Societal Security Dilemma Research Articles

Social identities in conflict: Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews

AbstractThe Israeli–Palestinian conflict is generally referred as a territorial conflict, but it is also a conflict over the preservation of identity. This study analyzes the relations of Jews and Palestinians in Israel from an identity security perspective. It sheds light on how the communities perceive actions, discourses, and symbols as a mutual threat to their own identity. Adapting the concept of societal security dilemma (SSD), this study seeks to reveal the patterns of feeling insecure between the groups and to put forth the measures and countermeasures taken to secure identity. This approach contends that the measures and countermeasures taken to reduce the perception of threat do not lead to a feeling of security; on the contrary, it creates a cycle of constant threat perception, making the groups feel more insecure in terms of identity. I argue that this is the case for the Jews and Palestinians in Israel. The analytical dimensions of SSD are applied to the case via process tracing and historical analysis. However, I identify a gap unaddressed by these dimensions of the concept. The present study proposes an additional dimension—confrontation—to fill this gap.

Minority Issues from a Non-traditional Security Perspective: Crossfertilizationamong Research Fields

Although security concerns have long been embedded in the field of ethnic politics and scholarship on mechanisms of ethnic conflict resolution and management of diversity in divided societies, a combination of real-world events and increasing cross-fertilization among research fields have accelerated the field of inquiry in the past fifteen years. On the one hand, security has become a relevant sphere of governmental action with repercussions in several policy areas, including accommodation of diversity. On the other hand, following the broadening and deepening of the Security Studies agenda, many scholars have applied security concepts to investigate minority issues and ethnic conflicts, from Roe’s “societal security dilemma” to research on securitization/desecuritization of minorities. A variety of approaches and theories have developed, not always in relation with each other. The goal of this paper is to provide a state-of-the-art comprehensive overview of the attempts at cross-fertilization between Non- Traditional Security Studies and work on minority accommodation/conflict regulation in European countries, discussing theoretical underpinnings as well as methodological issues. Applying a Security Studies lens to the politics surrounding the governance of cultural diversity deepens and advances our understanding of minority issues and policy debates, in particular, around institutional designs in divided societies.

LGBT Rights in Bosnia: The Challenge of Nationalism in the Context of Europeanization

AbstractNationalism has been one of the domestic constraints to progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, especially in the Balkans that are dealing with multiple postwar transition realities. Ethno-nationalist challenges, often influenced by religion, have been significant in Bosnia-Herzegovina given weak state identity and democracy, competing institutionalized ethno-national identities, and slow Europeanization. Through the lenses of gendered nationalism, the societal security dilemma, and political homophobia, this article analyzes how the politics and discourse of LGBT rights during the past decade in Bosnia reveal tensions between competing and multiple identities and narratives—European, multiethnic, ethno-nationalist, and religious—using the violent response to the 2008 Queer Sarajevo Festival as a key illustration. However, in the past decade, LGBT rights have progressed and antigay backlash to LGBT visibility (in addition to stronger external leverage and other factors) has resulted in stronger activism and change. The public discourse and response to the announcement of Bosnia’s first Pride Parade represents another turning point in LGBT visibility that seems to reveal that ethno-nationalist challenges may be lessening as LGBT rights norms gain strength.

Festung Europa: Securitization of Migration and Radicalization of European Societies

Europe is undoubtedly changing into Festung Europa – Fortress Europe. While its external boundaries are daily traversed by hundreds of migrants and refugees, its heretofore invisible internal borders have begun to sprout barbed wires, barriers and armed patrols. This paper analyzes the problem of migration and the ongoing European migration crisis through the lens of societal insecurity, arguing that the trend toward radicalization of European societies and electoral politics is one the most volatile ramifications of securitized migration. The European migration crisis has led to a societal security dilemma resulting in a growing chasm between the political elites in member states of the European Union and their societies. The radicalization of those societies is visible in the rising popularity of anti-establishment (populist) parties, the push for direct democracy (demonstrations, manifestations, referenda), and the attractiveness of vigilante groups. Where the state responds to this trend, culture becomes a security policy and “immiskepticism” is the default approach. If it does not respond, society either looks for new political representatives or takes matters into its own hands, sometimes resorting to violence. While the former trend is more visible in the Eastern part of the European Union, the latter is more typical of its Western part. Keywords: Europe; European migrant crisis; migration; politicization; securitization; radical politics; societal insecurity DOI: 10.14712/23363231.2017.10

Ontological insecurity in asymmetric conflicts: Reflections on agonistic peace in Turkey’s Kurdish issue

This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes. Over time, all conflicts become embroiled in a set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, the maintenance of which becomes critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions and narratives also intersect with a fundamental ontological asymmetry, because such conflicts often pit state parties with secure existence against ethnic groups with contested status and illegitimate standing. We argue that peace processes are easier to initiate but harder to conclude in ontologically asymmetric conflicts. Accordingly, we find that during the 2009–2015 peace process in Turkey, ontological (in)security-induced dynamics presented themselves in cyclical patterns of ambitious peace initiatives receiving greater support among the Kurdish public but giving way, at the first sign of crisis, to a rapid and dramatic return to violence, which neither side acted to stem. Moreover, we underscore that ontologically asymmetric conflicts, such as Turkey’s Kurdish issue, are often characterized by a societal security dilemma, where the conditions of ontological security for one party undermine those of the other. Therefore, building consensus around a new shared peace narrative may not be possible or desirable, and a lasting solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue depends on the development of an agonistic peace around coexisting, multiple and contestatory narratives.

