Human Security, Changing States and Global Responses

Institutions and Practices

Sangmin Bae, Makoto Maruyama

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781138803893
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317620945
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book critically assesses the human security challenges faced by states, focusing on how and to what extent the state is influenced by global structures and operations.

Having grown rapidly since the 1990s, the field of human security has spawned a wide variety of academic research. This research has helped to reconceptualize the notion of security, both broadening and deepening it, and it has created a space where unconventional and multidimensional forms of security inform international policy practices. However, while various issues and cases of human security have received growing academic attention and policy interest, many of the existing books on human security focus primarily on non-state actors. This leaves a key question unanswered: why do sovereign states take on leadership roles in promoting human security?

To answer the question of why and how national governments influence international human security policy, this volume examines the domestic political factors and structures that mediate the range of policy choices. Important domestic variables include the 'cultural match' (e.g., 'Does the country often favor multilateralism and promote a rule-bound international society?'), the nature of the political interests and realities that are present (e.g., 'Does the country see the promotion of human security as a strategic choice?'), and the occurrence of important historical events such as wars, revolutions, or natural disasters (e.g., 'Does the country, during the crisis, help to foster a new way of managing enduring security threats?'). Using this line of analysis, the book illuminates the role of the state in handling critical human security issues and its rationale for doing so.

This book will be of much interest to students of human security, peace studies, global governance, development studies and IR in general.

1 Introduction

The state and human security

Sangmin Bae

It was about 20 years ago that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) first defined and articulated the notion of human security, in its 1994 publication of the Human Development Report, and brought it to international attention. Since then, our understanding of human security has taken a significant leap forward, spurring new fields of academic research. There has been a proliferation of scholars and actors who champion the notion of human security, of tools for promoting human security, and of a growing audience interested in and able to absorb new ideas. Work in the field of human security has helped to reconceptualize the existing notion of security, both broadening and deepening it. Some notable states have attempted their own versions of human security policies with varying degrees of success, in spite of differing definitions and ongoing debates over the ethical, political, and policy implications of human security.

The very notion of human security is both old and new. It is as old as Woodrow Wilson’s famous 1918 speech laying out the “Fourteen Points” to guide the reconstruction of the world in the wake of the Great War, in which he implicitly acknowledged that all nations should advance the living standards and human circumstances of their people. Franklin Roosevelt, in his State of the Union speech in 1941, referred to “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want”—phrases widely used in definitions of human security and often found in the UN documents. Similar language was embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations and, most importantly, in the Charter of the United Nations. The UN Charter committed its member states to providing “higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development,… [as well as] solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems” as preconditions to continuing global “stability and well-being” (Charter of the United Nations, Article 55). A theoretical inspiration for human security came in part from Johan Galtung’s peace studies in the 1970s, which emphasized the role of “structural violence,” that is, violence built into the social system and expressed in the unequal distribution of power and, as a result, unequal opportunities. Barry Buzan’s 1983 book, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, further provided a conceptual cornerstone for the evolution and expansion of security theory.

But the notion of human security is also new, because it was only after the end of the Cold War that the principles of human security became the focus of much attention in both academic and policy circles. Human security as an international policy agenda was first suggested in April 1991 in the Stockholm Initiative on Global Security and Governance. The Stockholm Initiative championed an alternative security discourse that shifted its focus from “political rivalry and armament” to “a wider concept of security, which deals also with threats that stem from failure in development, environmental degradation, excessive population growth and movement, and lack of progress towards democracy” (1991, 17–18). A timely and influential response to the Stockholm Initiative was the UNDP’s 1994 Human Development Report above mentioned. In that report, the UN’s description of the concept of human security closely resembles that of the Stockholm Initiative, moving “from an exclusive stress on territorial security to a much greater stress on people’s security” and “from security through armaments to security through sustainable human development” (United Nations Development Programme 1994, 24). The report identified a list of perceived new security threats, namely, economic threats; threats related to food, health, and the environment, personal threats, and threats, related to community and political security, thereby establishing a baseline for the definition of human security.

