Designing (de)security: European exceptionalism,Atlantic republicanism and the ‘public sphere’

Abstract

This article pursues three interrelated objectives. Above all, it seeks to theorize desecuritization at the level of polity rather than policy; to distinguish between forms of political order and the likelihood that they will give in to the call for exceptional measures. Second, and to achieve that goal, it suggests a turn away from continental notions of ‘the people’ and towards American debates over ‘the public sphere’: a realm deliberately designed and continually cultivated to exercise autonomous, pluralistic and politicized contestation. Third, it examines why the ‘speechlessness’ of contemporary Western security practices may inhibit that public sphere from functioning properly.

Keywords

Copenhagen School desecuritization republicanism classical realism public sphere

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