People, States and Fear (Buzan 1991), led to clear-cut conclusions about the importance of regional security complexes in the military and political sectors. These complexes showed strong territorial coherence. In other words, one of the primary locations in which to find the sources of explana
tion and the outcomes of traditional security dynamics is the regional level.
Does securitization related to the referent objects of the other sectors also result in coherent regional security complexes? If so, are these regions identical to the military-political ones?
To assess overall trends among local, regional, and global levels is complicated by the often polemical nature of the arguments. As soon as someone puts too much emphasis on localization, regionalization, or glo
balization, it is easy to raise counterarguments. If one, for example, stresses the increasing regionalization in economics in terms of territorial bloc for
mation (the EU, NAFTA, and APEC), another can counter this by pointing to globalization in terms of interaction capacity (e.g., low transportation costs, international capital) or to global regimes (the rules set by the IMF, I lie WTO, the World Bank, and the G7). If the global structure is empha
sized, it is easy to point to the importance, of regional or even national eco
nomics. In the first part of this chapter, we try to break out of this trap by decomposing the question, summing up the analysis we carried out in the previous chapters sector by sector.
One of the assumptions in our study is that we are working within an international system that is global in scale. On the face of it, one might cxpect that the shrinking world and globalization arguments mean the terri- lorial factor is disappearing from politics. The revolution in interaction capacity—including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and jumbo jets, satellites, and the development of cyberspace—has eroded the, signifi
cance of distance. Changing global regimes characterize periods in what is l ightly called world history: the eras of imperialism, world war, decoloniza
tion, bipolarity, and global interdependence.
Despite the apparently triumphal march of globalization, the evidence from our sector chapters suggests this is only part of the story. The ability lo Iravel worldwide does not mean everyone is doing so. The strengthening
of the global level does not obliterate other levels. Tom Nierop (1994, 1995) rightly remarks that even most of the people who invented and creat
ed cyberspace are living in one place—Silicon Valley. Despite the overall global structure, there are regional differences that are too crucial to be neglected. Different rules of the game apply in various subsystems. The invisible hands, types of anarchy, and international regimes that condition the margins for cooperation and conflict in each of the sectors vary widely from region to region. This points to their relative independence.
In the postbipolar system, in many places regional dynamics are signif
icantly less constrained than they were previously. But the end of the Cold War also lifted constraints on globalization, most notably in the economic sector, because all of the so-called Second World was now opened up.
There have also been strong localizing developments, especially in the societal and environmental sectors—to some extent as the dialectical other side of globalization. The model for security analysis presented in this book is meant to be instrumental in sorting and comparing these uneven effects.
The first subsection sets up levels of analysis as a way of comparing the sectors and summarizes the five sector chapters into one matrix accord
ing to the weight of the levels at which securitization occurs. Section\2 looks at linkages acros*é:’the sectors and states conclusions about what can be said at the aggregate level about the relative weights of the different lev
els and whether congruent regions form in the different sectors. Section 3 contrasts this approach with one that starts from the actors, with each syn
thesizing the different sectors in its specific weighing and possibly connect
ing of security concerns. Section 4 offers a brief survey of how cross-sec
toral weighing of security operates for some different units (France, Japan, Third World states, Sudan, the LIEO, and the environment). In contrast to this impressionistic overview, section 5 is an empirically based case study of the EU. Space does not allow great amounts of documentation, but the case study is intended to illustrate a possible method for studying securiti
zation. The final section discusses the merits of different forms of synthe
sizing sectors—aggregate, as in sections 1 and 2, or by the units, as in sec
tions 3,4, and 5—for different purposes.
Levels of Analysis as a Way of Comparing Sectors
In the sector chapters, we traced the globalizing, regionalizing, and localiz
ing tendencies in the security debates about the referent objects and threats in each sector. At what level does the securitization within each of the sec
tors appear? Does the subsystem level show coherent regional security complexes in geopolitical terms within each and across all of the sectors?
In each chapter, we have assessed the importance of securitization at the different levels of analysis, and these arguments are summed up in Figure 8.1. Globalizing dynamics operate at the system level. At the subsystem
Figure 8.1 Securitization at Different Levels of Analysis Dynamics/
Sectors Military Environment Economic Societal Political
Global ** ** ***
Non-regional subsystemic
** ** ** ** *
Regional *** *** ♦ ♦♦*
Local *** ** ♦ ♦
**** . dominant securitization; *** - subdominant securitization; ** - minor securiti
zation; * - no securitization
level, there are two possible patterns: regionalization if patterns are geo
graphically coherent and nonregional subsystemic if they are not. Finally, there are localizing dynamics at the subunit level.1
Can we add up the results and arrive at an overall conclusion about whether a dominant trend exists across the spectrum? Yes and no. Not every observer will give equal weight to each sector. There is a classical debate over whether to put politics before economics or the reverse.
