Theorising security discourses

Abstract

This chapter addresses the theoretical framework needed to approach the Democratic Security Policy (DSP). It reviews the conventional understanding of security policies according to mainstream views in international relations (IR), determining the main pillars that give them grounding in this logic. These pillars of security discussions in IR include: 1) defining the concept of security, 2) the anarchical international system, 3) the state of nature, 4) the sovereign state and 5) threats and vulnerabilities. The DSP shapes, moulds and changes politics such that political violence is reproduced by the very promise of halting it. It is also a grammar of war and peace that closes down the spaces for politics and actually inflicts harm. The political violence that the DSP produces is explained. It is noted that insecurity is not a paradox of security, but rather is the very condition of its possibility.