Abstract
This article goes beyond the study of speech acts to investigate the process of securitization during a health crisis. The article introduces the concept of ‘expert-led securitization’ to account for situations when experts dominate the administrative process that translates a securitizing speech act into extraordinary public policy. Expert-led securitization was particularly salient during the 2009 pandemic flu in Denmark and Sweden. Autonomous public health expert agencies led the national securitization processes, and these never included intense political battles or extensive public debates. In turn, the respective processes resulted in different policies: Sweden’s main response to the pandemic was an extraordinary push to vaccinate its whole population, while Denmark’s was a one-off offer of vaccination to about twenty percent of its people. Hence, the 2009 pandemic example illustrates the added value of investigating the administrative dynamics of securitization when seeking to understand differences in extraordinary policies.
Highlights
This article addresses a particular dimension of crisis governance, namely the elevation of a crisis to a security threat
The Danish and Swedish cases of 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic responses show the utility of investigating administrative processes to chart the policy dimensions of securitization
We see the importance of administrative practices for the securitization process in Denmark and Sweden during 2009
Summary
This article addresses a particular dimension of crisis governance, namely the elevation of a crisis to a security threat. Securitization can be applied to non-military threats such as migration (e.g., Robinson, 2017), climate change (e.g., Diez, Von Lucke, & Wellmann, 2016) and health (Elbe, 2011; Enemark, 2017; Hanrieder & Kreuder-Sonnen, 2014; Howell, 2014; Kittelsen, 2013; Roemer-Mahler & Elbe, 2016) Many of these newer studies theorize securitization to include public administrative processes and policy decisions, and extend empirical investigations beyond discourse analysis to include process tracing, content analysis, and even ethnographic research While conventional securitization theory suggests that all securitization is followed by extraordinary policies, the analysis here shows that focusing on expert leadership helps explain how extraordinary measures taken by governments really are
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
