![]() ![]() It was an important development in the rise of a wider perspective on security. ![]() ![]() Widening the agenda from a feminist perspective brought gender into focus by placing gender and women as the focus of security calculations and by demonstrating that gender, war and security were intertwined. On the contrary, the state was often the cause of insecurities for women. Feminism had an important role in widening the agenda by challenging the idea that the sole provider of security was the state and that gender was irrelevant in the production of security. This expanded the security agenda by including concepts such as human security and regional security – together with ideas of culture and identity. Dissatisfied with this, wideners sought to include other types of threat that were not military in nature and that affected people rather than states. The narrowers were concerned with the security of the state and often focused on analysing the military and political stability between the United States and the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War sparked a debate over ideas of security in IR between ‘narrowers’ and ‘wideners’. Securitisation theory challenges traditional approaches to security in IR and asserts that issues are not essentially threatening in themselves rather, it is by referring to them as ‘security’ issues that they become security problems. Calling immigration a ‘threat to national security’, for instance, shifts immigration from a low priority political concern to a high priority issue that requires action, such as securing borders. So, security issues are not simply ‘out there’ but rather must be articulated as problems by securitising actors. According to securitisation theory, political issues are constituted as extreme security issues to be dealt with urgently when they have been labelled as ‘dangerous’, ‘menacing’, ‘threatening’, ‘alarming’ and so on by a ‘securitising actor’ who has the social and institutional power to move the issue ‘beyond politics’. Securitisation theory shows us that national security policy is not a natural given, but carefully designated by politicians and decision-makers. This is an excerpt from International Relations Theory – an E-IR Foundations beginner’s textbook. ![]()
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