Environmentalists will disagree either way, and some argue that identity issues are behind everything. Traditional security studies weights the mili
tary sector so heavily that it becomes the only one worth studying.
For our purposes, the relative weight of sectors should depend primari
ly upon the degree of securitization but should also consider the relative importance of types of issues when sectoral concerns clash. For instance, relatively speaking, the economic sector has the least successful securitiza
tion (which is one of the major reasons the regional level continues to have a claim for primacy, because the economic sector is probably the most strongly globalized), but the degree of securitization is not the only factor to consider. In terms of relative importance, it is worth remembering an argument from traditional security studies (which is not as entirely conclu
sive as its proponents claim but is partly correct nevertheless): When a cal
culation relating to a military conflict meets a concern from one of the other sectors, military-political arguments carry the most weight. This is not always correct, however, since both identity and environment can become very strong motives. But the basic approach is correct: We should look for what counts most when different concerns conflict. This conclu
sion is important when we try impressionistically to balance the f indings of I he different sectors.
The overall picture indicates that regional security complexes domi
nate the military, political, and societal sectors; that they are potentially strong in the economic one; and that they are present in the environmental sector. The global level is dominant in the economic sector, but global dynamics themselves stimulate regionalization. Global-level dominance in the environm ental sector refers m ainly to the level of the debate.
Environmental issues as such are spread across all levels; some affect local structures only, others affect the international system as such, and some fall in between and form regional clusters of interdependent issues. Most suc
cessful securitization here is local. When we draw upon the finding that the economic sector has comparatively little successful securitization, a rough weighing points to the regional level as still fairly central despite the move to a wider security agenda.
Linkages Across Sectors
It is impossible, however, to conclude on the basis of this study whether the regional security complexes are always identical in each sector. In princi
ple, we could find that security dynamics in most sectors were regional but that the regions were different. Is military Europe the same as political Europe and societal Europe? Is economic East Asia the same as political East Asia and environmental East Asia? Whether these sectoral subsystems overlap and thus form coherent regions can be answered only tentatively and on a descriptive basis. Examples of relatively coherent regions across sectors are the Middle East, Europe, the CIS, Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, and North America. Potential cases are found in East Africa, Central and Latin America, East Asia, and perhaps the Pacific. But in all of these cases, one can always point to exceptions.
Obviously, the answers to these questions are of crucial importance, not the least for IR theory; the more the dynamics of the five sectors high
light identical regions, the more they lead to overall congruent power con
figurations and thereby make the regional level more powerful in explana
tions. One factor that supports a tendency toward congruence among sectoral regional subsystems is that in the end, the actors themselves must make up their minds as to how the securitization of different values adds up. The next three sections develop this question of how sectors are synthe
sized by actors.
The question of whether the regional security complexes match across sectors is answered in part by looking at the ways in which the sectors are linked to one another. Although we maintain that the disaggregated world of sectors makes analytical sense because different agenda, values, dis
courses, and the like can be reasonably clustered in these five sectors, it
should be remembered that sectors are lenses focusing on the same world.
Not surprisingly, the sector chapters are full of cross-references.
In the chapter about the military sector, for instance, it was noted that military security serves functions in the other sectors, whereas warfare tends to disrupt stability in the other sectors. This refers to the security debate with which we are so familiar: What do we see when we perceive all sectors through the lens in which military rationales (the use of, or protec
tion against the use of, violence) ultimately dominate? But the question can also be phrased the other way around. Problems that on the surface seem to be military might, on closer inspection, turn out to be motivated by fears in the other four sectors. Wars of independence, for example, may focus on separatism and border conflicts, whereas they are better understood in terms of identity concerns; wars against a ruling government might actually represent mere frustration about deteriorating living conditions caused by environmental decline. The séctor linkages resemble the ultimate conse
quence of Karl von Clausewitz’s dictum: War is the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
Such linkages can be formulated for all 10 dyads among the five sec
tors. Military operations can be the continuation of environmental conflict or, the reverse, can be constrained by environmental limitations. Raising the “identity flag” can entail the continuation of economics with the admix
ture of other means—for example, legitimizing protectionism—or, the reverse, economic free trade arguments can be used as a means in rap
prochement policies. It is important to know how sectoral concerns feed into one another. When do they reinforce and when do they modify each other? Chapters 3-7 contain examples for each of the sector dyads.
Disaggregating security into sectors has been helpful in distilling distinc
tive patterns of vulnerabilities and threats, differences regarding referent objects and actors, and different relationships to territorializing and deterritorializing trends in the system. The number of cross-linkages, how
ever, stands as a massive warning against treating the sectors as closed sys
tems.
