419000 424510.

1177/0967010611419000Guzzini: Securitization as a causal mechanismSecurity Dialogue

Special issue on The Politics of Securitization

Security Dialogue

Securitization as a causal
42(4-5) 329341
The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
mechanism co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0967010611419000
sdi.sagepub.com

Stefano Guzzini
Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark & Uppsala University, Sweden

Abstract
The article seeks to offer a way forward in discussions about the status of securitization theory. In my
reading, this debate has been inhibited by the difficulty of finding an appropriate version of understanding/
explanation that would be consistent with the meta-theoretical commitments of a post-structuralist theory.
By leaving explanation and/or all versions of causality to the positivist other, the Copenhagen School also left
its own explanatory status often implicit, or only negatively defined. Instead, the present article claims that
the explanatory theory used in securitization research de facto relies on causal mechanisms that are non-
positivistically conceived. Using the appropriate methodological literature renders this explanatory status
explicit, exposing the theorys non-positivist causality and thus, hopefully, enhancing its empirical theory.

Keywords
Copenhagen School, securitization theory, constructivism, international security, casual mechanism

Introduction
Conceived for a special occasion, the purpose of this article is a friendly intervention into the theo-
retical discussion around securitization. Focusing on the original contributions of the Copenhagen
School, it does not aim at assessing the various debates that have characterized the reception of
securitization theory, although it raises points pertinent to it. Its main aim is another: to offer a way
forward in the discussion about the status of securitization theory. In my reading, debate on this
topic has been inhibited by the difficulty of finding an appropriate version of understanding/expla-
nation that would be consistent with the meta-theoretical commitments of a post-structuralist
theory. By leaving explanation and/or all versions of causality to the positivist other, the
Copenhagen School also left its own explanatory status often implicit, or only negatively defined.
Instead, the present article claims that the explanatory theory used in securitization research de
facto relies on causal mechanisms that are non-positivistically conceived. Using the appropriate
methodological literature renders this explanatory status explicit, exposing the theorys non-
positivist causality and thus, hopefully, enhancing its empirical theory. The article is an invitation

Corresponding author:
Stefano Guzzini
Email: sgu@diis.dk

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330 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)

to scholars working within the Copenhagen School to explore such a path, which is both consistent
with the underlying meta-theoretical commitments of the Copenhagen School and implicitly
applied in many of the latters empirical analyses.
The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I specify the different ways in which the theoretical
status of the Copenhagen Schools approach has been conceived: namely, as a conceptual move, a
framework of analysis, and an empirical and political theory of security. Focusing on its empirical
theory for the rest of the article, I specify in a second step how to conceive of a causal mechanism
in a way that is compatible with a constructivist/post-structuralist meta-theory. Finally, this view of
a causal mechanism is applied to securitization.

What does securitization?

When the Copenhagen School coined the term securitization, it provided a next step in the ongo-
ing discussion on how best to understand security. However, what this improved understanding
exactly meant turned out to be ambivalent in its theoretical scope, since it alternatively implied a
conceptual move, a framework of analysis, and an empirical and political theory of security.
It is probably fair to say that securitization was foremost a broad conceptual move.1 It went
beyond conceptualizing security in objectivist terms where threats are threats, security is secu-
rity, and taking a careful look at political reality is all that is needed. But, it also left a subjectivist
security concept behind, where security is whatever significant actors may regard as such. In fact,
both approaches beg the question. An objectivist approach seems unable to fix what triggers inse-
curity, since a particular situation or event does not give an unambiguous input into behaviour.
When actors disagree on how to read the real situation, and do so systematically, then perhaps the
problem lies not with them but with the allegedly objective input to start with. Similar questions
are begged by a subjectivist approach. If all is in the eye of the beholder, then anything could in
principle be a threat. Yet, ripe tomatoes, which visitors to Valencia can experience as a weapon
once a year, never appear as a general security threat in our intelligence statistics. As this last
example illustrates, perceptions can be subjectively varied, but are not reducible to personal whim
on that account. And so the real questions arise. What provides some regularity to perception?
Indeed, perceptions may not be subjective to start with, but only made possible by intersubjective
understandings embedded in the dominant discourses among foreign policy elites. Why is it, for
instance, that the foreign policies of some countries are historically more paranoid than those of
others?
Securitization broke with this potentially interminable security debate by proposing a series
of conceptual moves. For one, it sociologized the analysis of security. Rather than conducting
a first-level analysis of the exact meaning of security, it looks at how that meaning is socially
produced. If discussions about the content of security can go on endlessly, why not concentrate on
the role or function of security instead? And so, to use the famous turn of phrase, the analysis of
security is about not what security means but what security does. Security is understood not
through its substance but through its performance: securitization. According to the reference defi-
nition, securitization is a successful speech act through which an intersubjective understanding is
constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued
referent object, and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat
(Buzan and Wver, 2003: 491).
Yet, although opening up valid research avenues, such a conceptual move leaves us ultimately
unsatisfied. Sociologizing added much needed reflexivity to the debate. But, in the end, it cannot
avoid debates about substance. Conceiving of security as a speech act is important, because it

