Scholars and policymakers agree that major powers have leverage over their more junior partners. Giving security assistance or providing arms is supposed to increase this leverage. However, major powers often hit roadblocks when trying to influence the behaviour of their junior partners. This article demonstrates that junior partners are often successful in constraining the behaviour of the major power partners, and have particular success in extracting additional resources from their major partners. This article develops the concept of loyalty coercion to explain that leverage is based on rhetorical and symbolic moves, rather than material preponderance. It then uses cases of US arms sales to show that weapons transfers did not lead to US leverage, instead opened opportunities for junior partner influence. The article contributes to scholarly and policy perspectives on alliance management and reputation, and leverage in world politics.

The purpose of this introduction is to concisely present The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization so that those unfamiliar with this work are better able to engage with the symposium. The book develops a Theory of Just Securitisation outlining when securitisation is morally permissible. Securitisation, here, refers to more than a securitising speech act coupled with a legitimising audience's tacit or actual acceptance of the threat and defence framing. Arguably the question of the morality of securitisation is most pertinent when the same encompasses the use of measures and conduct that most reasonable persons would ordinarily (that is, in times when there is no relevant threat) consider unacceptable, largely because of the harm and/or the violence risked or entailed.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a tectonic change that influenced the geopolitics of the Middle East to this day. This article highlights the necessity of re-examining the events of 1979 from a securitisation perspective. Through an investigation of Ayatollah Khomeini's pivotal role, I challenge the methodological nationalism often found in the study of Israel–Iran relations. Despite his unconventional position in security matters, Khomeini played a crucial role in the securitisation of the 1979 revolution. Drawing on Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, secondary sources, elite interviews, and Khomeini's theological speeches, this article re-examines the intricate stages of securitisation and counter-securitisation spanning 16 years. Khomeini effectively mobilized the political audience (Iranian people) to support the revolution, aiming to overthrow the Shah and remove Israel’s presence from Iran. I argue that a non-linear securitisation process was employed, characterised by Khomeini's ability to establish informal authority among the opposition. This process ultimately led to him gaining legitimacy from the Iranian people and culminated in the successful securitisation act of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

This article contributes to an ‘historical turn’ in security scholarship. It addresses imbalance in security studies’ attention to historical empirics, and argues against notions of temporal disjunct prevalent within the discipline. I employ a genealogical framework to clarify the interpellation of past and present; and I introduce the ‘conceptual archive’ as a lens for pursuing that interpellation in research. My thesis on the ‘conceptual archive’ represents a twofold contribution. Firstly, a conceptual contribution: I advance the ‘conceptual archive’ as a way of thinking about past-present interpellation (specifically, existing conceptual logics’ remodelling in arguments justifying new practice). Secondly, an analytical contribution: I propose the ‘conceptual archive’ as a tool for doing genealogy (a research programme with historicising promise, but one suffering nebulous operationalisation at present). I use the field of terrorism studies as an entry-point to these contributions: adopting a mixed-methods research design to trace British counterterrorism practices’ roots within an ‘archive’ of logics on Northern Ireland. I find 1970s British governments remodelled long-standing ‘archival’ vocabularies in their arguments for new security provisions: framing exceptional practices according to an accepted fabric of concepts.

Peacebuilding policies and practices represent strong attempts by external actors to exercise power in postconflict settings. Yet the extensive theoretical treatments of power in International Relations remain somewhat disconnected from empirical analyses of peacebuilding, and how external actors exercise power is under-conceptualised in the literature. Likewise, the literature on forms of resistance by local actors is seldom examined as an exercise of power in itself, and as part of a multidimensional relationship of power/resistance between external and local actors. This article thus theorises the different dimensions of power/resistance, with a detailed focus on an exemplary case – international efforts at peacebuilding in Burundi – that spans more than twenty years. It deploys a tripartite conception of both to analyse the ways in which different forms of power and resistance can be uncovered in peacebuilding practices, We demonstrate this via an analysis of postconflict peacebuilding in Burundi, and in particular the longer-term efforts of local actors to overtly and covertly bend and fuse peacebuilding practices to their own ends.

