mainstream regional security analysis;

‘new’ security analysis;

critical human security and development;

regional integration/co-operation;

regional development, and

gendered approaches to security and development.

The differences between these approaches relate to theoretical and methodological assumptions, but also, and more profoundly, to the purpose of theoretical analysis itself. There is at present a considerable degree of conscious territoriality with regard to broader security approaches, although an overwhelming consensus exists at the same time that realism and neo-realism remain the central conceptual (some might say ideological) framework within which most mainstream security analysts function. On the ‘broader’ security front, there is, on the one hand, ‘new security’ as represented by Buzan and the Copenhagen School. New security thinking has gained wide popularity, not least among analysts in influential think-tanks close to government. On the other hand, the most coherent alternative front has become known as critical security studies analysis, represented by the Aberystwyth School.2 Critical security studies perspectives have purposefully tried to define an agenda, which prioritises descriptions and prescriptions that focus on the ways in which security can be enhanced at the social level, using the central assumption that states are not necessarily the best or necessary providers of such security.

In drawing the above distinction, it is useful — as part of the critical security endeavour within which this analysis is located — to analyse how the distinctions between these two approaches have led to the appropriation of the critical security studies academic discourse which has led to the repackaging of old government priorities. A further concern is that it is perhaps the way in which some critical security studies approaches have been framed which allows for this appropriation to take place. With regard to the latter, it would seem that some critical security studies approaches turn on a ‘state-society’ nexus, which assumes a strong state, or at least a state which has a policy purvey that is felt by all ‘citizens’. This is not necessarily the case in the Southern African context, as the crisis in the Congo illustrates. The guiding premise used here is encapsulated by Krause and Williams:

"We must grasp the genesis and structure of particular security problems as grounded in concrete historical conditions and practices, rather than in abstract assertions of transcendental rational actors and scientific methods. We must understand the genesis of conflicts and the creation of the dilemmas of security as grounded in reflexive practices rather than the outcome of timeless structures."3

The above highlights both the need for the prioritisation of the historically grounded subject, as well as the constant need for critical reflexivity on what (critical security) academics are saying (as well as who is listening and why). The need for such critical self-reflection is well illustrated by the ways in which broader issues of security (and the emancipatory dynamic of focusing on societies) have been absorbed into the policies of SADC member states at the level of policy statements. The same (old) policy practices continue nevertheless, cloaked in the veil of political ‘correct-speak’.

The emergence of critical thinking on security in International Relations

Many repetitive metatheoretical analyses of the IR discipline and its weaknesses have been undertaken. Its most obvious characteristic is the dominance of one perspective: realism (and its more economically oriented variant, neo-realism). The end of the Cold War initially appeared to signal a theoretical ‘opening’, but it is unclear whether this has really done much to change the nature of the dominant meta-narratives in IR/IPE.

One area where these ‘changes’ seem to be in evidence is security studies. Buzan’s4 attempt to expand notions of security horizontally to include aspects other than simply the political and military security of states triggered a post-Cold War wave of ‘new’ and critical human security thinking which has also attempted to extend this conceptualisation vertically to embrace communitarian aspects.5 This involves conceptualising security across borders and from the ‘bottom up’, especially within the developing world context. To this extent, previously hidden insecurities (of marginalised groups within and between states) have emerged more clearly. As pointed out in the introduction, however, ‘new’ security approaches can be seen as distinct from ‘critical security’ studies even though both profess to have an ‘emancipatory’ dynamic.6

These developments in academic discourse, and the adoption of ‘new security-speak’ by practitioners, have had a limited impact in terms of addressing regional insecurities. This is, to a large extent, the result of the fact that the (regional) security agenda continues to be dominated by traditional (neo-realist) security issues. It is, however, also related to the ways in which emancipatory critical security thinking is structured, as well as the generality of its content, which has tended to allow some of its aspects to be appropriated into policy discourses. This has been made even easier by the ‘new security’ approaches that have retained the state as the legitimate locus of security provision and ascribe to some of the same emancipatory principles as critical security studies, such as a focus on human security. This has, of course, been very convenient for policymakers, as the following discussion clearly shows.