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Guzzini: Securitization as a causal mechanism 331

shows that the form/performance of security is its content. However, it cannot show that this is all
that there is to its content.2 For, unlike the original conception of a speech act, security speech
does not in itself constitute the significant act, as does, for instance, a promise. Talking up certain
issues or marking them as vital or national interests (by specifying the object of threat and the
subject) are in themselves insufficient to trigger (de)securitization. Therefore, the literature distin-
guishes between securitization as such and (de)securitization attempts or moves. Another dif-
ficulty arises from the fact that, sometimes, rather than lifting an issue out of normal politics
altogether, as securitization analysis claims, the securitization move exacerbates political debate.
For this, the literature talks about politicization. Other similar qualifications have been added.
What they have in common is that they theoretically develop the issue that securitization refers
not to a single act or ritual (like marriage) but to a process that can lead to the anticipated effects,
but does not do so necessarily. This then begs the question of under which (political, cultural, eco-
nomic, etc.) conditions, with which audience, while using which discourse, etc., (de)securitization
attempts (can) succeed.
It is therefore coherent to see securitization not only as a conceptual move but also as a
framework for analysis (Buzan et al., 1998). This framework develops several dimensions or
conditions that must be specified if we are to know how securitization takes place. These promi-
nently include the different sectors of security (and implicitly different audiences). And much of
the Copenhagen School cottage industry has been about specifying the conditions on which the
effects of securitization depend.
This framework for analysis can, in turn, be part of an empirical theory of security. The frame-
work qualifies the internal logic of securitization as a process, specifying the conditions for its
possibility. In a next step, securitization has been framed within the so-called regional security
complex approach, which makes it a security theory in terms of substance. This framing takes place
through a redefinition of both the objectivist and subjectivist conceptions of security within a con-
structivist setting. To some extent, and in some passages, regional security complex theory seems to
start from the objective geopolitical environment (the region) in which countries find them-
selves, which predisposes for certain security issues to be threatening and prompts almost by the
nature of things certain foreign policy positions. Yet, the whole theory is set up in such a way that
security is never given by geopolitical realities: it is the effect of (national) securitization processes
and their aggregation that is, the ways in which national security discourses, intersubjectively
shared and with a repertoire of common historical lessons, make sense of geopolitical realities. The
constructivist horse has been put before the geopolitical cart: regions are what they (mainly
regional actors) make of them. Hence, it would be mistaken to assume a given geopolitical reality.
But, whereas such reification is to be avoided by the observer, it is not wrong to take it as an
empirical fact in the meaning system of the security actor. Since there are no private meaning
systems, the regional or geographic component in the analysis refers to a social as opposed to
natural fact, one that is moreover of an intersubjective, and not just subjective, character.3 It is
from here that the empirical theorizing takes its origins. Knowing different security discourses and
analysing how the other is constructed within each allows the observer to see potential policy
fault-lines and securitization processes. In turn, this makes it possible to state that (regional) secu-
rity crises appear when such discourses simultaneously start securitizing the other, or that regional
dtente is possible when such discourses simultaneously desecuritize. Such statements carry an
implicit causality that will be the central focus of this article.
Finally, securitization is also part of a political theory of security. In other words, here we are
interested not only in what security may mean or do, or when security problems will arise, but more
fundamentally in the role security plays both in human nature and in political order. Much has been

