The Copenhagen School of Security Studies

The issue of security is central in the field of political science in general and international relations in particular. This concept has received significant attention from thinkers and academic researchers, as security is a human value inherent to the individual before it pertains to states. It is worth noting that the importance of security lies in its role as a core topic or research agenda in both classical and contemporary theoretical frameworks of international relations. It also serves as a methodological foundation for studying and understanding the optimal perspectives to interpret the successive transformations of the international environment. Security is one of the components or processes of global politics, serving as a focal point for implicit debates among various theoretical directions in international relations. At the same time, it has remained the primary concern of statesmen and decision-makers who view ensuring conditions of survival and continuity as a top priority in state policy.

The Emergence of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies:

The term “Copenhagen School” refers to the research agenda of a group of academic researchers at the “Copenhagen Institute for Peace Research” in Denmark, established in 1985. The term was first coined by Bill McSweeney in 1996, referring to the theoretical contributions of Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and others who participated in the research program. Since the publication of the first edition of “People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations” in 1983, Buzan’s work has become an indispensable reference for security scholars. The revised second edition of the same book, released in 1991, motivated a group of researchers to delve deeper into the security problem alongside Buzan, making this group a significant theoretical platform for studying security issues. Although the institute closed in 2114, the project achieved a sufficient degree of coherence and continuity over 13 years, justifying the use of the term “School” by ensuring the participation of a minimum number of scholars and researchers involved.

Contributions of the Copenhagen School to Security Studies:

1. Levels of Security Analysis: The Individual, the State, and the International System:

Buzan built on the three levels of analysis in international relations proposed by Kenneth Waltz, suggesting that security should be studied from three distinct perspectives: the individual, the state, and the international system. He emphasized the difficulty of determining a single reference point for security. However, individual and international system security ultimately depend on state security, as the state remains the most important reference point, though not the only one, for understanding security behaviors. According to Buzan, the state consists of three components: the idea of the state (nationality), the physical basis of the state (people, resources, technology), and the institutional aspect of the state (political and administrative systems). He believed that defining the state makes it easier to identify threats to any of these three components.

Buzan also differentiated between strong and weak states in terms of security at the state level. While Waltz measured state strength and weakness based solely on material capabilities, Buzan saw them as dependent on institutional stability and internal political and social cohesion. The complex interconnection between internal and external contexts has made it difficult to determine whether a threat to a government’s security originates from within or outside, complicating the problem of security analysis.

2. Societal Security and the Theory of Securitization:

• Securitization Theory:

Securitization theory, developed by Ole Wæver, is one of the most important theoretical contributions of the Copenhagen School. This theory views security not as an objective condition but as the result of a specific social process. Wæver emphasized that security is partly a “speech act” that invokes a state of severe danger requiring extraordinary measures. For Wæver, security is best understood as a discursive act, meaning that designating something as a security issue gives it a sense of urgency and importance, legitimizing exceptional measures beyond the usual political process to address it.

In this sense, securitization is the process of transforming issues into security matters by framing them as security threats. It posits that security can be understood as the outcome of repetitive discursive acts that present an event as an existential threat. Through public discourse, this issue is portrayed as one that affects the material or moral survival of a community, requiring urgent and exceptional measures to legitimize actions beyond the usual political process. Buzan suggests that the most common securitization actors are political leaders, bureaucracies, governments, lobbyists, and pressure groups.

• Societal Security:

Societal security is a key component of the research program in contemporary security studies. It goes beyond traditional views that consider society merely a sector of state security and instead treats it as an independent and distinct subject of security. According to Durkheim, societies are defined as units composed of groups of individuals bound together by shared religious beliefs and national sentiments, creating a collective consciousness that transcends individual awareness. The Copenhagen School emphasized that modern globalization has significantly impacted societal identities, which have been threatened by factors such as migration flows, the forced import of foreign cultures, and integration into larger entities.

As a result, the proponents of the Copenhagen School have positioned society as the primary reference point for security in opposition to the state, which they now see as a fundamental source of threat. Shifting the reference point from the state to society directly altered the nature of security from “national security” to “societal security.” Buzan defines societal security as “the continuity, under acceptable conditions of development, of traditional patterns of language, culture, religious and national identity, and customs.” According to this definition, society or social groups become the entities at risk, with identity being the value most threatened.

