Ole Wæver

University of Copenhagen · Department of Political Science

Greenland is the most dynamic piece in the new Arctic jigsaw puzzle: insisting on a course toward statehood, hoping to be able to juggle relations to more metropoles without falling unilaterally under U.S. supremacy. Hence, for a nation of 56,000, Greenlandic security politics might prove surprisingly disruptive, if not to Arctic security as such,...

Our introductory chapter, first, promised an empirically fuller and more precise understanding of where Greenland wants to go, but also the limitations presented to this ambitious polity by the new Arctic. As contributions to this aim, the chapters have employed and developed select parts of securitization theory to analyze distinct sets of the sec...

Greenland has increasingly captivated imaginations around the globe. Yet, while it is central to the Arctic region, its role has been poorly understood. Greenland in Arctic Security delivers a comprehensive overview of how security dynamics unfold in and in relation to Greenland. Each individual chapter analyzes specific discourses and dynamics per...

This book brings together a group of leading scholars on international relations to develop and apply the concept of polarity on past and present international relations and discuss its applicability and usefulness in the future. Despite a comprehensive debate on a global power shift, often discussed in terms of the decline of the United States, th...

This introductory chapter explains the aim of the volume and unpacks the shared assumptions and starting points before outlining the structure and content of the book. The chapter provides an overview of the polarity literature, and how it has evolved since the early Cold War. It summarizes the findings of the book and discusses their implications....

Polarity is not what states make of it. Most policy-makers have no concept of polarity. They typically have a sense of what power is and of its contemporary distribution. In neorealism, polarity is a structural feature of the international system: changes of polarity are the most important structural changes we observe. Polarity is not something we...

This chapter presents an interpretation of the past and present of security studies with an emphasis on the changing periods of theory production and practical problem solving. The field started out as a distinct US specialty much shaped by the new conditions of the 1940s set by nuclear weapons and a long-term mobilization against the Soviet Union,...

Carefully selected and first translated into Polish excerpts from academic works, which shaped the international relations science. The anthology reflects the plurality of theoretical, normative and methodological approaches, characteristic of modern international relations science.

This book scrutinises how contemporary practices of security have come to rely on many different translations of security, risk, and danger. Institutions of national security policies are currently undergoing radical conceptual and organisational changes, and this book presents a novel approach for how to study and politically address the new situ...

New technology is undoubtedly changing world politics. But does this necessarily require new theories? In this interview, we explore the challenges facing a (political) theory of technology and how to understand the novelty of technologies such as Big Data. Ole Wæver recounts his early interest in technology and how theorizing technology demands th...

This chapter reflects on the past and present of Security Studies, with a particular focus on the changing periods of theory production and practical problem solving. It begins by tracing the origins and institutional structure of Security Studies, noting that it started out as an American, think-tank based, interdisciplinary field and then became...

The European Union is typically perceived by its proponents as an avant-garde, anti–power politics polity capable of civilizing its own political space and its geopolitical neighborhood. For the past decade, this conventional European narrative has been challenged by a series of events and developments amounting to an allegedly existential crisis o...

Debates on “rising powers” and a possible end to the liberal international order mostly focus on two kinds of actors: the hegemon (the United States), privileged by the power distribution of yesteryear, and rising powers (notably China). Europe's curious position brings to light some intriguing dynamics of the emerging world order—nuances needed to...

Who will take care of what global challenges—and why not? Does the international system have an emerging pattern of leadership, or does system structure either preclude leadership as such or prevent prediction of any systematic form hereof? It is widely agreed among scholars and practitioners alike that the ‘structure’ of the international system i...

The notion of 'the West' is commonly used in politics, the media, and in the academic world. To date, our idea of 'the West' has been largely assumed and effective, but has not been examined in detail from a theoretical perspective. Uses of 'the West' combines a range of original and topical approaches to evaluate what 'the West' really does, and h...

This chapter considers how the arguments associated with the thirteen different theories of International Relations discussed in the book sum up. More specifically, it asks whether IR is (still?) a discipline, and whether it is likely to remain one. The chapter examines the intellectual and social patterns of IR and the discipline as a social syste...

