European Civil Security Governance

Diversity and Cooperation in Crisis and Disaster Management

Raphael Bossong, Hendrik Hegemann, Raphael Bossong, Hendrik Hegemann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137481108
• eBook ISBN: 9781137481115
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

European states and international organizations have established multiple policies and mechanisms to deal with various risks, crises and disasters. This edited volume examines the emerging multi-level policy space of European civil security governance, identifying patterns and reviewing the opportunities and obstacles for cooperation.

1

Introduction: European Civil Security Governance – Towards a New Comprehensive Policy Space?

Raphael Bossong and Hendrik Hegemann

Introduction

The post-Cold War period has witnessed a transformation from military-focused civil defence towards broader concepts of ‘all-hazards’ crisis and disaster management.¹ Civilian crises and disasters, it seems, are ubiquitous and ‘normal’ (Perrow, 1984, 2007), while the threat of major interstate war has receded from the top of the agenda of security planners and crisis managers – at least in Western Europe and before the recent confrontations in Ukraine. Thus, security challenges like large-scale industrial accidents, infrastructure failures, major terrorist attacks or global pandemics have risen to prominence in the work of security policymakers and practitioners and become merged with long-standing concerns about ‘natural’ disasters such as floods and storms. The paradigmatic shorthand for these developments is the emergence of the ‘(world) risk society’ (Beck, 1992, 1999), whereby advanced societies are confronted with a multitude of increasingly complex, transnational and incalculable risks resulting from the unintended side-effects of globalization and high-tech capitalism. There is no shortage of recent examples supporting this thesis, ranging from the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid or London and the Fukushima nuclear disaster to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or the Ebola virus pandemic in Western Africa.

Both macro-sociological analyses and political science have correspondingly highlighted the growing limits to hierarchical, expert-driven and state-centred mechanisms of control. Yet, despite the growth of civil society movements in areas such as environmental protection and structural trends towards more horizontal forms of governance, citizens still demand an effective and efficient provision of core security goods by ‘the state’. Even if one adopts a critical reading of exaggerated threat perceptions, such as in the case of terrorism, Western societies are not inclined to accept fatalistic interpretations of natural disasters and societal vulnerabilities. Security continues to be the quintessential value and basis for political legitimacy in modern states, apparently requiring responsible governments to take resolute action against an ever longer list of – real or imagined – threats and fears, also entailing the danger of overreaction and unintended costs and consequences (Furedi, 2005; Baumann, 2006). The US-coined concept of ‘homeland security’ can be seen as the most comprehensive, though highly controversial, expression of this trend. In Europe, too, the value of security can be regarded as increasingly central to political authority construction (Burgess, 2011).

In this context, the European Union (EU) has similarly built up frameworks for responding to crises, disasters and structural risks that cross both geographical and functional boundaries. Going beyond its track record as a regulator of economic infrastructures as well as the long-standing ambition to forge a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the EU can increasingly be seen as a comprehensive security provider for its citizens. This notion is expressed in new formal norms and institutions, such as the ‘Solidarity Clause’ and the European Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), as well as in informal arrangements for research and best practice exchange. Furthermore, the notion of preparedness and response to crises has become central to many EU policy regimes that developed dynamically over the last decade, ranging from counterterrorism to food security and flood protection. In sum, comprehensive management of crises and disasters seems to be moving towards a distinct European policy space and research agenda (Boin et al., 2006, 2013; Attinà, 2013; Kirchner et al., 2014). Yet, functional pressures for centralization and trans-nationalization exist alongside deep rooted and potentially conflicting political interests and cultural traditions, not to forget cross-cutting trends towards more decentralized societal resilience. Hence, the evolution of this hybrid governance space requires more systematic investigation.

Moreover, the potentially far-reaching economic, political, legal and operational implications of this new dimension of EU security governance have hardly attracted public or academic attention. The EU’s CFSP or areas like counterterrorism and asylum, which are more directly linked to salient normative and political debates, continue to stand in the limelight (Bigo et al., 2010; Biscop, 2013). We do not want to detract from the importance of these debates. However, it is striking that the unique character and the interrelatedness of many policies and processes in the field of civilian crisis and disaster management are not awarded sufficient scrutiny – even though it has become commonplace to point to the merger of internal and external security policy (Eriksson and Rhinard, 2009; Schroeder, 2011) as well as to the EU’s endorsement of a ‘comprehensive approach’ (Kaunert and Zwolski, 2013). From an academic perspective, the literature on EU security governance usually disregards broader policy regimes and frameworks to protect EU citizens against multiple hazards and risks rather than against intentional threats (Kirchner and Sperling, 2007; Wagnsson et al., 2009; Norheim-Martinsen, 2013). And from a political perspective, one may wonder about the agendas and interests of bureaucratic and professional actors to downplay the ‘disaster-politics-nexus’ and portray crisis and disaster management as a primarily technical question (Hannigan, 2012).

