The Return of the ‘Positive State’? Securitization of Critical National Infrastructures and Transformations in the Making of European Security

Critical national infrastructures (CNIs) have come to be viewed as vital security issues across European countries. Existing theories suggest that the securitization of CNIs will drive state capacity-building for the governance of CNIs, which had previously been privatized and marketized. Yet, empirically, European states’ responses to the securitization of CNIs vary. When do states rely on state capacity-building and when do they rather expand the rules for private CNI providers? We argue that different types of (concentrated or diffuse) threats and the state’s (statist or liberal) ideational-institutional legacies in a particular CNI sector shape the choice of regulatory or capacities-based instruments. Only if threats are concentrated and ideational-institutional legacies are statist, states will shift to centralized capacities-based governance of CNIs in a particular sector. In all other constellations, securitization will prompt (primarily) expanded regulation of private CNI provision. Four case studies of British and French reforms in the governance of energy and telecommunication infrastructures lend support to our theoretical argument, as does a mapping of 31 European states’ responses to the securitization of telecommunication and energy (sub-)sectors. Our findings contribute to research on the geo-politicization of CNIs and shifting instruments of European security policymaking more generally.