This chapter reflects on the past and present of Security Studies, with a particular focus on the changing periods of theory production and practical problem solving. It begins by tracing the origins and institutional structure of Security Studies, noting that it started out as an American, think-tank based, interdisciplinary field and then became...

Austin gives us insights into the capacity of mankind for creating shared environments through language, not as a matter of transmitting anything from one head to the other or of causally influencing each other’s mental states, but as a matter of establishing situations and roles and attributing local statuses to participants. Herein lies the power...

One of the great appeals of securitization theory, and a major reason for its success, has been its usefulness as a tool for empirical research: an analytic framework capable of practical application. However, the development of securitization has raised several criticisms, the most important of which concern the nature of securitization theory. In...

Although securitization theory has been applied worldwide, it has been accused of having only limited appositeness to the non-Western world. When the Centre for Advanced Security Theory began a collaboration with the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute and the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo in 2010, securitization theor...

En este resumen presentamos el capítulo introductorio de International Relations Scholarship Around the World, publicado por Routledge en 2009. Los editores y también autores de esta introducción, Ole Wæver y Arlene B. Tickner, argumentan sobre la necesidad dentro de la teoría de Relaciones Internacionales de mirar más allá de los límites geográfic...

Though Securitization theory has been applied to cases worldwide, it has been criticized for limited applica- bility to the non-western world. When, in 2010, Centre for Advanced Security eory began a collaboration with Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute and Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, Securitization theory was chal...

This article outlines three ways of analysing the `politics of securitization', emphasizing an often-overlooked form of politics practised through theory design. The structure and nature of a theory can have systematic political implications. Analysis of this `politics of securitization' is distinct from both the study of political practices of sec...

Endowed now with a convincing history of itself, security studies needs a sociological analysis of its workings. The ‘post-Kuhnian sociology of science’ in the Buzan & Hansen (2009) volume is too sociologically thin and offers a disembodied history of ideas, not a sociology of flesh-and-blood scholars. This article suggests how a sociology of secur...

International Relations is mostly defined as a largely North American discipline with a strong anchoring in Europe. There are different views on what such a geographical or geocultural anchoring of knowledge …

Waltz's 1979 book, Theory of International Politics, is the most influential in the history of the discipline. It worked its effects to a large extent through raising the bar for what counted as theoretical work, in effect reshaping not only realism but rivals like liberalism and reflectivism. Yet, ironically, there has been little attention paid t...

This chapter examines discourse analysis as an approach to the study of European integration. It first provides an overview of the basic idea(s) underlying discourse analysis before tracing its philosophical roots. It then considers when and how discourse analysis entered political science, international relations, and European integration studies....

Security dynamics have some shared features irrespective of their referent object or ‘sector’, and ‘different kinds of security’ often interact so that one actor’s fear for military security triggers countermeasures that make another state worried about its economic security, which in turn triggers countermeasures that let a security dilemma loose...

At least one thing about security seems to be agreed on by most authors — it is something good. In other words, the very term ‘security’ is positively value-loaded. And precisely for this reason much less agreement exists on what clear meaning to attach to that word (Wiberg 1987: 340).

‘Political solutions to cultural conflict’ is the unifying theme of this book. ‘The security problems of a political “solution” to cultural/religious conflict’ could have been the title of this chapter.

In the last decade, critical approaches have substantially reshaped the theoretical landscape of security studies in Europe. Yet, despite an impressive body of literature, there remains fundamental disagreement as to what counts as critical in this context. Scholars are still arguing in terms of ‘schools’, while there has been an increasing and sus...

A chapter on European security written in the shadow from the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, easily turns into a search for the European reaction, the place of terrorism in European threat perceptions and the impact of 9/11 on conceptions of security in Europe. Similarly, a conference on globalization and securi...

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This 2003 book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asi...

It is a widely shared assumption that since the end of the Cold War, conflicts and wars are less driven by political-ideological systems. Also they are not much caused by economic motives or even the classical ones of territory and power as an aim in themselves. The roots of conflicts are increasingly related to culture and identity, be it the wide...

Krig behandles i flere relativt adskilte litteraturer, og denne indledende artikel diskuterer tre af disse primært med det sigte at afdække, om de reelt siger det samme på forskellig vis, eller om de er ‘ude af fase’ og tegner modsatrettede tendenser. De tre samtaler, der behandles, er: 1) krigsteori, dens klassikere og den vedvarende debat om diss...