This edited volume, therefore, draws attention to the emerging field of ‘civil security governance’ in Europe. As explained further below, this volume argues that the concept of civil security governance may help to capture the emerging protection-oriented policy space, which extends beyond the EU’s CFSP and Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) and is not adequately covered by more traditional terms like internal security. The concept further aims to highlight that EU structures and policies are placed in a complex system that involves different actors with diverse and potentially conflicting traditions, rules and institutions. Consequentially, we need a broader perspective. Member states continue to hold most competences for the provision of civil security, while one also needs to be aware of different global, regional, national and subnational actions and actors in a differentiated multilevel system dealing with the management of transnational risks and crises (de Franco and Meyer, 2011; Attinà, 2012; Hannigan, 2012). Thus, analysing civil security in and of the EU requires an appreciation for interdependence and multiple levels of governance.

In addition to students of EU security policy or European analysts of security governance, this analysis should be of relevance to researchers interested in crisis and disaster management or in the wider evolution of security studies. The former usually approach the response to concrete crisis and disasters from the perspective of functional and operational challenges impeding effective and efficient action – especially at the national level – but often disregard the broader political and conceptual dynamics in this transnational policy-field. The latter have conducted extensive analysis of the evolving concept of security in its different guises, but did not explicitly scrutinize the idea of civil security with its specific meaning and ramifications.

The remainder of this introductory chapter therefore works towards a common, though not canonical, understanding of civil security governance and how it fits in broader debates briefly alluded to above. First, it asks what ‘civil security’ is and which potentials and pitfalls it entails compared to related terms. Second, it raises the question of whether civil security is emerging as a new, distinct European policy space and suggests that the idea of security governance might help us understand developments in this area. The final section then briefly outlines the three parts of the book, which speak to different, but overlapping research interests and respectively address the challenge of diversity in European civil security governance; Europe’s relation to global and regional processes of transformation; and the wider implications for the EU’s role as a security actor.

Civil security: Just another prefix?

The definition and redefinition of security beyond conventional military-centred conceptions has been a key concern for social science research over the last two decades. The study of security has left behind its constitutive emphasis on ‘national security’ and added a plethora of new prefixes to security, which can be understood as parallel deepening and widening (Buzan and Hansen, 2009). These compound terms and modulations of the meaning of security have attracted intense debate, which generally revolves around the tension between the desire to ‘democratize’ or ‘civilize’ the practices of security and orient them towards the emancipatory benefit of each human being, and the dangers of eroding democracy, social cohesion and civil rights by ever expanding processes of ‘securitization’ (Loader and Walker, 2007; Huysmans, 2014).

By using the term ‘civil security’, we cannot escape this normative debate. From a critical perspective, it could be argued that civil security is guilty of unnecessarily adding to the muddy waters of academic definition. Aside from suspicions that we just seek to introduce a new buzzword, civil security could most of all be seen as yet another indicator of the securitization of all aspects of ‘civil’ life and the resulting claims to political authority to provide protection.

Instead of immediately staking out a normative position in this debate, we, however, first aim to open an area of investigation and pay attention to emerging empirical developments. As sketched out above, there are significant transformations in the broader field of crisis and disaster management at the EU level and beyond, which cannot readily be captured by familiar labels from security studies. On a theoretical level, we expect that the way security governance is organized and executed strongly depends upon the underlying representations and understandings of ‘security’ – and these representations and understandings can lead to, or accommodate, different logics of governance ranging from functional technocracy over ‘normal’ politics to states of emergency (Christou et al., 2010). So it matters whether a field is structured by representations that are associated with internal security, human security or civil security, but the resulting consequences do not have to automatically be read from the perspective of securitization (in its many critical variants). Following this inductive approach, the next section, therefore, surveys the existing usages of civil security before, in a second step, further discussing its possible political and normative implications, which are typically foregrounded by critical security scholars.

Civil security: What’s in a name?

To date, the term civil security is used in varied geographical and functional contexts. First, some national governments advanced the concept as a way to describe the comprehensive ambitions of their reformed crisis and disaster management systems. For example, the section for Civil Security (Sécurité Civile) in the French Ministry of Internal Security underlines that civil security is taking place ‘on all fronts’ and ‘for all types of disasters’.² In other cases, civil security also serves to capture the desired holistic and de-militarized conduct of crisis management and civil protection. Civil security, for example, was proposed as a new guiding concept for the transformation of Bulgaria’s security architecture to be established as a third pillar alongside military-centred external security and police-focused internal security (Shalamanov et al., 2005). A slightly different reading becomes apparent in attempts by some analysts in the broader US discourse on ‘homeland security’ to suggest civil security as a useful concept to activate and inform citizens in the ‘war on terror’ by revitalizing and adapting experiences from civil defence programmes dating back to the Cold War (Dory, 2003). Yet, the term civil security never gained acceptance in the US context. In this comprehensive sense and through its focus on crisis and disasters within Western societies, civil security also partly overlaps with, but goes clearly beyond, the concepts of disaster relief and emergency aid as they are advanced by many international actors (Attinà, 2012; Hannigan, 2012).

