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Beyond The Evolution of International Security Studies?

Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen
Security Dialogue 2010 41: 659
DOI: 10.1177/0967010610388214

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Special Section on THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES

Beyond The Evolution of International

Security Studies?
BARRY BUZAN & LENE HANSEN*

Department of International Relations, London School of Economics

and Political Science, UK & Department of Political Science,
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
This article provides a reply to the other contributions to this special
section of Security Dialogue on The Evolution of International Security
Studies. Our response cuts across the special section as a whole, focusing on the following questions: What does it mean to take a critical
stance towards the history of international security studies? Does
micro-sociology provide the way forward? How do the main analytical distinctions laid out in The Evolution of International Security Studies
work? And, what are the challenges and suggestions for a more
thorough study of traditionalism?
Keywords international security studies

N WRITING THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

STUDIES, our ambition was to heed the call made by Nye & Lynn-Jones
(1988) for an intellectual history of international security studies, and the
contributions in this special issue of Security Dialogue give us confidence that
we have at least provided a good foundation for further discussion. Our goal
was never to write the only book that could be written, so we welcome what
we see as a series of suggestions for how subsequent volumes might further explore the trajectory of international security studies. Our response cuts
across the special section as a whole in terms of the following questions: What
does it mean to take a critical stance towards the history of international security studies? Would micro-sociology provide the way forward? How do the
main analytical distinctions that is, the four questions and the five driving
forces laid out in The Evolution of International Security Studies work? And,
what are the challenges for a more thorough study of traditionalism?

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Security Dialogue vol. 41, no. 6, December 2010

Taking a Critical-Normative Stance

What are the implications of the contributors views on our meta-positioning
of The Evolution of International Security Studies (Buzan & Hansen, 2009) on
the terrain of international security studies? First, we have Shah (2010: 636),
who, on the basis of a critical Foucauldian reading of the field of international
security studies, faults us for making the absurd suggestion that contending
approaches are having the same conversation, while Miller (2010: 644), who
provides us with a view from the traditionalist perspective, holds that we
offer an unduly conflictual conception of the field that misrepresents the
desire among traditionalists not to hinder other scholars working on their
own agendas. A tempting response is that if we are providing a reading that
is neither too homogenous nor too contested, we might have got it right. Yet,
that is too easy a reply. Underpinning Millers claim that traditionalists see
no opponents is a reiteration of the standard traditionalist claim epitomized
by Walt (1991) that wideners and deepeners are fine, they just are not part
of international security studies. In that sense, Millers claim that there is no
conflict is itself a boundary-producing practice of the sort that might support Shahs charge that we downplay contestations and hegemony on the
terrain of international security studies. Although Miller and Shah disagree
on whether international security studies is conflictual or not, they share the
view that international security studies is a field where there is little genuine
engagement across the traditionalist/widening-deepening divide.
One problem is that we have no yardstick for what is a truly critical or
critical enough account. The normative tightrope we sought to walk was one
where we strove to provide a fairness (dare we say objectivity?) in terms of
how we presented the various perspectives that make up international security studies. While not all perspectives or authors might be equally impressed
with our success in providing such accounts, it makes a crucial difference for
how the books meta-positioning is read whether what is laid out is the view
from any given perspective or our view. This distinction appears blurred in
Millers contribution, where he takes the account of widening-deepenings
criticism of traditionalism at the end of the Cold War to be ours (see Buzan &
Hansen, 2009: 187). We also disagree with Shah, who holds that we privilege
great-power politics, technology and socially constituted events over institutionalization and academic debates. Moreover, we are unconvinced by Shahs
argument that to theorize the significance of great-power politics, technology
and events by itself equals a realist logic of anarchy. These driving forces
play crucial roles in virtually all international security studies perspectives,
although the ontological assumptions that are made about them differ.
That said, our decision on how to define international security studies
and its boundaries cannot be situated outside of normative debates over