Nation-building under the societal security dilemma: The case of Macedonia

In 2009, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia announced the Skopje 2014 Project, a project that envisioned an urban reconstruction of the city through a series of monuments of historical and religious figures, as well as various public buildings resembling neo-classical, or neo-baroque style. The Project was the culmination of a wider nation-building project initiated several years earlier that became known as 'antiquisation' that sought to reconstruct and redefine Macedonian national identity, in which the uppermost importance was given to the figure of Alexander the Great. The nation-building project stressed a linear continuity of Macedonian national identity from antiquity to the present thereby emphasizing the nation's unceasing existence and affirmation throughout the centuries. But what were the underlying causes that shaped the nation-building project? How have historical, political and other factors influenced the nation-building project in Macedonia? And why was ancient Macedonia chosen as the narrative around which the nation-building project could take place? These are the questions that the present article will attempt to answer. The aim of this article is to examine the complex interplay between security policy and nation-building, in the Macedonian context. More specifically, it will argue that the current nation-building project in Macedonia has been developed as a response to internal and external perceived identity threats. Namely, ever since declaring independence the Republic of Macedonia has been facing a double societal security dilemma - an external, stemming from the country's immediate neighbors who constantly dispute the existence of a distinct Macedonian national identity, and an internal reflected in the constant challenges of the character of the State, by the country's ethnic Albanian community. In response, the nation-building project sought to address these concerns.

Education in Post-war Bosnia: The Nexus of Societal Security, Identity and Nationalism

The notion of security in international relations has been broadened and reconceptualized and now rightly includes an understanding of education as a potential security threat, not just a socializing tool. In post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, the education system is decentralized, politicized and nationalistic, and promotes competing visions and identities of Bosnia. Some students attend segregated schools, while almost all study only with others from their same ethnonational group and learn from a mono-ethnic curriculum that does not foster understanding or tolerance of others, but breeds suspicion. This paper argues that these educational practices constitute a societal security dilemma. Many Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs use the education system to gain rights and security for their group, which is viewed by others as a potential threat to their own security and identity within a fractured state. This paper shows that while these attempts to reinforce group security and identity (and increase power) may be beneficial to the group and nationalist leaders themselves, they paradoxically may have negative consequences for the security of other groups and for the security and stability of the Bosnian state itself, understood in terms of national cohesiveness and territorial integrity.

Towards a new societal security dilemma: comprehensive analysis of actor responsibility in intersocietal conflicts

AbstractScholars of the societal security dilemma implicitly or explicitly aim to analyse actor responsibility in intersocietal group confrontations. However, adherence of these approaches to (neo-)realist theoretical assumptions of the security dilemma hinders this objective. This article provides analytical principles upon which a new societal security dilemma can be constructed in order to conduct a more comprehensive analysis of actor responsibility. A new societal security dilemma framework can be built upon three principles: (1) a security dilemma results in violence depending on how the actors themselves interpret the political structure in which they interact with others; (2) differentiation of actors' intentions as malign or benign is inconsequential; what matters is how actors interpret security and which tools they choose to adopt to achieve security; and (3) identity is not exogenous to the politics of security. Adopting these principles requires reconceptualisation of the security dilemma. It will be argued that a new societal security, which reflects the politics of security, can provide a more comprehensive, dynamic, political, and realistic analysis of actor responsibility in societal-level confrontations. These new principles will be illustrated through re-reading of the dissolution of Yugoslavia to analyse actor responsibility as a sketch of the new societal security dilemma theorising.

Israel's Societal Security Dilemma and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

This article applies the concept of the societal security dilemma to ethnic relations in Israel. I argue that Jews and Arabs in Israel are locked in a regular societal security dilemma in which their identity security requirements are incompatible and that the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has only served to exacerbate that incompatibility. The article highlights the process of securitization of identities, which is generally missing from the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ethnic relations in Israel.

Ethnic Violence and the Societal Security Dilemma by Paul Roe

Ethnic Violence and the Societal Security Dilemma by Paul Roe

Misperception and ethnic conflict: Transylvania's societal security dilemma

This article proposes that instances of ethnic violence can profitably be viewed through the concept of a societal security dilemma. It begins by arguing that the explanatory value of the security dilemma might be enhanced by shifting the focus of the concept away from its traditional concern with state sovereignty to an emphasis on ethnic identity instead. This is proposed through combining the security dilemma with the Copenhagen School's notion of societal security. In this way, the article claims that the resultant societal security dilemma is able to capture certain dynamics between ethnic groups that its traditional variant necessarily misses. The article then goes on to show how ethnic violence between Hungarians and Romanians in the Transylvanian city of Tirgu Mures can be partly explained by the societal security dilemma concept. It argues that many Romanians were mobilized on the basis of the misperception that Hungarian societal security requirements necessarily threatened their own identity. The article concludes that misperceptions on both sides were enabled by the weakness of the Romanian State; that insufficient mechanisms existed for the clear, unambiguous signalling of intentions.

The Intrastate Security Dilemma: Ethnic Conflict as a `Tragedy'?

This article seeks to pull together the main body of work on the security dilemma and that concerning the relatively recent move in international relations in reconceptualizing and operationalizing the concept away from its usual interstate setting. First, it will discuss some of the ways in which the security dilemma has been defined. Second, it will concentrate on the work of those writers who have conceived of `ethnic security dilemmas' and `insecurity dilemmas' occurring at the intrastate level. Third, it will suggest some possible answers to the problems that this body of writing has raised. Fourth, it will both introduce and further develop the concept of the `(inter-) societal security dilemma' as a possibly more productive way of explaining the outbreak of ethnic violence. Moreover, throughout the article the question as to if and when ethnic conflict can be seen as a `tragedy' in Herbert Butterfield's sense of the word will be addressed.