Abstract
This article attempts to explore and analyse the evidence for cohabiting the human security concept into the national security frameworks of ASEAN countries. Using the Philippines and Malaysia as case studies, the article determines the extent to which public officials and policymakers have redefined and reenvisioned national security by incorporating non-traditional, people-centered elements of human security. The word 'cohabitation' refers to national governments' efforts to amalgamate statist and humanist dimensions of security when articulating and implementing their national security rhetoric and agenda. It argues that human security naturally complements state security, and vice versa. As such, human security and state security co-exist in a constructive manner that enhances the overall level of national security. In other words, they are mutually constitutive rather than mutually corrosive. Both cases underscore a two-pronged assumption. First, the meaning and provision of national security can neither be eloquently articulated nor completely substantiated without considerations for 'below the state' actors and issues. And second, the eminent status vis-a-vis power of the state in providing national security can neither be trivialized nor undermined.
Highlights
Twenty years after the official debut of human security in academic and policymaking circles in 1994, the concept continues to be a source of important debates directed at the progressive re-imagination of national security
Section four summarizes the main arguments presented based on the analysis of two empirical case studies. It concludes that despite the limitations of the Philippine and Malaysian governments in fully cohabiting the concept of human security into their respective national security frameworks, both countries have illustrated a concrete way of giving entitlement to non-traditional, people-centered elements of security as legitimate referent objects of national security
The following subsections discuss these limits, which help explain the country's continuously shrinking diversity space, and subsequent failure to fully embed the notion of human security into its national security framework
Summary
Twenty years after the official debut of human security in academic and policymaking circles in 1994, the concept continues to be a source of important debates directed at the progressive re-imagination of national security. Section four summarizes the main arguments presented based on the analysis of two empirical case studies It concludes that despite the limitations of the Philippine and Malaysian governments in fully cohabiting the concept of human security into their respective national security frameworks, both countries have illustrated a concrete way of giving entitlement to non-traditional, people-centered elements of security as legitimate referent objects of national security. Both cases underscore a two-pronged hypothesis: (i) that the meaning and provision of national security can neither be eloquently articulated nor completely substantiated without considerations for 'below the state' actors and issues; and (ii)that the eminent status of the state in terms of power in providing national security can neither be trivialized nor undermined. The following subsections discuss these limits, which help explain the country's continuously shrinking diversity space, and subsequent failure to fully embed the notion of human security (defined in terms of economic security) into its national security framework
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