Security and Democracy

Il tema del rapporto tra libertà e sicurezza non è certo recente, ma diversa e per molti aspetti inedita è la sua versione contemporanea, e cioè la tensione che viene a instaurarsi tra democrazia e «terrore». Oggi le manifestazioni del terrorismo si intersecano con i processi di ridefinizione spaziale e materiale della politica, rendendo più difficile un "trattamento" dell'incertezza e della paura diffuse (il «deinòn») in termini compaginativi e non dispersivi o oppositivi. Il volume suggerisce alcune prospettive su come uscire da queste trasformazioni della politica in modo appropriato, non attraverso una qualche «democrazia securitaria», ma piuttosto creando le condizioni per una «sicurezza democratica» fondata sulla partecipazione comunitaria.

After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fearmongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.

В последние годы в Армении, особенно после поражения в 44-дневной войне, некоторые группы и отдельные лица манипулируют представлением о том, что права человека и демократия являются западными, либеральными, глобалистскими и ложными ценностями, привнесенными из-за рубежа через гражданские общество с целью ослабления безопасности, обороны страны и снижения сопротивляемости общества.

Однако анализ факторов, приведших к войне, показывает, что в действительности в период, лежащий между первой и второй войнами, в Армении и Арцахе не было удовлетворительной отчетности и прозрачности ни дипломатического переговорного процесса по мирному урегулированию Арцахского конфликта, ни хода модернизации армии, повышения боеспособности и реформы оборонного сектора.

Is the need for stability pre-empting the need for democratic values? How can the EU cope with two contradictory security requirements: the need to promote democratic norms and to secure geostrategic interests? This paper takes on the security-democracy dilemma in a complex way that transcends the realpolitik frame overshadowing the analysis of the EU’s policy orientation in the Southern Mediterranean while considering its normative role as a fig leaf for security interests.
This paper investigates the EU’s foreign policy orientation reflected in the ENP in terms of the two logics of action of consequentialism and appropriateness. Tracing changes at the policy level over time between 2011 and 2015, the paper zooms into the implementation of the “new” ENP in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to highlight additional variation across countries.
Building on a document analysis of the official declarations for the policy-making level and of ENP action plans for the implementation level, the paper argues that local political dynamics and the level of the EU’s threat perception shape the EU’s response to the partner countries.

ABSTRACT Within the analytic purview of postcolonial feminist theory, this article investigates how women leverage their intelligence-gathering capabilities in Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) in Nigeria. Although P/CVE is widely perceived as an androcentric project, the threat posed by violent extremism to global peace and security has heightened the clamor for increased involvement of women in the formulation and implementation of peace and security policies in Africa. In 2000, this clamor gained international recognition and support following the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 which focuses on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). The resolution acknowledges the disproportionate impact of violent conflict on women and recognizes that women empowerment and gender equality are critical to the attainment of sustainable global peace and security. Notwithstanding, most Euro-American and other global frameworks against women victimization tend to accord the contributions of African women in P/CVE an epiphenomenal consideration. While academic discourses focus more closely on the victim-vanguard narratives of women in relation to terrorism and insurgency, the role of women in intelligence gathering for P/CVE has not received the needed attention in the literature. The universalizing posturing and influence of most global frameworks against women victimization hardly account for the role of African women, with their deep knowledge of their homes, families and communities, as invaluable resource for gathering actionable intelligence crucial for effective P/CVE.

Legal pluralism, or the dual legal system, is in essence a postcolonial phenomenon. People movement—migration—from the poor South to the rich North started in earnest at the end of the colonial era. Many Muslims were part of this migration process, and as a result we ...

ABSTRACT The failed coup attempt in July 2016 initiated a two-year long state of emergency (SoE) in Turkey. While studies have revealed its effects of power concentration in the government’s hands, what lacks to this point is a holistic and contextual analysis of how the SoE made it possible for the AKP Government to expand its power and through which mechanisms. This article adopts the conceptions of Securitization and the Sociology of Power and argues that the 2016–18 SoE is the latest manifestation of a long tradition of practices of securitization as well as the implementation of exceptional states.