While various issues and cases of human security received increasing academic attention and policy interest in recent decades, much of the existing literature on human security has focused primarily on nonstate actors, including the United Nations and European Union (Bruderlein 2000; MacFarlane and Khong 2006; Martin and Kaldor 2010; Matlary 2008). While international organizations, individuals, or other nonstate actors are largely considered as creators and implementers of emerging human security norms, the state has somehow been treated as the antithesis of human security.¹ One might argue that this makes sense because the human security approach moves away from the state as the referent of security and focuses primarily on “the other levels of analysis,” namely, the individual or international actor. What explains, then, the leadership roles of sovereign states that actively promote human security? Several states have created official government agencies to support human security programs (e.g., Canada, Japan, Norway and Slovenia). They have built collaborative networks in order to motivate international action on a broad range of human security concerns (e.g., the Human Security Network). And they have established human security advisory boards within international organizations (e.g., the Commission on Human Security), while financing human security activities operated by international organizations (e.g., the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security). States have certainly sought to become global advocates for setting human security agendas and promoting them (Bae 2011; Hynek and Bosold 2010; Takasu 2014).

The purpose of this book is to address why and how national governments influence international human security policy. Varying political factors and structures mediate the range of policy choices. Specific political cultures, structures, and conditions may greatly influence human security policies. Important variables include the “cultural match” (e.g., “Does the country that largely favors multilateralism and a rule-bound international society advocate human security?”), the nature of the political interests and realities that are present (e.g., “Does the country see the promotion of human security as a strategic choice, given the political realities of the moment or impending changes in the political order and landscape?”), and the occurrence of important historical events, such as wars, revolutions, or natural disasters (e.g., “Does the country, during the crisis, likely foster a new way of managing enduring security threats?”). Using this line of analysis, this book illuminates the role of the state in handling critical human security issues and its rationale for doing so.

This book collects scholarship from a broad set of disciplines, including political science, diplomacy, economics, sociology, gender studies, environmental science, and peace studies. On the practical level, it will help to translate some of the general lessons into a more concrete program of action for human security advocates. By synthesizing work across disciplines and issues, the book creates new perspectives on emerging problems and new insights on the notion of human security. This book is thus an act of translation—both laterally between academic disciplines and vertically between the academy and the world of practice.

Human security: multifaceted concepts and controversies

According to the Commission on Human Security, human security involves “processes that build on people’s strengths and aspirations” while creating “political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.” Human security is the protection of people “from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations” (Commission on Human Security 2003, 4). The basic consensus—it is “right” to protect the very vulnerable—has become an essential component of global security discourse, as there has been a shift from the question “Should we do anything?” to “What kind of action should we take?” Human security is a normative and ethical movement in that it strongly suggests the desirability of coordinated, multilateral efforts to address security problems. As noble as it sounds, however, the notion of human security has generated a great deal of criticism and controversy. Regarding its breadth, characterization, and significance, a number of important questions have been raised and addressed. The first two questions discussed below give insights into the state’s power and role in human security.

First, an important strand of criticism, largely coming from “critical theory” scholars, relates to the nature of revisionism entailed in the discourse and policy objectives of human security (Newman 2010; Wibben 2008). In contrast to the critique coming from a conservative perspective that warns of the way human security logic jeopardizes the principle of state sovereignty (Carafano and Smith 2006), scholars from the critical theory camp ask questions about how and to what extent the notion of human security is revisionist, transformative, or emancipatory (Booth 2005, 181–235; Grayson 2004, 41–68). For them, human security does not fundamentally question existing power structures and relations. Instead it is easily co-opted by political elites (Wibben 2008, 455), or it merely allows power reallocation from states to international institutions, further disempowering individuals and weaker states (McCormack 2008). What is the reason or motive for framing human security as “security” rather than simply calling it the promotion of peace, development, health, and environmental integrity? (Smith 2006, 82) Is it true that, as Heather Smith argues, human security may be no more than a rhetorical device to cover up the core feature of the dominant order in the international system and to reinforce international power inequalities? “In many ways, human security is about national security, in spite of pretenses to the contrary” (Smith 2006, 80). Ad hoc, short-term foreign policy of human security is especially formulated to accommodate and legitimize the global policy interests of a few powerful countries (Chandler 2008). Even for Canada, a leading human security advocate, the portion of the government budget allocated for human security initiatives is only a very small part of its national security budget, indicating that human security is merely embedded in a conditioning framework of economic progress and national security (Black 2006, 56; Smith 2006, 81–82). Responding to this line of debate, however, David Ambrosetti (2008) warns against hasty overall judgments on human security in terms of a conservative or emancipatory dichotomy, and calls for an empirical assessment of the practical uses of human security rhetoric and their political consequences.