Academic discourses and policy discourses

While the tensions and linkages between academic discourses and policy discourses remain somewhat difficult to pin down, there is at least one clear form of interaction between the two forms of discourse, with academics often wearing two hats: that of the ‘academic’, the other of the ‘policy expert’. The relational aspect of the power of knowledge, to use Strange’s terminology,7 is reflected in the metanarratives (academic theories/ideologies) which hold sway and are used in policy, even if simplistically. In structural power terms, the ability of certain states, international financial institutions, international governmental organisations, non-governmental organisations and business companies to reproduce dominant knowledge to reinforce policy priorities — recreating the common-sense reality as it were — ensures that what is portrayed to societies via the media as ‘the facts’ has been legitimised along the way by a chain of ‘expertise’ from academia and ‘influential’ (most often international) development and security institutions. For the purposes here, a focus on the normative dimension of knowledge is central, since, while certain dominant approaches lay claim to value neutrality, their absorption into policy discourses is always related to the dynamics of power. Explanations and predictions are rarely purely factual, and that which holds sway in international development and security discourses, among others, has more to do with whose (and what) knowledge is said to count (legitimate/legitimised knowledge) than with the superiority of one form of explanation/prediction over another.8

A good example of the distinction between academic discourses and policy discourses is to be found in analysing World Bank approaches to development. Williams states:

"Development discourse continues to display a surprising confidence in the capacities of governments to plan peoples activities and get them to follow official directives ... Why is the World Bank incapable of learning from past experience? Why does it not take seriously academic research which exposes the inaccuracies of its accounts of African societies and their histories? Ferguson … argues that ‘what is being done here is not some kind of staggeringly bad scholarship, but something else entirely’ an example of ‘development discourse’ quite distinct from academic discourse."9

This distinction is to be found in the ways in which development discourse standardises, caricatures and generalises states and their behaviour. Not only that, but "development discourse is similarly unable to accommodate indigenous or peasant knowledge, except as ‘traditional practices’ appropriate only to the past."10

How does this policy discourse perpetuate itself? Crush states:

"Development discourse is constituted and reproduced within a set of material relationships, activities and powers — social, cultural and geo-political. To comprehend the real power of development we cannot ignore either the immediate institutional or the broader historical and geographical context within which its texts are produced. The immediate context is provided by ‘the development machine’. This machine is global in its reach, encompassing departments and bureaucracies in the colonial and post-colonial states throughout the world. Western aid agencies, multilateral organisations, the sprawling global network of NGOs, experts and private consultants, private sector organisations such as banks and companies that marshal the rhetoric of development, and the plethora of development studies programmes in institutes of learning world wide."11

While these examples of the distinction between academic (especially critical academic) and policy discourse relate to development, it is quite clear that a similar dynamic is at work in security discourses. As alluded to earlier, one need only think of what SADC will be remembered for in the 1990s: the sophisticated policy wording of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security and the blatant power politics which followed its creation. It included the clever absorption of the critical ‘broader security’ analytical debate (especially the new security approach, as opposed to the critical security approach) via academic ‘experts’, which led to SADC’s extension of its economic integration to embrace collective security. This step was marketed as a ‘broadening of security’ (and was formulated and endorsed by new security policy experts) thus opening the way for the debacle of SADC (read Mugabe and cohorts sans South Africa) intervening militarily in the Congo; and SADC (read South Africa sans the rest of SADC) intervening in Lesotho.

Of course, the question at a metatheoretical level is whether policy discourses can be changed at all. And if so, how? The views of critical development theorists seem to suggest that the question exacerbates tensions in analyses on discourses, in that it reverts to the logocentric ‘either this or that way’ formula, which is precisely how notions of reinvention are built into the perpetuation of the discourse itself.12 This analysis adopts Crush’s view on the potential trap of reverting to reinscribing dualisms by taking on board Foucault’s understanding of the "tactical polyvalence of discourses" which argues that, instead of thinking of dominant and excluded discourses, the focus should rather be on the linkage between knowledge and power, or that "complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy."13 It would seem that such an approach shares resonances with Gramsci’s understandings of the "war of manoeuvre" and the "war of position", although these were, of course, references to intrastate power relations.14

