied feature of strategic narratives is the discursive construction of blame. In this article, we use the coverage of the adoption of 5G cellular technology in Russian state-funded news portals as an example to show how to interpret blame narratives about international security issues. We combine methods and insights from the discourse-analytic studies of blame and the research into the uses of strategic narratives in international relations to reveal how various articulations of blame are used to (de)legitimise particular actors and actions, sow discord, and foster alliances. Our analysis sheds new light on blame discourses that are more sophisticated and indirect than straightforward accusations and may serve multiple strategic goals at once. It also contributes to scholarship on Russia’s strategic communication about China as well as the United States and its allies.
{"title":"Discourses of blame in strategic narratives: the case of Russia’s 5G stories","authors":"Sten Hansson, Mari-Liis Madisson, A. Ventsel","doi":"10.1080/09662839.2022.2057188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2022.2057188","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Governments spread strategic narratives via media to influence foreign audiences and policy makers. A frequent but understudied feature of strategic narratives is the discursive construction of blame. In this article, we use the coverage of the adoption of 5G cellular technology in Russian state-funded news portals as an example to show how to interpret blame narratives about international security issues. We combine methods and insights from the discourse-analytic studies of blame and the research into the uses of strategic narratives in international relations to reveal how various articulations of blame are used to (de)legitimise particular actors and actions, sow discord, and foster alliances. Our analysis sheds new light on blame discourses that are more sophisticated and indirect than straightforward accusations and may serve multiple strategic goals at once. It also contributes to scholarship on Russia’s strategic communication about China as well as the United States and its allies.","PeriodicalId":46331,"journal":{"name":"European Security","volume":"32 1","pages":"62 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48034959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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