Few issues are more important yet less understood than outside interventions in intra-state conflicts. Under what circumstances do intervening states further their interests and when, contrarily, do they plunge into quagmires? France is a critical case. It is, statistically, the world’s second intervenor and earned the sobriquet of Africa’s gendarme through frequent interventions in African wars. The ability of such a medium-sized state to intervene with greater regularity and ostensible success than larger powers raises questions about how France manages its interventions. Do French interventions draw on the French Army’s distinctive ‘school’ of population-centric counterinsurgency, which emphasises the need to militarise governance in pursuit of comprehensive victories? Or do the French Fifth Republic’s civil-military institutions encourage policymakers to carefully regulate force’s employment in pursuit of limited ends? This study draws on declassified archives to test which approach most characterises French interventions. To preview my conclusions, strategic satisficing – the use of minimal force for short durations to produce satisfactory outcomes – distinguishes the Fifth Republic’s interventions from other powers’ practices and prior French counterinsurgencies. This particular form of interventionism enables France to influence a large number of intra-state conflicts and maintain a network of security agreements with African states.

With the advent of smartphones and social media, non-elites possess more resources to engage in politicisation and securitisation of issues. The increasing popularity and acceptance of eyewitness videos captured by non-elites presents new political-security implications, especially for the issue of migration and refugees, as witnessed during the European refugee crisis. The eyewitness videos the host population of Europe captured served as key heuristic artefacts for non-elites to engage in the securitisation and counter desecuritisation of asylum seekers. The production, visual, circulation, and audiencing aspects of eyewitness videos are significantly different from those of professional videos from news media and therefore can potentially articulate (in)security in distinct ways. I argue that the epistemic-political constitution of eyewitness videos and their online remediation through the complex networked act between the calculated security publics and video recommendation algorithms of social media play a key role in facilitating security articulations of asylum seekers. This is illustrated in the analysis of two popular eyewitness videos from Calais. The article examines how non-elites used eyewitness videos to politicise and securitise Calais asylum seekers.

In this article, I attempt to theorise the nature of the African multilateral security system. In doing so, I interrogate the question: how does the emancipatory logic of critical security relate to the post-colonial ideal of self-determination within the context of the African multilateral security system? The question is worthy of an attempt, for it brings the post-colonial concerns of African security into the discussion of critical security. For the empirical exposition, I draw on the idea of African solutions to African problems (Afsol to Afprob) as the hallmark of Africa’s collective security system to argue that at the ideational level, the emancipatory logic converges with self-determination. However, I observe that, at the level of operationalisation, the emancipatory logic of critical security diverges from the post-colonial ideal of self-determination. This is owing to the privileges of power reflected in the representational and financial capacity of the actors involved. This facilitates the reproduction of the Eurocentric dependency which Afsol to Afprob sought to supplant. The outcome is a paradox of critical security in post-colonial contexts exemplified in the disaggregation of emancipation into three emancipatory logics: the urgent, preferred, and desired.

The Schengen Information System for law enforcement, border control, and judicial cooperation in the European Union has over the years seen a considerable expansion of the amount and types of data stored and its functionalities, as well as its user base. In light of this transformation from a simple information-sharing tool to a full-blown investigative database, there has, however, been surprisingly little public debate and pushback against the growing surveillance and control capacities that the system enables. This article proposes to understand the largely uncontested evolution of the SIS through the concept of ‘creep’, i.e. the incremental, unforeseen, and/or stealthy development of a technological system beyond what it was originally introduced for. More specifically, it retraces how creep has in the case of the SIS been enabled and facilitated through (1) latent development principles, i.e. the rationale of building dormant features into a system that can be activated at a later point in time once technology has sufficiently matured and/or legal foundations have been adopted; and (2) technology monitoring and steering mechanisms, i.e. the continuous assessment of the readiness of key technologies for anticipated updates to the system as well as interventions in publicly funded research programmes.

The individualisation of punishment is a key element in liberal narratives about international law and international relations. This narrative has become an integral part of positive international law, especially the regimes governing the use of force and the prosecution of an international crimes. Rather than punishing states or entire societies, liberals claim, punishment has become restricted to those who incurred individual guilt. To liberals, the individualisation of punishment is part of a larger process of enlightenment and civilisation that has helped to fence atavisms like revenge. We do not question the emergence of an ever more sophisticated system of individual punishment in international law. However, we argue that punitivity has been more difficult to fully channel towards individuals and away from collectives than claimed. To be sure, punitive language has by and large been banned from the laws of armed conflict. We argue, however, that the absence of a punitive vocabulary does not equal the absence of punitivity. In contrast, current state practices of using armed force are still imbued with punitivity, however silenced in the current legal framework and thus pushed underground. Realising the presence of a punitive undercurrent, we argue, adds to a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary state practices.