Crush draws the attention to the way in which development requires a socio-spatial dimension and it is clear that security functions in much the same way. Geography acts as ‘both stage and actor’ defining the boundaries of nation-states, as well as posing states as core actors. Viewed this way, the discourse on development and security in South and Southern Africa shows the reinvention of a new language of crisis, of which a key aspect is the geographical dynamic of globalisation. As Watts points out, one of the key ways in which the development discourse perpetuates itself is through notions of crisis at both the level of theory and policy practice (in the latter case, both state and non-state).15 The new language of development is characterised by references to the ‘inexorable force of globalisation’ and the simultaneous need for ‘sustainable development’, the ‘empowerment of marginalised groups’, ‘enhanced productivity’ and the need for ‘regional development integration’.

Thus, while leaders of states in Southern Africa have ostensibly tried to be responsive to ‘new’ thinking — which has permeated mostly from centres of knowledge production outside the region, to regional academic and policy development institutions — the ‘reality’ of security as military security is pervasive in policy action (and in the size of defence budgets). Socio-economic security continues to be reflected in an essentially separate policy discourse which uses the language and policy prescriptions of the ‘development machine’ spoken of earlier, which is, in turn, subservient to the central metanarrative of neo-liberal economics of international finance, trade and production structures. Because of the ways in which policy discourses tend to appropriate ‘correct-speak’ without altering power balances, most leaders and their executive support base (where such a legitimated luxury exists) continue to view their decision-making options with exactly the same national-based, self-preserving logic as before. Arundhati Roy, in an article on India’s dams, uses the right language to package strategies that guarantee the status quo.16 Because of the packaging, most do not ask too many questions. People hear what they want to hear, because that is all they want to hear. Or, as Arundhati Roy puts it in the same article with reference to India:

"[The Indian government] is superbly accomplished in the art of protecting the cadres of its paid up elite. But its finest feat of all is the way it achieves all this and still emerges smelling sweet. The way it manages to keep its secrets, to contain information that vitally concerns the daily lives of one billion people, in government files, accessible only to the keepers of the flame — ministers, bureaucrats, state engineers, defence strategists. Of course we make it easy for them, we, its beneficiaries. We don’t really want to know the grisly detail."17

The example is equally appropriate in the Southern African context. It must be added, however, that we also hear what we hear because that is all the bearers of dominant knowledge want us to hear, as Roy’s example also makes clear. The rest is collective laziness, disinterest, lack of information and education — depending on where communities and the individuals that comprise them find themselves in time, space and history.

Notes

This paper is based on excerpts of two papers: L Thompson & A Leysens, Redefining human security in the region?, Transformation 41, 2000; L Thompson, Why the words don’t work: Re-evaluating emancipatory approaches to security and development in the Southern African region, paper presented at the 41st Convention of the International Studies Association, 15-18 March 2000, Los Angeles.