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332 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)

suggested (more than really analysed) about a potential link between the state of exception in
securitization theory and Carl Schmitts political theory.4 But, as Ole Wver once remarked,
whereas exceptionalism is the fundament of the political in Schmitt, it is the end of the political
in securitization studies. More congenial would therefore be political theories that more generally
relate to the role of identity (both personal and collective) and, or so I think, to processes of recog-
nition in the reproduction of a social order.
In sum, securitization does a lot: it is a conceptual move, a framework of analysis, an empirical
theory and a political theory of security. A lifetime job! In the following, I will concentrate on its
empirical theory. I will use the various above-mentioned steps as a background, since each of them
has quite important implications for the type of social and action theory that would be necessary
for thinking securitization. Speech-act theory implies the existence of performatives and hence a
non-representational understanding of language. Moreover, securitization is strongly connected to
a social ontology of discourses and practices. Finally, its very analysis focuses on security as a
(contingent) process. Within the understanding of this process, I suggest that securitization has
been and can be coherently used as a causal mechanism.

A causal mechanism in a constructivist/post-structuralist setting

In the following, I seek to show that causal mechanisms5 are not limited to certain meta-theoretical
commitments and that non-rationalist and non-positivist approaches can also use them.6 Indeed, or
so I believe, securitization studies are already constantly using them in their empirical analyses.
Let me start with Elsters reference definition and why he got there. He defines (social) mecha-
nisms as frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under
generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences (Elster, 1998: 45; 2007: 36).
To unpack this definition, more context is needed. Like other sociological rationalists, Elster starts
his analysis by openly repudiating the covering-law model of explanation and simple correlational
analysis. In his reading, a correlation does not explain; at best, it summarizes an explanation.
Hence, it is important to open the black box of why and how a particular outcome was actually
reached. In Elsters prominent approach to the matter, mechanisms are the intermediate level of
generalization available between universal laws, which are unattainable in the social sciences, and
descriptions, which are too unambitious. Not being general laws, mechanisms can explain (ex
post) why something happened, but cannot be used for predictions, since we cannot know whether
a mechanism will be activated or not and/or whether it will always have the same effects (Elster,
1998: 45; see also Grosser, 1972).
Hence, with mechanism goes the covering-law model of generalization and theorization.
Oddly enough, this has gone unnoticed by some of the defenders of using mechanisms in politi-
cal science. Alexander George and George Bennetts (2005: 2257) analysis of process-tracing
is based on such mechanisms, which they unhelpfully conceive as a series of small-range cover-
ing-law explanations. This seems to reduce mechanisms and hence process-tracing to a
sequence of intervening variables. But, conceiving of mechanisms as intervening variables
slides back into correlational analysis, now sequentially applied to however many different steps
the analyst finds in the process traced (as in Gerring, 2007: 172). De facto, this means that cor-
relations are explained by more micro-correlations (as in Mahoney, 2001: 578). The only thing
process-tracing or mechanisms change for the analysis is the number of causal links; they do
nothing to the very idea of causality implied. Indeed, for the positivist, they add little to the
explanation, since there is nothing to exclude an increasing chain of links. Worse, they do noth-
ing to avoid an infinite regress, making such mechanisms ultimately descriptive, not causal

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Guzzini: Securitization as a causal mechanism 333