Cross-Sectoral Security Connections Through the Actor's Lens
In the present book, we have dissected the world of security into five sec- lors. The purpose of such a disaggregating exercise is to put security back logether in, it is hoped, a more transparent form. The reconnecting job can be done in two ways that are not incompatible but that serve different pur
poses. The section “Levels of Analysis as a Way of Comparing Sectors”
weighed the findings of all the sectors both as a total picture and as a gener
al lesson about security in its different forms. That section looked at the different pictures that emerged in the particular sectors and at the ways these five pictures could possibly be combined.
In Chapter 1, however, we asked whether one should study security sector by sector and then try to relate the different sector-specific maps of the world to one another or rather try to see all security interaction as one constellation and security as an integrated field. The section “Levels of Analysis as a Way of Comparing Sectors” viewed the five sectors from th el analyst’s outside perspective. The rest of this chapter does so from the inside, through the actor’s perspective. In both cases, one can draw on the lessons of Chapters 3-7 because one needs an understanding of the pecu
liarities of security of each of the types—economic, military, and so forth.
The case for looking through the actor’s lens is as follows. Sectors are not ontologically separate realms; they are not, like levels, separate subsys
tems (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993: 30-33). Some units, particularly the state, appear in several or all of the sectors, although at different strengths.
We see sectors as a purely analytical device, as different lenses through/
which to see different views of the same issues.
But although they are analytical devices, sectors exist not only in a the- \ oretician’s head but also in policy heads, where the concept of security itself is the integrating force. Actors think about economics, politics, and other areas but judge their main security problems across the board. Thus, units do not exist in sectors; sectors exist in units as different types of secu
rity concerns (political, economic, etc.). These different concerns are weighed and aggregated by the units.2 One unit (say, the United States) can feel threatened mainly by military matters and will define security in nar
row military terms (which, in turn, allows it to define its own uses of non
military means as “ordinary interaction” rather than security issues, regard
less of how others perceive them; Wæver 1989b, 1995b). Another unit (say, the former USSR) has existential fears about sociocultural penetration by a dynamic neighboring area and insists that the concept of security should be wider and should include “nonmilitary security problems.” A third state (say, Latvia) might see demographic developments as existential and apply the security approach to these.
To grasp political dynamics, one needs to focus on the most dynamic interactions, the loops, the vicious circles—regardless of whether these stay within one sector. A political analysis searches for constellations of inter
linking securitizations and is open about whether these interlinkages oper
ate across sectors.3 The sectors should not be projected out as a map of the world cut up into sectors (each to be filled with units, aims, threats, and dynamics); they should be sent in, into the actors as different kinds of secu
rity concerns.
The basic argument here is about analytical sequence: A specific secu
rity analysis does not start by cutting the world into sectors. We have done so in this book because it was necessary to do so to resolve misunderstand
ings about the general domain of security. But in a specific analysis, the sequence is (1) securitization as a phenomenon, as a distinct type of prac
tice; (2) the security units, those units that have become established as legitimate referent objects for security action and those that are able to securitize—the securitizing actors; and (3) the pattern of mutual references among units—the security complex.
Looking sector by sector, there is a risk of missing even intense securi
ty dilemmas in cases where the threat of A against B lies in one sector and the threat to which A is reacting (and thereby possibly reinforcing) from B is found in another sector. Illustrations could be Estonia-Russia (military fears and security for and against minorities) and Turkey-Syria (Kurdish separatism versus water control). Therefore, one should look at all kinds of security and look unit by unit, conflict by conflict—and thereby build the complex as the constellation of main security concerns (“main” is defined by the actors).
Accordingly, our 1993 book has no “societal security complex” and only hesitantly introduces a “societal security dilemma” (Wæver et al.
1993; see further Kelstrup 1995). There is one European security complex;
societal security plays a part in this complex if important units act accord
ing to this logic and their action is significant enough to feed into the secu
rity policy of other actors and thus to become part of the chain of security interdependencies forming the regional security complex.
A further reason for paying close attention to cross-sectoral dynamics is that doing so might solve the problem of having to deal with one or sev
eral sector-specific maps of security complexes. Where these seem to line up (and the previous section argued that they often do), the explanation will probably be found in cross-sectoral dynamics. From a functionalist per
spective, one might expect that the economic security complexes would come out differently from the military ones, which again would have differ
ent borders from the environmental security complexes. The nature of envi
ronmental affairs—even the main units—differs from affairs in economics, which, in turn, differ from military matters; thus, one should expect size and constellations to be very different. Truly, there are major deviances among sectors, but there are also some surprising consistencies.
In the societal security chapter, for instance, it was noticed that strong instances of societal security were found in Europe and to some extent in the Middle East, which taken independently should have been expected to generate smaller complexes (e.g., to focus on subregions, such as the Balkans or even Transylvania). Because of cross-sectoral connections, especially with the political sector, however, the different societal conflicts were tied together, and states acted in a generalized sense in relation to minority conflicts and self-determination with a view to regional dynamics and to principles that are partly systemic, partly regional (in this case European).
In the economic chapter, it was noticed that whereas the firm is not an