The Evolution of Homeland and Civil Security Policies Internationally: Values vs. Resilience? Political Science Perspectives
Alexander Siedschlag
Dean & Professor of Homeland Security and Security Studies, College of Arts & Sciences, Embry-Riddle Worldwide, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
By Andrea Jerkovi? & Alexander Siedschlag
This article summarizes the main findings from a panel held at the International Political Science Association (IPSA) 2023 World Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, offering international political science perspectives on select homeland and civil security challenges. The congress took place at the Pontifical?Catholic University?of Argentina (UCA).
Titled “The Evolution of Homeland and Civil Security Policies Internationally: Values vs. Resilience,” the panel was a session of IPSA Research Committee (RC) RC44 Security, Conflict and Democratization. It was convened and chaired by Alexander Siedschlag , Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Embry-Riddle Worldwide College of Arts & Sciences . Andrea Jerkovi?, Business Academy Vienna, served as the discussant.
The concept for the panel was informed by our work on Homeland and Civil Security Research as well as on Homeland Security Cultures.
While originally a U.S. concept following the 9/11 attacks, homeland security and related policy concepts and strategies have started to disseminate around the world and across cultures. At the same time, the concept of civil security has been rising, either as a copy concept or a counter concept to homeland security. Related policies and strategies are also being adopted more globally and increasingly connected to human security and resilience.?
Writing 1952 in Political Science Quarterly, Arnold Wolfers argued “national security” was an “ambiguous symbol,” signifying a broad range of “highly divergent policies [that] can be interpreted as policies of security.” This remains true today for homeland and civil security, which we would argue is best understood, also in Wolfers’ term as security in the sense of defending a society’s commonly acquired values – with all the moral dilemmas and risk of the term mainly turning into a political formula, away from its relevance as a concept for policy analysis.
With a total of six countries represented on the panel, the discussion also made a contribution to the field of comparative politics of homeland and civil security, and how security policies develop based on different “semantic fields of democracy” as Giovanni Sartori addressed it in his Democratic Theory.
The panel explored how the adaptation and application of homeland and civil security policies in different regions, political cultures, and nations vary, to what extent shared and/or global values prevail, and how priority and value conflicts are resolved in order to achieve democratic, citizen-owned solutions to security challenges emanating from an evolving hybrid threat environment to democracy and society. The?papers had interesting perspectives to offer on the social construction of security as well as the action repertory for democratic, or sometimes factional, response to security threats – therefore the dichotomy of “Values vs. Resilience” in the panel title. In a Strong Democracy as conceptualized by Benjamin Barber, that antagonism would be resolved by civic engagement as the security maxim and politics as a heuristic instrument to create security as a collective good under conditions of uncertainty in the threat environment as well as uncertainty in the security posture.
Contributions
The following four papers were presented by their respective authors and subsequently discussed by Andrea Jerkovi?:
The papers address varieties of homeland and civil security challenges and policy domains in different innovative ways, making international comparisons and evaluating the international transfer of security policy concepts and methods.
Doubtful Discourses on Terrorism and Cyberterrorism: The Applicability of International Security Concepts in African Contexts
Alta Grobbelaar’s paper on the applicability of international security concepts in different national contexts to address terrorism and cyberterrorism focuses on Africa and uses a discourse analysis approach. It enables the author to pinpoint power relations and imbalances in the creation of terrorism and cyberterrorism discourses while identifying contextual frameworks that lead to different regional substantializations of these global homeland security phenomena. The paper contributes to understanding the ongoing evolution of the concept of terrorism on a global scale by examining links between terrorism and cyberterrorism as used by Western and African actors. Methodologically, the paper blends Critical Terrorism Studies with Critical Discourse Analysis. While the paper does not very directly address resilience, it suggests an information governance approach, where multistate actors make a broad spectrum of knowledge available. In addressing the liberty–security continuum, the Grobbelaar paper argues for a focus on computer network security and surveillance governance that also fosters the privacy and sovereignty of the common user. The paper recognizes the limitations of its analytical and proposed political discourse-centered methodology: Those lie in discourses becoming too diverse and too contested, which can also lead to an overinterpretation of semantics as well as threats. That in turn can result in the immediate security-providing and life-saving task at hand. Practically, the paper sketches a framework to address interregional imbalances of power and how they can influence nation-states’ understanding and addressing of the evolving threat of terrorism.