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661

what international security studies is. In that sense, we do side with nontraditionalists who have fought to be recognized as doing work not only on
their own agenda but on security proper. As Bilgin (2010) points out in
her contribution on the Western-centrism of international security studies,
this means that The Evolution of International Security Studies devotes more
space to non-traditionalist approaches than these take up on the terrain of
international security studies, whether measured in terms of how much is
published or how much attention and citation is generated. The question of
how much and who are included is one side of the normative coin; the other
is whether a conflictual or a dialogical history is brought out. In terms of the
latter question, we should perhaps clarify that, as indicated towards the end
of The Evolution of International Security Studies (Buzan & Hansen, 2009: 262),
we do think we rely on a Foucauldian genealogical approach. This approach
is usually defined as a history of the present that traces the exclusions, marginalizations and silences that have gone into producing current understandings. Our use of genealogy led us to privilege debates/wars over the
conceptualization of security over empirical works, and to base our decision
on what was included (and what fell out along the way) on the constitution
of international security studies in the present. Moreover, precisely because,
as Bilgin argues, the Western state has been the dominant understanding of
entities or political community within international security studies, a main
priority of a genealogy must, in our view, be to engage the analytical and
normative status of the state.
Yet, we do also want to stick by our meta-normative decision to provide
a framework and a story that emphasize the possibility of dialogue across
camps rather than, in Shahs (2010: 637) words, radical incommensurability. Like Sylvester (2010), who addresses the camp-dynamics of international
security studies, we find plenty that divides international security studies,
and hence the need to find where conversations can be engaged is more pressing than pointing out that they break down. That said, we would welcome a
genealogical analysis that traces Shahs incommensurabilities and silences to
see where it might differ from ours.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of a

Micro-Sociological Approach
Our commitment to work in the service of dialogue within international security studies does not mean, however, that we are oblivious to the workings
of power and material means. Clearly, funding, access to publication, hiring
patterns, etc. make a huge difference to what gets accepted and what is marginalized, which is why we introduced institutionalization as one of the five

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driving forces, because that is where academic power comes through most
explicitly. We agree that more could be done to theorize the impact of institutionalization on international security studies, and certainly that much more
could be done to trace it empirically. Such an expansion of the historicalsociological research agenda might also speak to Bilgins and Shahs calls for
a more critical approach to international security studies, in that it is possible
that a stronger emphasis on the sociology and power of institutionalization
would provide a different picture of international security studies than the
largely text-based one that we offer. Although we include texts on the institutionalization of international security studies, including some that trace the
role of smaller research environments and individuals, we have not had the
resources to conduct much primary research ourselves. That project would
be a good subject for another book (or doctoral thesis).
The call for boosting the study of institutionalization appears to be based on
the assumption that this factor holds sufficient explanatory or heuristic power
that it should be further subdivided. One possibility would be to continue
along the macro-sociological line that we adopt and provide more thorough
studies of funding, journals and journals networks and citation practices as
in the contribution by Russett & Arnold (2010) and international security
studies curricula. One particular suggestion would be to document hiring
practices within international security studies, looking to the way in which
particular perspectives and university departments succeed in providing
their graduates with jobs.
Another would be to look to the micro-sociology of international security
studies, as advocated by Wver (2010), or the personal experiences of security theorists, as suggested by Biersteker (2010). This raises a really interesting methodological choice. Our decision was to base analysis mainly on the
output of international security studies, its texts. Choosing to work through
the input side, the personal histories and networks of the main participants,
would almost certainly bring not just the motivations but also the conflicts
and boundary settings into clearer perspective. It would also, as indicated by
Wvers (2010: 651) Buzan & Hansen, 2020 remark, be an immense research
task, and we doubt that such an approach could ever produce a synoptic
overview of international security studies. A start, at least on the traditionalist side, has been made in Baylis & Garnetts (1991) Makers of Nuclear Strategy,
which looks at nine of the early thinkers about nuclear weapons. It would be
extremely interesting to see whether such studies would challenge the conclusions we reach or come to the same conclusions but provide a much richer
account of how we got there. We are not going to embark on such a project,
but for those who might we would like to offer two comments.
First, we disagree with Wver that a micro-sociology that starts with scholars in their immediate social context and then adds institutional conditions
and larger economic and political processes as the second and third layers

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provides a more political understanding of the field (Wver, 2010: 649). As

Sylvesters (2010) account of the history and make-up of feminist security
studies lays out, focusing on individuals risks downplaying the discursive
structures and political positions that give certain individuals a particular
standing within an academic or policy field. Our understanding of the individuals relationship to political and societal structures has implications for
what it is that we think we uncover by doing micro-sociology. Studying
biographies, as mentioned briefly by Wver, is one possibility, and autobiographies would seem even more obvious. Yet, as literary scholars working on
these genres point out, such material is not simply a window into what really
happened, but a narration and constitution of the self that follows specific
linguistic, political and sociological conventions (Hansen, 2006: 6872). In a
similar manner, to turn to experience as suggested by Biersteker does
not provide us with an unmediated access to how individuals really feel,
because personal experiences are always constituted through the collective
representations that are available. This does not mean that micro-sociological
studies are unimportant or that autobiographical material, for instance, is
irrelevant to an understanding of international security studies, but rather
that these are not data that are separable from the structures that constitute
international security studies.

