Journal of Regional Security

Forming Connections between Security Sector Reform and Sustainable Development: The Potential of the Human Security Paradigm

Oya Dursun-Özkanca — 2024-06-13

Many interlinkages already exist between security and development, despite the fact they traditionally maintained separate bodies of literature and compartmentalized presence in policymaking. This article seeks to provide guidance on how to bridge the gap between the two. It focuses on the nexus between Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG-16 devoted to effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. It argues that the human security paradigm provides the most rewarding approach for bridging the gap between these two, as it centres the focus on the human element of these two endeavours. It first provides an overview of the security-development nexus, followed by a discussion of the commonalities and differences between SSR and SDG-16 specifically, outlining how human security provides a better connection between the two. It concludes that the bottom-up and multistakeholder approaches of the human security paradigm and its context-specific perspective ensure that the SSR missions and attainment of the SDG-16 targets will be more effective and efficient.

Scarcity and instability: Transforming societies through equitable distribution mechanisms

Jaynisha Patel — 2024-06-13

Under the framework of SDG 16, one key underexplored area of inclusion relates to the means of ensuring access to justice through the equitable governance of scarce resources, and mechanisms to promote equal and structural access to opportunities across society. This research sets out to answer the following questions across three case studies: (1) What is the relationship between critical or scarce resources and political conflict in the region under study?; (2) On what basis is the scarce or critical resource currently distributed within the region under study?; (3) What formal or informal governance mechanisms are in place to manage access to critical or scarce resources, and resolve conflicts created by it?; and (4) What improvements could be made to ensure more inclusive and equitable access to the distribution of this resource? The three proposed case studies, namely, Central Mali (land), Northeastern Kenya (water), and northern Mozambique (extraction and revenues of natural gas), have unique political and geographic features that are indivisible from peace and security. In each case, a blend of formal and informal mechanisms is used, but these often involve competing mandates, are guided by socio-economic dynamics or are unenforced, potentially leading to different types of localised conflict.

The Significance of Innovation in the Defence Industry from the End of the Cold War to the War in Ukraine

Alexandra Meszaros — 2024-06-13

As a result of the transformation of the defence industry in the last three decades, it has become a pioneer in innovative technologies. This paper presents the revolution in the defence industry, focusing on the factors that have enabled this field to become one of the most innovative sectors. Data were collected through semi-structured, open-ended, in-depth interviews with twenty-five experts from ten European countries and analysed with qualitative content analysis. The results indicate the importance of defence alliances and collaborations, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups, the significance of defence innovation in national strategy, and how the new circumstances may change the direction of innovation. However, despite the technological revolution in the defence industry and the aspiration to develop unmanned systems and technologies, humans will always remain a critical factor in strategic and tactical decision-making.

THE BALKAN PEACE INDEX 2023: MONITORING THE REGIONAL PEACE

Goran Tepsic — 2024-06-13

This commentary has no abstract

Images of (in)security: visualizing borders, migrants and control in Serbia’s news media

Aleksandra Krstic — 2023-10-12

Media images of borders and control have been one of the most dominant frames in reporting on migrant crisis in European media and negative coverage of migrants as threat to security and public health dominates media narratives around the world. This paper examines how the concept of border has been used as a powerful visual narrative in the media representation of the relationship between security and human rights in the context of migration throughout Serbia, a transit country alongside the Western Balkans migration corridor. The mixed method analysis is based on 300 images published in relevant national and regional print media and their online versions from 2015 until 2020. The results show that the visual depiction of walls, wires, control, law and order, modern technological equipment, security providers and important political authorities have been often intensified with sensational headlines and tabloid, fake news coverage and with images framing migrants as violent and deviant and as a threat to borders, people and security.

On “Westsplaining,” realism, and technologies of the Self.

Aliaksei Kazharski — 2024-06-14

The article offers a Foucauldian reading of the Western realist commentary on the Russo-Ukrainian war which often faces the charges of “Westsplaining.” It situates this commentary in the broader context of knowledge production and the power-knowledge nexūs it reproduces and conceptualizes realism as a discourse in the Foucauldian sense. As the article argues, this conceptualization allows one to capture its specific technologies of power which, in this case, can be understood as a form of technology of the Self, or, in other words, the disciplining of the collective subjects of world politics (nation-states) through the specifically realist constructs of rationality and prudence that all states are expected to adhere to in the making of their foreign policy. Additionally, the article suggests that this conceptualization of realism as a discourse can be analytically helpful in making sense of the way in which very different genres such as academic research and the op-ed policy commentary, frequently provided by realist IR scholars, are connected through the political economy of knowledge production, thus forming a relationship of discursive symbiosis and mutual legitimation.

Review: Dukalskis, Alexander. 2021. Making the World Safe for Dictatorship, Oxford University Press, 249 pp. $17 (Paperback)

Joseph Speicher — 2024-06-13