(King et al., 1994: 86). Consequently, an analysis of mechanisms in terms of variables ends up
re-importing correlational analysis by the back door, where bivariate correlations can, and may
need to, serve as a first step of the analysis, or may even be combined with positivist (Hempel
Oppenheim) covering-law explanations (Opp, 2005).
However, such reduction of mechanisms to variables does away with their very specificity.
First, and in contrast to mechanisms, an intervening variable is added to increase the total variance
explained in a multivariate analysis, but that is different from providing the links in a process
(Mayntz, 2004: 245). Similarly, such an approach starts from an assumption of static and additive
causes, moreover understood as constant conjunctions, not in terms of sequence and the relational
configuration of factors. Second, reducing mechanisms to variables implies that they are not just
observable but observed (Johnson, 2006: 248), which not all mechanisms are. Here, the commit-
ment to observation primes and effectively excludes one of the specificities of mechanisms. Third,
at least in some approaches, mechanisms are not attributes of the unit of analysis, as they would be
if they were variables. Instead, mechanisms describe the relationships or the actions among the
units of analysis or in the cases of study (Falleti and Lynch, 2009: 1147). Again, reducing mecha-
nisms to variables denies the possibility of a combinatorial or configurational explanation.
Hence, to be non-redundant, a reference to mechanisms needs to leave the covering-law model
of explanation and a conception of causality as regularity. As Hedstrm and Ylikovski (2010: 53)
write, talking about mechanisms excludes approaches that define causality in terms of regularities
(such as Humes constant conjunction theory or many probabilistic theories of causation). A cen-
tral point of the mechanism debate is to redefine causality in an interpretivist and/or scientific
realist manner, not to deny it (Patomki, 1996).
So far, so good. Causal mechanisms la Elster get us out of the positivist understanding of
explanation and of viewing causality in terms of efficient regularities, both pillars of mainstream
social science research. But, what about their underlying social theory that is, their rationalism
and individualism?
It is quite understandable that rationalist scholars have insisted on mechanisms. Such an
approach squarely meets the demands of methodological individualism, which says that all events
need eventually be connected to the effects of intended or unintended action. It is therefore quite
normal to double-check which micro-behaviour has resulted in which macro-states. When apply-
ing a straightforward macromicromacro scheme, there would be three mechanisms: one relating
the macro to the micro level, one on the micro level, and one from the micro to the macro level
(Hedstrm and Swedberg, 1998). In the most extreme version of this understanding of mecha-
nisms, rationality becomes the supreme mechanism. Yet, taking moreover the workings of rational-
ity for granted, such an analysis then ends up short-circuiting individual agency and the analysis of
mechanisms altogether, since all is reduced to a narrowly mechanistic through-put.7
But also more relaxed versions of rationalism tend to define mechanism analysis in terms of a
rationalist action theory alone (e.g. Gambetta, 1998: 103). True, most rationalists using mecha-
nisms are sociologists who base the analysis on a not exclusively utilitarian understanding of ratio-
nality. There, the role played by Werterationalitt is equal to, if not more important than, the role
of instrumental rationality (Boudon, 1998).8 Alternatively, the analysis is conducted in terms of
reasons, widely defined, in the classical rationalist desirebelief(opportunities)behaviour trian-
gle (Elster, 1998, 2007). In this wider post-Weberian lineage, interpretation is part and parcel of the
approach and methodology. Still, these different versions of rationality or cognitive processes are
eventually all there is to mechanisms.
Yet, there is no inherent reason why the idea of mechanisms cannot apply to other social theo-
ries, including those that feature a social ontology. Arguing from an institutionalist position, Renate

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334 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)

