Globalisation and the New Governance of National Security?

This section focuses on globalisation’s impact on states' security. Its point of departure is the widespread perception that nation states are gradually losing their capacity to act even in the constitutive domain of national security. Within this context, we conceptualize four dynamics as constituting a challenge to states’ ability to achieve their governance objectives: the growth of (economically-driven) networks that fuel intra-state conflicts; the “marketisation” of security by private military companies; the emergence of technologies (cyber war and drones) blurring distinctions between war and peace; and the de-nationalization of arms industries. The guiding question of the section’s panels is how sovereign governments are responding to these challenges and to what extent these dynamics are transforming traditional national security practices. Providing tentative answers to these questions will contribute to both our understanding of some of the contemporary world’s most momentous developments and the broader theoretical issue of how governance is evolving beyond the nation state. Although individually distinct, the four dynamics of security globalization are closely inter-related. To begin with, global clandestine markets for acquiring small arms and selling natural resources have fuelled a rise in intra-state conflicts and maritime piracy. However, to address the insecurity generated by such conflicts, states and corporations are increasingly turning to private military companies (PMC). Although frequently contracted by states, these PMCs constitute a new form of violent actor because they draw on an international market of ex-military personnel and pursue the corporate objective of maximizing profits. Increasingly, conflicts are also being waged with emerging technologies whose nature blurs traditional Westphalian distinctions between war and peace. Despite their differences, contemporary drone assassinations and cyber war efforts are each in their own way undermining the concept of “war” as a distinct condition. Finally, even the most traditional weapons employed by armed forces are subtly transformed by globalization. Digitized supply chains and international mergers threaten to emancipate arms producing corporations from the regulatory control of states. Because of their individual significance and inter-related nature, the above mentioned dynamics will be scrutinized in distinct, consecutive panels.   Biographies: Moritz Weiss is a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer at the LMU University of Munich (Germany). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Jacobs University Bremen; and he was post-doctoral fellow at the University of St. Gallen. His current research focuses on the political economy of defense-industrial policies and judicial politics within the European Union. He is the author of Transaction Costs and Security Institutions: Unravelling the ESDP (Palgrave 2011). His articles were published in: Review of International Political Economy, Journal of European Public Policy, Security Studies, Cooperation & Conflict and the Journal of International Relations and Development. Marc R. DeVore is a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews (United Kingdom). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of St. Gallen and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. His current research deals with the political economy of the arms trade, civil-military relations and violent non-state actors. His past and upcoming articles have been featured in: Review of International Political Economy, Security Studies, European Security, Cold War History, The Swiss Political Science Review, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Defense and Peace Economics, Comparative Strategy and Defense and Security Analysis.