See for instance: K Booth, A security regime in Southern Africa: Theoretical considerations, Southern African Perspectives 30, Centre for Southern African Studies, 1994; K Booth & P Vale, Security in Southern Africa: After apartheid, beyond realism, International Affairs 71(2), April 1995; K Booth & P Vale, Critical security studies and regional insecurity: The case of Southern Africa, in K Krause & M Williams (eds), Critical security studies, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997; R Davies, Emerging South African perspectives on regional cooperation and integration after apartheid, Transformation 20, 1992; R Davies, Approaches to regional integration in the Southern African context, Africa Insight 24(1), 1994; R Davies, Promoting regional integration in Southern Africa: An analysis of prospects and problems from a South African perspective, in L Swatuk & D Black (eds), Bridging the rift: The new South Africa in Africa, Westview, Colorado, 1997; AJLeysens, Southern Africa: The case for a Coxian approach, paper read at the Third Pan-European International Relations Conference and Joint Meeting of the International Studies Association, Vienna, 16-19 September 1998; G Maasdorp, The future structure of regional trade integration and development cooperation in Southern Africa, Africa Insight 24(1), 1994; M Malan, SADC and sub-regional security: Unde venis et quo vadis? ISS Monograph 19, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, 1998; M Malan & J Cilliers, SADC Organ on Defence and Security: Future development, ISS Paper 19, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, 1997; I Mandaza & A Tostensen, (ed by E M Maphanyane), Southern Africa: In search of a common future, SADC, Gaborone, 1994; WMartin, Region formation under crisis conditions: South vs Southern Africa in the interwar period, Journal of Southern African Studies 16(1), March 1990; G Mills, The history of regional integrative attempts: The way forward?, in G Mills et al (eds), South Africa in the global economy, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 1995; M Schoeman, An exploration of the link between security and development, in H Solomon & M Schoeman (eds), Security, development and gender in Africa, ISS Monograph 27, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, 1998; Solomon and Schoeman, ibid; L Swatuk, The environment, sustainable development, and prospects for Southern African regional Cupertino, in Swatuk & Black, op cit; L Thompson, Is the dream dreaming us?: Developing development discourse in Southern Africa, Africanus 27(2), 1997; B Tsie, States and markets in the Southern African Development Community (SADC): Beyond the neo-liberal paradigm, Journal of Southern African Studies 22(1), March 1996; P Vale & J Daniel, Regional security in Southern Africa in the 1990s: Challenging the terms of the neo-realist debate, Transformation 28, 1995; P Vale, Regional security in Southern Africa, Alternatives 21(3), 1996; P Vale, Backwaters and by-passes: South Africa and ‘its’ region, in Swatuk & Black, op cit; M van Aardt, In search of a more adequate conceptualisation of security for Southern Africa: Do we need a feminist touch?, Politikon 20(1), June 1993; M van Aardt, The emerging security framework in Southern Africa: Regime or community?, Strategic Review for Southern Africa 19(1), May 1997. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does reflect some of the various approaches which have been used in Southern African regional analysis.



It does not seem useful to ‘divide’ the security and development debate further and so deliberately does not draw further territorial boundaries between critical security studies approaches of, for example, the York Centre for International and Strategic Studies (YCISS) in Toronto (to which Krause and Williams pay homage for the development of their ideas in their edited book on critical security studies). The distinction made here between critical and ‘new’ security thinking thus hinges on two key analytical divisions: the extent to which the state remains privileged as ultimately the legitimate provider of security (new security); and the extent to which the subjects of security are contextually and historically privileged as the locus for the emancipatory project (critical security studies).



Krause & Williams, op cit, p 50.



B Buzan, People, states and fear: The national security problem in international relations, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Brighton, 1983; B Buzan, People, states and fear: An agenda for international security studies in the post-Cold War era, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1992.



See, for instance, Krause & Williams, op cit.



This is most clearly demonstrated in the work of Ken Booth. In an excellent overview of critical international relations theory, Devetak points out that in Booth’s understanding of emancipation the emphasis "is on dislodging those impediments or impositions which unnecessarily curtail individual or collective freedom." See R Devetak, Critical theory, in S Burchill & A Linklater (eds), Theories of international relations, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1996, p 166.



Strange’s now classic distinction between structural and relational power in the international context is widely in use; the notion of structural power serves to represent international power derived from material and other resources in the areas of finance, knowledge, security and production. Relational power refers to the power of a socio-economic group or institution to exercise influence over another. See S Strange, States and markets: An Introduction to international political economy, Pinter, London, 1987; S Strange, An eclectic approach, in C Murphy & R Tooze (eds), The new international political economy, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1991.



This can be the case even where there is no explicit metanarrative — for example, in newspaper articles, where say, neo-liberal economic assumptions are the prism through which international and national economic events are interpreted.



Williams in Krause & Williams, op cit, p 172.



Ibid, p 173.



J Crush (ed), The power of development, Routledge, London, 1995, p 6.



M Watts, in ibid; M Cowen & R W Shenton, in ibid; Crush, ibid.



M Foucault, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, Pantheon, New York, 1977 (cited in Crush, ibid, p 20).



A Gramsci, Selections from prison notebooks, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1978.



Watts, op cit.



A Roy, The greater common good, India Book Publishers, Bombay, 1999.



Ibid.

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