Tensions between civil and military authorities over issues such as budgets and strategic posture are unavoidable in pluralistic societies. Scholars of Civil-Military Relations (CMR) have identified a range of practices through which civil-military contestation occurs, and examined their implications for issues such as military effectiveness. This literature, however, has yet to incorporate critical approaches to knowledge into its analysis. Seeking to fill this gap, this article explores how the British military's presentation of its professional knowledge has been increasingly shaped by the political context of British defence policy. More specifically, it argues that the British armed forces’ presentation of opaque imaginations of future war in military doctrine has sought to entrench the role of Defence in an environment of increasingly integrated governmental responses to security challenges. To do this, the article focuses specifically on two concepts that have become increasingly significant in the British defence establishment's articulation of its professional authority and strategic purpose – Multi-Domain Integration (MDI) and the Integrated Operating Concept (IOpC). The article therefore contributes to the literature a fresh perspective of the role of military doctrine and epistemic practices in civil-military contestation, as well as a critical account of the politics of knowledge in British defence.

This article examines how coalition forces sought to weaponise the counting of civilian casualties in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2014. Drawing on interviews with senior coalition officials, recently declassified documents, and coalition data on civilian harm, it will explain how these figures were used to calibrate the violence inflicted on the Afghan people, ensuring that commanders applied sufficient force to achieve their objectives without causing unnecessary harm to civilians and jeopardising the success of military operations. The article examines the formation of the Civilian Casualty Tracking Cell (CCTC), which was created by General David McKiernan in 2008. It also traces the formation of the Civilian Casualty Mitigation Team (CCMT), which was established by General John Allen in 2011. Furthermore, it explores how this data was deployed by coalition officials to minimise civilian harm where possible and to rationalise this harm where necessary. Rather than simply documenting the death and destruction, these counts were complicit in the violence experienced by Afghan civilians, helping to enable and enhance the effectiveness of military operations. As such, I argue that these counts failed to contest the violence of war or the continued dehumanisation of Afghan civilians.

Securitisation theory has too often been associated with the liberal state of exception and its problematic baggage. The Copenhagen School's early claims to deconstruct (not reproduce) the national security logic seem overlooked. Using the fantasy video game World of Warcraft as a large-scale thought experiment, this article asks how a distinct security mode is still possible when the normalisation of armed violence exceeds even what Carl Schmitt's political theory can provide for. Following a careful reading of Ole Wæver's formulation of the ‘existential threat’, securitisation asserts that without a certain referent object, the world becomes meaningless. As a tool for reshaping the limits of imagination, securitisation enacts political communities in World of Warcraft by turning upside down common wisdom about normalcy and security. While normal politics are violently conflictual, securitisation fills in the role of international norms and organisation, fostering supranational cooperation and erasing sovereign disputes. Securitisation thus far exceeds its contingent incarnation in the modern concept of security – a conclusion that has consequences for the normative debate on securitisation and for non-Western interpretations of the theory.

This article contributes a securitisation-based, interpretive approach to state weakness. The long-dominant positivist approaches to the phenomenon have been extensively criticised for a wide range of deficiencies. Responding to Lemay-Hébert's suggestion of a ‘Durkheimian’, ideational-interpretive approach as a possible alternative, I base my conceptualisation on Migdal's view of state weakness as emerging from a ‘state-in-society's’ contested ‘strategies of survival’. I argue that several recent developments in Securitisation Theory enable it to capture this contested ‘collective knowledge’ on the state: a move away from state-centrism, the development of a contextualised ‘sociological’ version, linkages made between securitisation and legitimacy, and the acknowledgment of ‘securitisations’ as a contested Bourdieusian field. I introduce the concept of ‘securitisation gaps’ – divergences in the security discourses and practices of state and society – as a concept aimed at capturing this contested role of the state, operationalised along two logics (reactive/substitutive) – depending on whether they emerge from securitisations of the state action or inaction – and three intensities (latent, manifest, and violent), depending on the extent to which they involve challenges to state authority. The approach is briefly illustrated through the changing securitisation gaps in the Republic of Lebanon during the 2019–20 ‘October Uprising’.

