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- Bengtsson, Louise, 1986-
(author)
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Health security in the European Union : Agents, practices and materialities of securitization
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Over the past two decades, the notion of ‘health security’ has emerged as a central tenet of European Union (EU) public health policy. This PhD thesis examines the rise and implications of health security cooperation, associated with an imperative to fight ‘bioterrorist attacks’, pandemics and other natural or man-made events. The study is composed of an introductory chapter as well as five related but self-contained papers, based on participant observation and 52 in-depth interviews at the European Commission as well as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). More specifically, the thesis as a whole explores how security perspectives mattered in different ways for the rise and implications of health security cooperation in the EU. Unlike previous studies which have tended to focus on normative aspects and overarching global dynamics, the thesis examines drivers, contradictions and tensions in a particular, highly institutionalized context. In order to answer a set of empirically motivated questions, the papers draw on various understandings of securitization in critical security studies. The over-all findings cast light on the emergence of a new way of understanding health problems as rapidly emerging, and often external, ‘cross-border threats to health’. The latter may include major infectious disease outbreaks, but also deliberate or accidental release of chemical or biological substances, natural disasters or any other unknown event assumed to threaten not only public health but society as a whole. In the search for potential crises, these are to be rapidly detected and contained rather than prevented in line with traditional public health policy. Partly arising from political speech acts after September 11 as well as bureaucratic practices carving out a role for the EU in public health, these new priorities have also been shaped by EU-specific digital surveillance tools, information sharing platforms and methodologies for managing risk. The findings also point to forms of reflexivity and instances of contestation within the EU institutions themselves, especially in relation to migrant health. As a whole, the thesis thus contributes empirically to a better understanding of how both health and security have come to be pursued within the EU institutions. Theoretically it highlights how approaches to securitization, drawn from partially different scholarly traditions, can be employed as empirically sensitive analytical tools and thereby add to a better understanding of the full prism of securitization processes.
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| 2. |
- Jakobsson, Elin, 1983-
(author)
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Norm Acceptance in the International Community : A study of disaster risk reduction and climate-induced migration
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Different kinds of normative claims and statements of “oughtness” infuse the international political environment. But why do some proposed norms become accepted by the international community while others do not? This thesis investigates this central question using two normatively charged international issues as vehicles for explanation.One issue reflects the norm to reduce disaster risk. The other issue concerns the normative question of asylum rights for climate-induced migrants. While climate-induced migration attracted much attention in the years 2007-2008, the norm acceptance process was stymied and stalled before it had a chance to gain broad acceptance in the international community. Disaster Risk Reduction reached a different outcome. After norm entrepreneurs had a difficult time in gaining traction for the issue, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami had an immense impact on the norm’s development, which led to the international community agreeing to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015. The norm proposition to reduce disaster risk has thus reached a broad and high level of acceptance. This thesis uses a norm theoretical lens to understand these contrasting outcomes. In doing so, it shows that there are key components missing from conventional explanations of norm success and failure. Most importantly, the lack of attention to contingencies and to windows of opportunity that contingencies may open up.An analytical framework is developed to account for contingent factors in norm evolution, and the relevance of these components is evaluated by using the two cases in question as plausibility probes. The framework takes the key variables from traditional approaches (agency, the norm itself and framing), adds two more recent suggestions (venue and resistance) and, most importantly, adds the component of contingencies (including windows of opportunity). The detailed empirical investigations draw on a rich, and in some parts unique, material of official texts, practitioner interviews and secondary literature. This thesis thus contributes to existing research on norms and provides future researchers with an enhanced tool for explaining norm emergence.The case study on disaster risk reduction provided an example of how a natural catastrophe which coincided with an already planned and prepared international summit on the subject interacted to propel disaster risk reduction to the top of the political agenda and toward norm acceptance. The case concerning international protection for climate-induced migrants showed how three particular moments in time had promising potential to advance the norm toward greater acceptance but largely failed because there were no solutions to act on, because no viable window opened to drive further attention and acceptance or because there was a “negative window”. The analysis conducted according to the framework shows how events must be actively connected to a specific norm proposition and how they must be aligned with other factors that determine the success of a norm, defined in this study as norm acceptance.Against this background, this study argues that contingencies, and a theorization of windows of opportunity, should always be included in explanatory tools on norm acceptance. Important explanatory aspects might otherwise be missed.
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| 3. |
- Ekengren, Magnus, Professor, 1962-, et al.
(author)
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The study of crisis management
- 2017
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In: Routledge Handbook of Security Studies (Second Edition). - London and New York : Routledge. - 9781138803930 - 9781315753393 ; , s. 447-456
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)
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