Mayntz stresses that once we try to understand relational mechanisms, we may find that these
micromacro mechanisms may not involve motivated individual behaviour to start with.
Institutional and structural components are decisive parts of the micromacro link: If the explanan-
dum is a macro-phenomenon, or the connection between two macro phenomena the main cogni-
tive challenge is therefore to identify the structural and institutional features, that organize the
actions of different actors so as to produce their macro effect (Mayntz, 2004: 252). As she also
writes, however, we have as of yet no similarly filled tool box of mechanisms where specific types
of corporate actor constellations and relational structures play the crucial role.
And corporate actor constellations and relational structures need not be naturalist or materialist;
they are indeed often best conceived as social ontologies. There is nothing in the analysis of mech-
anisms that per se asks for a materialist conception of institutions and structures. This tendency to
naturalist reductionism is surely understandable, since, by looking for mechanisms that would
explain certain effects, and by opening up boxes after boxes, the analysis seeks to stop at some
original, natural, point, as for example in the recourse to cognitive psychology. Thus has Jon
Elster, in particular, used results from psychology to exemplify the working of mechanisms. Take
his example of the pair of forbidden fruit and sour grapes. Unable to reach the fruits growing in
the neighbours garden, some people start thinking that those particular fruits are the very best,
whereas others convince themselves that they are the opposite. Hence, deprivation may make some
people desire an object more, others less. Although we would be hard pressed to predict the behav-
iour in general, we can retroactively explain the psychological mechanism for whatever happened.
Accordingly, Elster (2007: 36) rightly notes that for a methodological individualist position, the
recourse to psychology and perhaps biology is of fundamental importance in explaining social
phenomena.9
Yet, this can obviously be pushed too far. When Mario Bunge (2004: 202), who has done much
to introduce mechanistic explanations, writes that learning is explained by the formation of new
neuronal systems that emerge when they fire jointly in response to certain (external and internal)
stimuli, that may appeal to some natural scientists, but it will leave or so I guess most social
scientists wanting more. In an excellent response to Bunge, Colin Wight (2004: 296) exposes the
latters physicalist reductionism and shows the need to include what he calls conceptual and/or
semiotic mechanisms in social analysis:

All social activity presupposes the prior existence of social forms. Speech requires language; making,
materials; actions, conditions; agency, resources; activity, rules. Equally, these prior social forms are
concept dependent the concepts possessed by agents matter; they make a difference. And in complex
social settings they are part of the causal complex and, hence, may be mechanisms.

Is securitization one of those?

Securitization as a mechanism
Understanding securitization as a mechanism is not solving the issue of securitization. But, taking
the detour of the methodological discussion makes it possible to more clearly expose some of the
challenges for understanding and analysing securitization. For one thing, many empirical analyses
do not really acknowledge the intersubjective (i.e. both non-materialist and non-individualist) char-
acter of the initial framework. When so many analysts (and innumerable student papers) fall prey to
reducing securitization to studies in which they simply expose the intentional war-mongering of
some political actors, then perhaps a better specification of what the analysis is all about could be
helpful. Moreover, it may also provide a useful intermediate level at which securitization can be

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Guzzini: Securitization as a causal mechanism 335

pitched. Whereas, as mentioned above, some defenders use the concept basically as a fancy descrip-
tive term for successful propaganda, some critics have read securitization as a self-referential
automaton that, once applied, miraculously affects the political agenda. Not so surprisingly, such
automatism is then empirically faulted or found contradictory to the underlying assumptions of the
theory (Balzacq, 2005). In contrast, my endeavour here is to see whether causal mechanisms
understood as contingent or indeterminate, and applicable to many different contexts, yet not as a
universal or regular cause could help to specify the theorys explanatory import.
In a first step, let me stress the procedural character of the original securitization analysis.
Conceiving of security as performative meant for me that it is simply part of an ongoing social
construction of (social) reality. Only in its most legal sense can security be empirically conceived
as a speech act in terms of a single event. This would apply to those moments where a formal
national security speech constitutes a threat of war, an offer of peace or, paradigmatically, a decla-
ration of war or surrender. Lawyers have little difficulty understanding the idea of a speech act,
since they have defined the practical effects of such statements in laws or customs. However, this
was never the case for the paradigmatic case from which securitization indeed desecuritization
initially derived: German Ostpolitik cannot be thought of as a single authoritative act via which
the USSR or the threat of communism were desecuritized (Wver, 1995). A policy of gradual
change affected the logic of high politics that had locked up the political agenda. Hence, the idea
of a speech act refers here to a process, not a kind of single bombshell event.
Consequently, second, the whole analysis only makes sense within the specific cultural contexts
in which the performatives are realized. As Wvers (2004) analysis of foreign policy discourses
and the different identity layers testifies, the theory relies on a quite huge repository of common
meanings and selfother understandings within which we can understand why certain political
processes may lead to securitization or desecuritization (why? understood here in the sense of
how possible?). It is not a generic friendfoe distinction but embedded selfother understandings
that predispose political discourses, public opinion and hence also the receptivity of the wider
public to certain political moves. There is no reason to assume that these are universal contexts
within which speech acts (always) function, if only the right conditions apply. Looking for case-
independent generic scope conditions for (de)securitization therefore misses the point.10 Indeed,
the empirical theory of security that combines those discursive layers and dynamics in regional
interaction requires analysis that is very rich empirically if it is to explain the political dynamics,
threat constructions and hence discursive processes in the first place.
Third, the often-mentioned facilitating conditions for the success of (de)securitization include
contingency and endogenous effects. True, a major aspect of those conditions is more structural
that is, concerns (1) the way certain arguments are empowered through the mobilization of a
bias within existing foreign policy discourses and identities (dispositional) and (2) the validity that
accrues to an argument by force of the reputation and positional power of the agent (relational).
But, in a second aspect, contingent factors can play a role, since both such discourses and such
positions are also endogenous to the process (i.e. they can be affected by the process and are not
necessarily constant throughout).
Finally, the understanding of (de)securitization is historical. The strong emphasis on an
allegedly realist reading of security (connected to war, exceptional measures, done by foreign
policy elites, etc.) is not to be understood as the essence of security, but rather as the effect of
a historical development in which certain actors have come to be authorized to talk and effect
war and peace in a realist way.11 This implies that securitization theory may indeed help to
re-produce such an understanding, although it does not need to. It also implies that if a different
understanding of security appears and becomes shared, also the content of the approach will
have to adapt.12