Central to securitization theory is that the constitution of the referent object makes a difference. Survival and defence means something different to different referent objects. In the sphere of religion, the first task is therefore to characterise the nature of objects constituted by a religious discourse. On the basis of Kierkegaard, Bataille an...

Most people writing on the subject recognise that within the Russian discourse, the concept of human rights is used somewhat differently compared to Western Europe or the United States. However, the nature of these differences is yet to be properly studied. It is not enough just to say that 'the Western notions of human rights undergo certain trans...

This book argues that community can exist at the international level, and that security politics is profoundly shaped by it, with states dwelling within an international community having the capacity to develop a pacific disposition. By investigating the relationship between international community and the possibility for peaceful change, this book...

The international relations (IR) discipline is dominated by the American research community. Data about publication patterns in leading journals document this situation as well as a variance in theoretical orientations. IR is conducted differently in different places. The main patterns are explained through a sociology of science model that emphasi...

In the January 1996 issue of the Review, Bill McSweeney argues that our 1993 book, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (IMNSAE), ‘subverts’ the analysis of Buzan’s People, States and Fear (PSF) ‘without enhancing our understanding of the problem of security’ (p. 93). 2 Of the many charges that McSweeney brings to bear we will...

This book provides a major review of the state of international theory. It is focused around the issue of whether the positivist phase of international theory is now over, or whether the subject remains mainly positivistic. Leading scholars analyse the traditional theoretical approaches in the discipline, then examine the issues and groups which ar...

This article undertakes a reading of political identifications in Europe from the security perspective. Who or what exist politically in Europe? This is investigated through the test of whether and how different units are able to carry out the move characteristic of 'security': that is, to say 'our survival is threatened, therefore we have a right...

The English school in the study of international relations is characterized by its interest in `international society', i.e. a society formed by and of states developing rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations. This perspective has held a promise of overcoming the dichotomies of realist-liberalist and historical-structural approac...

Nordic identity is in crisis. With the European revolution of 1989-91, the meaning of 'Norden' has become unclear. In security terms, Nordic identity was defined by having lower military tension than Central Europe. In socio-economic terms, Nordic identity was dependent on the competition between capitalism and communism, offering a third way. At a...

The proposed preamble to the Charter for a League of Baltic Regions elaborates on the fact that all regions adjacent to the Baltic Sea share numerous interests - cultural, historical, economic, commercial, etc. First and foremost it is in their interest to work for the irreversibility of European unity, for the softening of rigid state borders, for...

In Ideology and Foreign Policy: Problems of Comparative Conceptualization, Walter Carlsnaes develops a framework for the study of foreign policy based on the concept of action. Functionalist and structuralist theories are thrust aside on the way to a logical clarification of the nature of explanation. Overall, this contribution is evaluated as posi...

Ole Waever writes that there are three competing versions of an all-European future unfolding with German unity. But while the French, German and Russian 'Europes' are racing each other to the finishing line, all three are crucially interlocked for reasons of realpolitik. The result is a grand bargaining process between Germany and the two losers o...

The preceding sixteen chapters have opened up a lot of perspectives and introduced a number of elements necessary to a general analysis of European security. Some of these will now be integrated into a common framework. This chapter will also try to sketch some guidelines for future research; it will be argued that an approach based on national ana...

One of the basic questions for this study is whether Theo Sommer of Die Zeit is correct in concluding after Chancellor Kohl’s 1988 visit to Moscow: They are all Genscherists now’.1

This study deals with the internal socio-political changes that the traditional political structures have not been able to incorporate, the perspectives of the superpowers and surveys of the debate on European security in each of 11 states. The book begins and ends with a theoretical overview.

Bu makalenin tüm hakları Uluslararası İlişkiler Konseyi Derneği'ne aittir. Önceden yazılı izin alınmadan hiç bir iletişim, kopyalama ya da yayın sistemi kullanılarak yeniden yayımlanamaz, çoğaltılamaz, dağıtılamaz, satılamaz veya herhangi bir şekilde kamunun ücretli/ücretsiz kullanımına sunulamaz. Akademik ve haber amaçlı kısa alıntılar bu kuralın...

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