Legislative Trends in the Management of Inner Enemies: The Early Stages of a Comparative Database
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Théo Leschevin also focuses on internal state security, studying legislative trends in the management of inner enemies. His paper uses a historical and sociological approach to study, with a focus on France and the United Kingdom, how societies relate to internal threats and the emergence of the figure of the “inner enemy.” The paper constitutes an experimental case study, based on the analysis of 117 legislative documents. Leschevin transcends the boundaries of international and internal state security studies by investigating historical periods of “enemisation,” where political or social opponents turn each other into enemies. Methodologically, the paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of aggregated data on legislative documents to counter inner enemies of the state. The paper also discusses the legislative conceptualization of resilience in terms of governmental social control of emergency situations. Exploring the genealogy of the conceptualization of the inner enemy, the paper also discusses related shifts in the liberty–security continuum. This, for example, includes anticipatory counterterrorist intervention of intelligence and police agencies that critics see as an attack on the habeas corpus principle as well as on other fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech. A genealogical megatrend identified in the paper is the transition of counterterrorism from an emergency measure to a temporary measure to a continuous provision. The paper discusses limitations of the presented study that lie in its quantitative part but can convincingly demonstrate the enemisation tendencies, increasingly present in legislation.
Punitive Policing in Mexico: The Role of the Businessmen in the Militarization of Security
Anaís Medeiros Passos and Maria Teresa Martínez Trujillo examine the role of entrepreneurs in the militarization of civil security, studying punitive policing in Mexico. They combine policing studies with the analysis of the use of armed forces in homeland security and law enforcement. Their analysis is infused with an interesting perspective on security cultures within law enforcement. Using a single case-study approach, the authors apply the concept of framing in the sense of a securitization approach. The study offers an interesting perspective on the liberty–security continuum and the political science concept of security as a commonly acquired value as different segments of society may actually acquire different and opposing values. In their case study, businessmen enable punitive militarized policing to seek their own security, based on the values of efficiency and efficacity that they hold. This co-construction of security from the business side undermines civil security-type law enforcement, based on human rights values. Methodologically, Medeiros Passos and Martínez Trujillo apply literature review and policy analysis. Their study delineates the militarization of law enforcement as a multifaceted social process by which military approaches to social problems acquire elite and popular acceptance. This contributes to the resilience of security forces as well as elites, in that case, the securitizing actors that are the businesspersons. While this is a single-country study, building on a comparative study on two cities in Mexico, Tijuana and Guadalajara, as the authors point out, it is an important starting point for broader Latin America area studies on the militarization of law enforcement institutions and its mechanisms.
Violent Protests and Political Violence: Hybrid Security Threats That Are Growing in Latin America
Marco Granja and Luis Santiago Manzano address hybrid homeland and civil security challenges, focusing on different domains of violence. Combining radicalization studies with human security studies and social movement theory, they use an ideologically agnostic functional framework and apply it to a group of South American countries to explore the securitization of hybrid threats from violent protests and political violence. The authors study violent protests against democratic government in various regions of South America, being careful to discern violent protest from political violence. Methodologically, Granja and Manzano use a bibliographic review and a descriptive analysis of cases informed by the categories of the concept of human security. The human security lens also helps identify elements of societal resilience to violence, based on fostering individualist societies organically resistant to recruitment for radicalization. In further elaboration on their proposed solution, the authors draw from regional security complex theory that they apply to their essentially civil security problem space. Granja and Manzano also offer an interesting fresh look at the liberty–security continuum, making the point for strong democracies, where domination by one group is less likely. On the security end, they argue for a comprehensive approach that uses a variety of capabilities and resources.
Recommendations for Further Research
The authors may want to consider a few suggestions to improve on what already are very good papers:
Regarding Alta Grobbelaar’s paper, in further exploring appropriate approaches to establish cybersecurity in the face of an evolving persistent terrorist threat, additional case studies and criteria would appear useful in determining the tipping point, where the adoption of more experienced Western approaches could start to counter the addressing of unique regional manifestations of terrorism and cyberterrorism in African countries.?
Théo Leschevin could expand on his quantitative work by defining indicators for "enemization" and hypothesis testing that would allow him to efficiently expand his experimental study into different regions and legislative cultures.
Anaís Medeiros Passos and Maria Teresa Martínez Trujillo should be encouraged to expand the application of their framework to broader Latin America studies on the militarization of law enforcement as a social process.
Marco Granja and Luis Santiago Manzano might want to elaborate on their use of the concept of ethics and morality to evaluate radicalized social and political actors. This could add an important political psychology dimension to the increasingly human-security-infused discussion of homeland and civil security.
Conclusions
Taken together, the papers as they are already leave us with some interesting overarching trends identified that can guide further study of homeland and civil security from a political science perspective: First, the fusion of homeland security and human security concepts and values; second, growing multinational collaboration to solve homeland security problems and seek new ways to balance the strengthening of security with reducing societal vulnerability; third, the antagonistic trend of fusing civil security and national defense – or military – policies and values, also at the expense of a well-balanced liberty–security continuum; fourth, the trend of defining resilience not as a social asset but a structured and legalized normalization of the emergency, along with the persistent exercising of governmental and public authorities emergency powers.
Securitization of democracy, including the use of national defense and military concepts, approaches, and methods in civil security, remains an ambivalent endeavor since in its effort to foster a resilient nation, it must continue to safeguard the commonly acquired values of the whole community that constitutes the democratic society that we seek to protect. Also in an era of hybrid threats and hybrid responses, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” as Carl Schmitt began his essay on Political Theology in 1922.
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