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336 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)

In short: the empirical theory is about a process; a process in which (de)securitization can only
be understood against the background of existing foreign policy discourses, their embedded collec-
tive memory of past lessons, defining metaphors and the significant circles of recognition for the
collective identities of a country; and whose success does obviously depend on, but cannot be
reduced to, the distribution of authority and the different forms of capital in the relevant field. Its
effectiveness (just as with a law) is historically constituted and evolving.
When the empirical theory of securitization is rephrased in this hopefully not unfair manner,
similarities with the previous discussion on causal mechanisms abound, which can hold out impor-
tant lessons. One issue is the better understanding of the alleged automatic nature of securitization.
If we recall Elsters definition, there are basically two ways to think about a mechanisms trigger-
ing capacity. In one, prompting the trigger is straightforward but the effects stay indeterminate. In
the other, the effect is determinate but triggering the mechanism itself contingent. In the first, the
automatic component of the mechanism lies in the triggering; in the second, in its effect. If auto-
maticity would apply to both, the event concerned would be a positivist causal regularity.
Both aspects seem to have been applied to (de)securitization. The reference definition surely
insists on the automaticity of the effects of (de)securitization once it has been successfully trig-
gered. Consequently, much discussion has moved to the facilitating conditions, adding context,
culture, power, etc. But, this type of discussion is a bit misleading, since it heaps on factors to
enhance causal efficacy, when the underlying question may be whether such efficacy can be
expected in the first place. To be fair, the reference definition and usage do encourage such
discussion.
Yet, we can also encounter the other aspect of a causal mechanism in the actual analysis of (de)
securitization where the effect stays contingent but not the prompting of the trigger. Here,
a certain event triggers securitizing moves in which actors lay claim to the actualization of a pre-
existing action-complex. For instance, if a countrys foreign policy discourse has features that
cause certain events to recall earlier threats, those events mobilize a shift in political debate towards
a security logic.13 This corresponds to the third facilitating condition (conditions historically asso-
ciated with that threat) and is consistent with the foreign policy discursive component of the
approach. Hence, there is some sort of an automatic mobilization of bias within that particular
context. Yet, importantly, such an event may trigger a parallel move. For instance, knowing about
the propensity to move into a security logic when threats of the specified kind appear, most foreign
policy discourses are heterogeneous enough to include a tradition that tries to pre-empt such secu-
ritization.14 This is easily illustrated by the debate around Huntingtons clash of civilizations
thesis, where his critics immediately latched on to, and tried to prevent, the potentially self-fulfill-
ing dynamic of his analysis. Here, the final effect is indeterminate, since a move is accompanied
by a counter-move, both triggered out of the heterogeneous reservoir of a foreign policy discourse.
But, that does not diminish its performative component. Both securitizing and desecuritizing
moves can be part of self-fulfilling prophecies by becoming shared beliefs and then affecting
pre-existing routine action-complexes related to them (say: deterrence or reassurance strategies).
This is the way I understand the move to the exceptional: it is a historically evolved routine
response that may well not function in all societies just as much as desecuritization is a routine
response to it.
This double aspect of automaticity one where origins are mechanical but effects are contin-
gent, and vice versa also points to an underlying ambiguity both of mechanism studies and (de)
securitization analyses.15 Let us recall Elsters definition: frequently occurring and easily recog-
nizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indetermi-
nate consequences. Here, mechanisms are not themselves the triggers, as common parlance would