Expanding the Scope

The call for a micro-sociology of international security studies can be seen as a
deepening of the driving force of institutionalization, and other contributions
suggest expansions that also work with the analytical framework presented
in The Evolution of International Security Studies. In terms of the driving forces,
our five forces were not entirely ad hoc (Wver, Biersteker), but were derived
through a reading of the literature on the sociology of international relations
combined with a first round of analysis that led us to replace internal politics with institutionalization. Given that no other historical sociology of
international security studies exists, the five driving forces appear to us as
a reasonable and theoretically derived framework. As for their relationship,
we assumed that rarely, if ever, would just one factor alone be able to explain
major developments in international security studies. We do not agree with
Bierstekers (2010: 600) suggestion that we privilege great-power politics:
events provide the framing for Chapters 4 to 8, technology is significant
particularly during the Cold War, internal academic debates are crucial for
understanding the upsurge in non-traditional approaches in the 1980s and
1990s, and institutionalization is important throughout. Nor do we come to
the conclusion that internal academic debates and institutionalization have

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no further impact, as Shah (2010: 635) suggests. We note that, at present, we

expect less change to be generated by academic debates and that the present
international security studies perspectives are sufficiently institutionalized
to be unlikely to disappear. But, we do not close the door to the intrusion of
new ways of thinking, and, in any case, to point to the stabilizing influence of
a factor is not the same as saying that it is unimportant.
Turning to the four questions, Williams (2010: 624) contribution makes
the call for adding a fifth to the four that we hold structure international
security studies: that of the relationship between the public and the private.
This sounds like an intriguing idea to us, and we simply hope that Williams
or someone else will develop it further. In terms of the broader historicalsociological research agenda on international security studies, one question
is whether the inclusion of the public/private as a fifth question will change
our story or just retell it with a richer, deeper content.
We also appreciate Bilgins discussion of international security studies
Western-centrism. This was one of the trickiest issues for us to address given
that our focus was on the evolution of international security studies, which is
a largely Western field of scholarship. We note in particular Bilgins account
of the difficulties that arise from the shortage of international security studies
material that could give a Third World counter to the imposition of a Western
conception of the state onto the non-Western world. To study absences is
always far more challenging than to study established texts, but is clearly
crucial to understanding what it is that international security studies has
left out, and how bringing it on board might change international security
studies itself. Studying the textual archive of international security studies
was already a very large undertaking, but we look forward to seeing the full
implications of the genuine post-colonial inclusion that Bilgin herself is an
important figure in producing. Speaking within the framework of international security studies, one question is whether uncovering the post-colonials
constitutive effect on international security studies would change the four
questions or driving forces framework. This also resonates with Wvers
(2010: 652) claim that the four questions provide too static a view of the field.
We would like to hear more on which questions are not in play and when
and which alternative questions the public/private perhaps? should be
introduced to provide a less static and more accurate picture.
Another category of suggestions for expanding the scope is to look further
to the interaction between international security studies and the world of
policymaking. Biersteker calls for considering policy doctrines as an interface between theory and practice; Wver points to political agendas and the
nature of political process; and Sylvester raises critical questions based on
the political, media and academic responses to Hirsi Ali. Again, we support
those who wish to look not just (as we do) at the factors that can explain/
illuminate the trajectory of international security studies, but also at how

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international security studies has influenced the policy world, an impact that
could be traced through studying texts (do concepts and logics from international security studies later appear in policy doctrines, speeches, etc.?) or
networks and institutions (who went to work in the world of policymaking,
or who went from policy to academe and how did that affect their writings?).
This aspect might well come out more clearly using a micro-sociological
approach. The more challenging question for The Evolution of International
Security Studies is whether there is a more distinct driving influence from the
policy world that we have downplayed or even overlooked. In the driving
forces framework, policy and politicians come in primarily through institutionalization (via think-tanks with an ideological stance, state funding for
universities and particular institutions) and great-power politics. But, one
might also see many events as driven by policy decisions. Again, we would
welcome studies that examine whether the policy world should be granted a
higher explanatory status.