Second, some actors in academia and private industry have taken up civil security to promote new research and technological agendas. For instance, the term features prominently in the EU Commission’s security research programme, which highlights its goal to ‘stimulate the cooperation of providers and users for civil security solutions’ and ‘ensure optimal and concerted use of available and evolving technologies to the benefit of civil European security’.³ In this perspective, civil security can relate to various technological applications not only for identification, surveillance and border protection but also for warning, communication or rescue, which has resonated with the security industry to market a wider range of products to a wider range of security practitioners. The security industry members united in the ‘Swedish Association of Civil Security’, for example, define civil security in a broad way as ‘the ability of society to handle antagonistic or non-antagonistic threats with a significant impact on the functioning of society’.⁴ In general, European officials have repeatedly stressed a pragmatic need to restructure national defence industries in light of declining defence budgets, whereas military research cooperation and joint production remains fraught with numerous political obstacles and is nearly impossible in the EU context. Civil security research allowed the Commission to legitimate its fragile role as security actor beyond the contentious military sphere. Thus, civil security research is heuristically defined by its antonym, even if civilian-led cooperation with military actors and the development of dual use technologies is not ruled out.

Third, civil security relates to a number of broader meta-trends in security provision by Western states. A wider historical perspective brings out a loose set of family resemblances that civil security shares with some of the other terms prevalent in this discourse. A first common trend is a break with the previous Cold War tradition of ‘civil defence’ effectively focusing on the protection of societies against the consequences of nuclear war. During the 1990s, more comprehensive notions, such as ‘civil protection’, became strong as new terms to denote public activities to protect the civilian population against all kinds of disasters and emergencies in rather decentralized structures with broad societal participation (Alexander, 2002). Rather than ‘the state’, societies and their ‘vital systems’ necessary to ensure the functioning of modern societies were increasingly defined as central reference objects of security policy. This shift manifested itself in new terms like ‘societal security’ (Wæver et al., 1993) and ‘critical infrastructure protection’ (Collier and Lakoff, 2008). Another distinct attempt to advance more comprehensive concepts for the protection of societies is visible in the US-coined concept of ‘homeland security’. It appeals beyond a technical or abstract referent object of security to the politically charged or emotive term of ‘homeland’ that is threatened by invasion (Kaunert et al., 2012, pp. 3–4). As is well known, it also emerged directly in response to the events of 9/11 and served to justify exceptionalist political measures. The introduction and institutionalization of homeland security – most visible through the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – revived the Cold War idea of civil defence, highlighting the need to prepare society for the response to terrorist attacks and to increase the resilience of societies. Yet, the limits and resulting gaps on this primary focus on terrorism as well as the low levels of societal resilience and mobilization were sharply highlighted during Hurricane Katrina.

Civil security also relates to the notions of risk management, risk governance and resilience that seem to have taken hold and have come to be regarded as an almost universally applicable panacea for the assessment and management of diverse natural and man-made hazards. More recent conceptualizations of risk governance have fully incorporated the classic critiques of seminal thinkers such as Beck and seek to balance a quantitative, mathematical risk management with sensitivity to deep uncertainty, complex scenarios and the need to involve multiple societal and political stakeholders beyond technocratic experts (van Asselt and Renn, 2011). In this context, the idea of resilience further acknowledges that societies – at least within reasonable costs – cannot guarantee effective protection of all people and sights against all kinds of unforeseen crises and disasters and, therefore, need to prepare for the case of their actual occurrence. This requires steps to enable and empower societies to cope with and recover from such events (Coaffee et al., 2008; see also Prior, Roth and Herzog in this volume). Yet, resilience remains ambiguous, especially when seen as universal standard for a society. Critical scholars have increasingly seen it as a further vector or problematic norm for instilling a neoliberal logic of governmentality (Joseph, 2013; Chandler, 2014), which shifts vital responsibilities of public authorities towards the individual, irrespective of the actually available capacities for or cons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1. Introduction: European Civil Security Governance – Towards a New Comprehensive Policy Space?
• Part I: The Challenge of Diversity
• Part II: The Challenge of Transformation
• Part III: The Challenge of Cooperation and the Role of the EU
• Index