3. Security Sectors:

Buzan’s writings introduced five key sectors of security: military, political, economic, social, and environmental. The importance of Buzan’s approach lies in making individuals the unit of analysis, though not necessarily the primary reference point. The state remains the fundamental reference point for analysis in security studies for three reasons:

• The state is capable of mitigating the severity of security issues in the context of international security.
• The state is the highest source of governing authority.
• The state is the primary actor in the international political system.

In distinguishing and establishing the research program of the Copenhagen School, the concept of “security sectors” stands out. It diverged from the material ontology that dominated the security studies field, which equated security with military and economic capabilities. To break free from this narrow view, Buzan proposed the idea of expansion and introduced the following key security sectors:

• Military Sector: This refers to traditional security, encompassing military threats that affect all components of the state and its institutions, as well as the safety of its citizens. It involves the survival of the state, focusing on the balance between offensive and defensive military capabilities and intentions toward one another.
• Political Sector: This relates to the stability of governance systems, the legitimacy of state institutions, and the legitimacy of their ideologies. Political sector threats have both internal and external dimensions, with the former including any threats to democratic values or opposition to state institutions and symbols, and the latter concerning the impact of the international system on the sovereignty of the state.
• Economic Sector: In this sector, reference points range from individuals to states and the global economic system. The primary focus is on a state’s ability to provide natural resources and meet the needs of its citizens to ensure a satisfactory standard of living. At the international level, economic security is tied to a state’s ability to access global markets and secure necessary funding for acceptable levels of welfare and power in the international system. Buzan highlights the important interconnection between economic and military security, noting how military security is dependent on economic security due to the financial constraints imposed on defense spending.
• Social Sector: Society is treated as an independent subject of security, with societal security being one of the most important components of security studies. Social security revolves around identity, i.e., what defines a group of people as “we” versus others who may pose a threat to this identity, which could be national, ethnic, or religious. This form of security is related to cultural, religious, and ethnic affiliations, making it one of the most complex security sectors in Buzan’s analysis.
• Environmental Sector: This sector focuses on protecting the local and global ecological environment from human practices that cause various forms of ecological degradation, such as global warming, pollution, and drought.

4. Regional Security:

Barry Buzan and his colleagues provided several definitions of the concept of “regional security complex.” One of the early definitions was “a group of states whose primary security concerns are closely interconnected, such that the national security of one cannot be reasonably considered apart from the others.” A more recent definition describes it as “a group of units among which securitization or desecuritization processes, or both, are so interconnected that security problems cannot be analyzed separately.”

According to the level of analysis within the regional security complex, history, politics, and material conditions in each region form specific patterns of security and insecurity. For Buzan and Wæver, security is shaped by states based on patterns of friendship or enmity and power relations in each regional complex. Consequently, four levels shape the complex: the local conditions of the states in the region (including their strengths and weaknesses), state-to-state relationships within the complex, relationships between regions, particularly with neighboring states, and finally, the role of global powers in the complex.

References

1. The book “Security: A New Framework for Analysis” by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde (1998) is considered the primary text outlining the Copenhagen School’s approach. This is a must-read for understanding their framework.
2. The Wikipedia article on the Copenhagen School provides a good overview of its key concepts, origins, and main theorists.
3. Barry Buzan’s 1983 book “People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations” is cited as one of the foundational works that led to the development of the Copenhagen School.
4. For a critical analysis of the Copenhagen School’s approach, the article “Towards a Critical Securitization Theory” provides useful insights and comparisons to other security studies approaches.
5. The Oxford Bibliographies entry on “Securitization” offers a comprehensive list of key works and overviews related to the Copenhagen School.
6. For an academic overview, the article “An Overview of the Copenhagen School’s Approach to Security Studies” published in The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies provides a detailed analysis.
7. The book chapter “Securitization” by Ralf Emmers in “Contemporary Security Studies” (edited by Alan Collins) is recommended as a straightforward introduction, especially for undergraduate students.
8. For more advanced discussions, the book “Critical Security Studies: An Introduction” by Columba Peoples and Nick Vaughan-Williams situates the Copenhagen School within broader critical security studies debates.