Telling Stories from Within International Security Studies

Our ambition was to provide an account of international security studies that
provided a birds eye, river delta picture, and we appreciate the possibility
of different stories being told by specific perspectives within international
security studies. Sylvester examines how feminist security studies has shied
away from studying war and its complicated politics. Pursuing this further
would provide valuable insights into not only the more specific trajectory of
feminist security studies, but also the study of internal dissent and how it
might stall or flourish.
The strongest challenge to our account comes from Miller, who holds that
strategic studies traditionalism would not recognize itself in the story we
tell. Millers contribution is a passionate, compelling case for why a companion volume is needed, and if we should pick only one among the multiple
response volumes to be written this would be our choice. Such a volume
would pick up quite a bit of what Biersteker wants in terms of looking at
doctrine, and what he and Wver ask for in terms of a more individualized micro-sociological and network account. In anticipation of that study,
we make four points. First, it seems to us that the agenda and the traditionalist perspective that Miller identifies is (still) one that hinges on strategy and
strategic studies rather than the broader conceptual and academic field of
security. Such a definition is, of course, legitimate, but it does situate wideners-deepeners outside of the field proper. It not only breaks up the great
conversation of international security studies as we have understood it, but
also brings into question our assumption that the traditionalists were also

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wedded to security as the core concept. We do not see how the traditionalists can both keep security, claim it to be a distinct subject area, and represent the only perspective inhabiting this territory. There is definitely more
to say about how strategic studies saw its relationship to the (Western) state
in general, to the USA as the hegemonic power in particular, and to both
the normative opposition from peace researchers and the non-traditionalists
who sought to speak to a broader agenda of international security. We hope
that the companion study addresses these questions, and tells us not only
about the internal composition of traditionalism, but of how the wideningdeepening debates are understood.
Second, by carving up the field such that traditionalists get the use of force
and non-traditionalists get all the ostensibly softer issues, Miller (2010: 644)
stacks the cards such that non-traditionalists are said to find the study of the
use of force objectionable or problematic. Yet, we know of no international
security studies perspective that does not engage with the use of force. As
we hope The Evolution of International Security Studies has borne out, what is
at stake in international security studies debates is not that the use of force
requires analysis (and, for some, political engagement), but how it is studied
and what the implications are of adopting particular definitions of what constitutes force.
Third, Miller makes the important observation that traditionalists feel that
work in strategic studies is not respected within at least parts of the academic
world. We hope that a companion volume will make much more of the relationship between traditionalism and other parts of international relations/
political science. In particular, we would value a traditionalist insider view
of our decision to change the composition of traditionalism quite dramatically following the end of the Cold War, where we include those parts of
peace research and conflict resolution that side with the military/negative
peace agenda. Considering the epistemological battles between quantitative,
formal model and rational choice scholars from conflict resolution, on the one
hand, and the softer, case-study approach of strategic studies on the other, is
there now a silence, a truce or rearmament?
Fourth, we are also curious to find out what the reading of international
security studies from within traditionalism will imply for the four questions
and five driving forces framework: Will these factors be used differently than
when telling the story of the field as a whole? Are there other questions or
driving forces that come into view as needing to be part of the analytical
framework? Does the particular link to policy and doctrine distinguish the
traditionalists from others who work on security?
Let us conclude by thanking the contributors to this special issue for the care
and enthusiasm with which they have engaged with our book. We hope that
others will feel inspired to write one or several of the companion volumes
suggested.

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* Barry Buzan is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London

School of Economics and Political Science, honorary professor at Copenhagen and Jilin
Universities, and a fellow of the British Academy. His books include People, States and
Fear (revised 2nd end, ECPR Press, 2007); An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military
Technology and International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987); (with Ole Wver and
Jaap de Wilde) Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Lynne Rienner, 1998); (with Ole
Wver) Regions and Powers (Cambridge University Press, 2003); and (with Lene Hansen)
The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Lene
Hansen is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at
the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis
and the Bosnian War (Routledge, 2006) and co-author (with Barry Buzan) of The Evolution of
International Security Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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