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Guzzini: Securitization as a causal mechanism 337

have it, but the things that are triggered by something else. Applied to securitization, that would
mean that one could see securitization either as the process that is triggered by something else or
as itself the trigger of certain effects both explanandum and explanans. And, indeed, some studies
concentrate on what made (de)securitization possible, whereas others look at the effects it has on
other processes. It is perfectly possible to use it both ways, and a process vision that links mecha-
nisms up in a sequence may resort to both. But, again, something is gained by being explicit about
how the determinacy in the analysis is configured.
This last point is, in turn, related to the difficult location of causal mechanisms in and over
time. The literature does not necessarily agree on where exactly to temporarily locate a mecha-
nism: is the mechanism confined to the triggering itself, or to the type of triggered (routine)
action-complexes, or does it encompass the process taken as a whole, as when historical sociolo-
gists use the term?16 This multiple focus also applies to securitization: the very definition stresses
the moment of the trigger, whereas the political theory stresses the content of the routine action
involved, and most of the empirical applications trace the evolution of the conditions for the per-
formative to take effect that is, the process. I do not think it necessary at this stage to decide
which is the right use. In fact, the choice of a specific understanding is partly driven by the
empirical question. If the research is directed towards individual events, trying to find out whether
they contribute to (de)securitization, then analysis of the possible triggering moments seems appro-
priate. If, however, as in the case of German Ostpolitik, a political strategy or long-term process is
the focus of the research question or, indeed, if the question turns on a comparison of different
processes, as in comparative historical sociology then it makes more sense to define the sequence
of moves in their particular context as the relevant understanding of securitization. Analysts,
however, need to be clear about the differences between the two, one leading rather more to within-
process comparison and its methodological needs, the other to the comparison of the given process
itself with other processes.
Finally, conceptualizing securitization as a causal mechanism does not in any way prejudice its
ontological status, but may alert scholars employing it to the need to be more self-conscious about
their choice. For mechanisms have been used by defenders of almost all meta-theories in the social
sciences. They can be found in the work of scholars who, if often implicitly, would subscribe to
some version of a correspondence theory of truth. Here, mechanisms are about real-world pro-
cesses. Inversely, and closer to the post-structuralist part of securitization theory, such mechanisms
can also be seen as purely theoretical constructs or heuristic devices, which we apply to our obser-
vations in order to classify them. They make sense of history but do not drive it (Pouliot, 2007:
37374). And this becomes still more distinct when an instrumentalist position (assumptions need
not be realistic if they work) is added, a position endorsed by Patrick Jackson (2011: 11255).
Finally, for others still, positioning themselves somewhat in between, mechanisms are surely heu-
ristic constructs, but one cannot rule out their independent existence. That position would apply to
critical realists who do not subscribe to a correspondence theory of truth (Kurki, 2008; Patomki,
2002, 2008; Wight, 2006, 2007), and also to some more agnostic constructivists (e.g. Kratochwil,
2007a,b).