Second, critics argue that human security is largely outwardly directed in its attention to policy. Highlighting only “their,” not “our,” problems and threats, which are placed “out there,” it tends to ignore human insecurity at the home front. This involves two problems: the lack of self-reflection among protagonists of human security and its potential to embrace ethnocentric interventionism. The Canadian human security agenda, which does not address the reality of people on the margins of its own society, does little to contemplate and assess the intention and practice of human security (Smith 2006, 80). The same holds true for Japan, which largely ignores domestic issues, including the treatment of minorities and increased job insecurity (Hook and Takeda 2007, 95; Sato 2007, 90). Perhaps more seriously, this outward orientation of human security offers handy and effective criteria for intervention in situations of human insecurity by powerful states and international institutions (McCormack 2008). Taking advantage of the breadth of human security, powerful countries pick and choose which human security issues should be pursued and what level of commitment they wish to make (Jockel and Sokolsky 2000/2001, 18). Responding to such criticism, Taylor Owen says that the developing world is focused on human security research and practice because threats are most severe there. It is an empirical reality not driven by ideology (Owen 2008a, 447). In addition, as Fairlie Chappuis aptly points out, if states prioritize the security of their own people, then there is no difference between human security and “citizen security.” The merit of human security is that it adds new normative weight to the incentive for states to look beyond the needs of their own citizens (Chappuis 2011, 110–11). In an effort to avoid the controversy of state intervention, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested that the phrase “responsibility to protect” (R2P) should not be connected to human security, but reserved for “specific cases of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” (Ban 2010, 7).

Third, numerous analysts examine the conceptual ambiguity and policy relevance of human security (King and Murray 2001/2002; Mack 2004; Roberts 2008; Suhrke 1999; Waisova 2003). Proponents of human security find its merit in the fact that it seeks to broaden our understanding of security beyond the narrow, military-based agenda, but critics—and even those who support the notion of human security—see it as “too broad and too comprehensive” to be a practical guide for academic research and policymaking. The level of analysis discussed in human security research encompasses everything from the personal (security of individuals in their own homes, at work, and so on) to the societal (inter-ethnic conflict for instance) and to the truly international level (issues pertaining to refugees and the “responsibility to protect” for instance; see Ford 2003, 188). The concept, therefore, lacks the degree of analytical separation required for the study of causal relationships (Paris 2001, 93). In addition, the notion of human security is considered problematic in terms of policy relevance. Treating all interests and objectives as equally important, human security, after all, implies that almost everything under the sun becomes a security issue. And this makes the policy analyst’s task of allocating scarce resources among competing goals extremely difficult (Paris 2001, 92).

The criticism of human security concerning its analytical utility and policy relevance is worth addressing in more detail, as it seems to be widely shared even among its intellectual supporters. Conceptual clarification is crucial, they argue, for human security to be further developed as a full-grown international norm and to be taken seriously by the members of the wider international community as a vision and instrument of foreign policy. According to Thomas Franck, the appeal of compliance to a norm, so-called compliance pull, can come from a norm’s clarity, among other sources, as its symbols, cues, or rituals elicit obligation. Clarity and coherency help determine the legitimacy of a norm and the degree of its compliance pull (Franck 1988). Coherence is a crucial virtue in transforming any ideas into norms, as it “can identify key issues and mobilize supporters” (Suhrke 1999, 270). The broad ethical core of human security, which relies on the basis of “inclusiveness” and “holism,” may, in turn, make policy choices and priority actions ambiguous. This is a critical conceptual problem of human security, because new norms are often connected to action (O’Neill et al. 2004).

In response to criticisms, Taylor Owen proposes a threshold conceptualization of human security on the basis of the severity, rather than the causes, of threats (2008b, 126). His definition is intended to enable a prioritization of threats that are the most critical and pervasive. Owen expects that this threshold-based conceptualization will allow international organizations and individual countries to adapt to the evolving nature of insecurity without falling prey to conceptual overstretch. Astri Suhrke, on the other hand, suggests building “the standard of vulnerability” that will help human security be a meaningful policy concept (1999, 275). This vulnerability-oriented concept focuses on “the elaboration and codification of rights” that apply to particularly vulnerable people; “the clarification of rights and establishment of safety nets for those most hurt”; and “similar safety nets for ‘the very vulnerable’ whose income and assets are arbitrarily confiscated by state and local authorities” (274–275). In an effort to enhance policy relevance, some governments seek to prioritize certain items selected from a wide range of human security issues. Among Asian countries, for example, the governments of Thailand and Indonesia focus exclusively on the “freedom from fear” aspect of human sec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: the state and human security
• PART I State behavior, preferences, and performance
• PART II The state during the human security crisis
• PART III The state and international dynamics
• Index