The significant link between human rights violations and the eventual outbreak of atrocity crimes has been widely promoted across the UN system. However, the question of how the connection between the R2P norm and human rights plays out in the actual practices and debates of the UN Security Council has been relatively under explored. In response, the article builds on constructivist research into norm robustness in order to trace how the R2P's shift to an atrocity prevention focus has generated increased applicatory contestation over the push to expand the link between human rights and threats to international peace and security. Based on extensive analysis of UN Security Council meeting records and three case studies, the article highlights two competing ideological frames that currently divide the Security Council's approach to atrocity prevention. This division has emphasised a key disconnect between the work of the Security Council and other UN institutions such as the Human Rights Council, therefore severely limiting the potential for effective atrocity prevention responses. Thus, without a stronger connection to human rights in the process of threat identification, the R2P norm will remain considerably limited as a prevention tool. Consequently, the article also contributes to a new understanding of the critical role evolving institutional rules and practices play in state attempts to both constrain and reshape human protection norms.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty reserved outer space for ‘peaceful purposes’, yet recent decades have witnessed growing competition and calls for new multilateral rules including a proposed ban on the deployment of weapons in space. These diplomatic initiatives have stalled in the face of concerted opposition from the United States. To explain this outcome, we characterise US diplomacy as a form of ‘antipreneurship’, a type of strategic norm-focused competition designed to preserve the prevailing normative status quo in the face of entrepreneurial efforts. We substantially refine and extend existing accounts of antipreneurship by theorising three dominant forms of antipreneurial agency – rhetorical, procedural, and behavioural – and describing the mechanisms and scope conditions though which they operate. We then trace the development of US resistance to proposed restraints on space weapons from 2000–present. Drawing on hundreds of official documents, we show how successive US administrations have employed a range of interlayered diplomatic strategies and tactics to preserve the permissive international legal framework governing outer space and protect US national security priorities. Our study illustrates the specific techniques and impacts of resistance in a domain of growing strategic importance, with implications for further refining understandings of norm competition in other issue areas.

Many are now discussing the possible demise of the so called ‘liberal international order’, but how can we know whether any international order is changing? This article argues for understanding order as maintained by institutions of international society and further theorises the role those institutions play in the stability or transformation of international order. To usefully put institutional analysis to work, this article, first, models the stylised evolution of a primary institution. Second, it illustrates this evolution with a discussion of the historical institution of trusteeship in order to historicise adaptation and transformation in international order. Finally, this leads to a generalised idea of how institutional analysis can be employed to study stability and transformation in international order. Beyond making a contribution to the wider debates about the possible demise of the current international order, this piece also fills a gap in English School theory, which is quite silent on the question of when international society furthers transformation, and when it furthers stability. Accepting the view of history that the future is contingent on today’s events, this study suggests possible points where push comes to shove for change and continuity in international order more generally.

Following its exceptional response to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) gained new powers to securitise infectious disease outbreaks via the revised 2005 International Health Regulations (IHRs) and the ability to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This article investigates the declaration of a PHEIC in relation to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that the securitisation of these outbreaks was dependent upon global surveillance networks that utilised genetic technologies to visualise the molecular characteristics and spread of the pathogen in question. Genetic evidence in these cases facilitated the creation of a securitised object by revealing the unique and ‘untypable’ nature of the H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and made visible the widespread prevalence of Ebola across the population of West Africa. The power of this evidence draws from a societal perception of science as producing objective ‘facts’ about the world that objectivise their objects of concern and empower political actors in the implementation of their security agendas. As a result, scientific evidence provided by genetic technologies now plays a necessary and indispensable role in the securitisation of infectious disease outbreaks.

This paper explores the relationship between feminist foreign policy (FFP) and a country’s national role conception (NRC). Specifically, it asks whether countries with ‘masculine’ NRCs are opposed to the pursuit of FFP while countries with a more ‘feminine’ national role conception are advocates of FFP. To this end, the paper conducts a comparative analysis of ‘masculine’ Israel and ‘feminine’ Germany along three domains: normative (with a focus on the Women, Peace, and Security [WPS] agenda), material (in relation to development policy), and institutional (with reference to female representation). Generally speaking, Germany has indeed undertaken broader and more substantive activities in pursuit of FFP goals than Israel. At the same time, Israel has clearly been more active than its ‘masculine’ role would suggest, and Germany less active and vocal than its ‘civilian power’ role would imply. Overall, the discussion suggests that whether countries pursue FFP goals is strongly influenced by the latter’s compatibility with the countries’ overarching NRCs, with party ideology, institutional autonomy, and intersection between gender policy and state interests playing a greater role regarding the specific levels of commitment and intensity shown in the pursuit of those goals.