So what?
Security as securitization has been part of a strategy to contaminate existing common knowl-
edge (Wver, 1989). Using the opener of a subjective definition of security (perception and
misperception), securitization takes out a central concept, redefines it, and then reinserts it into the
mainstream discourse in order to affect the latter from the inside. It does not leave security to the
conceptual habitus of the would-be experts whether these are socialized in the arms race of

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338 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)

the Cold War or the asymmetrical warfare and Revolution in Military Affairs today since this
would only reproduce their definitional power. No such sanctuary is granted.
What the approach to causal mechanisms presented in this article seeks to do is something simi-
lar. It uses the opening of some rationalist analysis in its insistence that explanations, even positiv-
ist ones, are based on mechanistic reasoning (correlations do not explain), and that while more than
description is possible in the social sciences, general laws are not. Yet, rather than leaving causality
and mechanism to a naturalist and/or individualist research programme, it shows how to conceptu-
alize causal mechanisms in an interpretivist environment, here applied to discourse analysis.
Consistent with the approaches adopted by critical realists and constructivists, it takes a different
understanding of causality (in a non-regular manner) and breaks out of the positivistic blackmail
that asserts that explanation is either positivistic or no explanation at all. Securitization analysis can
be directed to the understanding of why certain moves can be expected in given national security
discourse, why some of them may find a receptive audience (given the underlying security imagi-
nary), and indeed why certain action-complexes can then follow. But, such why is always a how
causality. It does (also)17 explain, just not in a positivistic manner. Successful desecuritization
explains Ostpolitik (why and how it has become possible), even if it does not constitute a cause
in any law-like sense. Also here, no sanctuary is granted.
And the present article proposes to use the idea of securitization as a causal mechanism in a type
of interpretivist process-tracing to allow for more coherence in the use of securitization in empirical
explanations,18 because explanations they are. Securitization seems to travel quite well from one
analysis to another, being used in all possible research contexts. Just what is it that travels? Some
critics contend that some universal feature of the speech act allows its analysis in different contexts.
Such a contention, however, does not work with the underlying theory and philosophy of science.
This article claims that what makes different security analyses comparable as to their process and
dynamics within an empirical theory of securitization is the idea of a causal mechanism (or, more
precisely, two, since desecuritization is the other potentially available). That mechanism may be
contingent in its prompting or indeterminate in its effect. Its exact content cannot be understood
outside of the context, discursive and other, in which it applies. In other words, the travel needs to
be understood from case to case. And yet, when the mechanism does travel, it is part of an explana-
tion. It allows securitization to constitute itself as an empirical theory of security. And the historical
constitution of securitization then also allows for assessing its contextual limits. Additional mecha-
nisms can be part of the security analysis for sure, but no security analysis or so my reconstruction
of securitization theory would claim can be conducted without it.

Notes
1. For an early good statement about the implications of this as a conceptual move, see Huysmans (1998).
2. See also McDonald (2008).
3. As one referee remarked, the expression intersubjectivity may be subject to different understandings. It
is here not meant to refer to the interaction of different subjectivities, in which meaning is subjectively
created and then shared. It refers instead to a genuinely structural idea, heir to the linguistic turn in the
social sciences, and akin to Foucaults episteme or Searles collective intentionality. For this use in inter-
national relations, see in particular Ruggie (1998).
4. For perhaps the best discussion, see Williams (2003).
5. As in much of the literature, I use the expressions social mechanism and causal mechanism inter-
changeably. As the discussion will show, this is not because I believe that the analysis of mechanisms is
just a subform of (Humean) causal analysis, but, to the contrary, because mechanism analysis makes more
sense in an analysis where causality is redefined.

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Guzzini: Securitization as a causal mechanism 339

6. Obviously, this has been argued earlier (e.g. Wendt, 1999, 2000; Checkel, 2006, 2008).
7. On conflating (rational) action with mechanisms, see Hedstrm and Swedberg (1998: 1112).
8. For a more general argument that the core of this conceptualization is Werterationalitt, to which
Zweckrationalitt is just a residual or parasitarian category, see Pizzorno (2007: 1549).
9. This can then also lead to the critique of (utilitarian) rationality by psychological theories. In international
relations, see in particular Mercer (2005).
10. I am indebted to Ludvig Norman for stressing this aspect.
11. This corresponds to the necessary third leg of any constructivist conceptual analysis that needs to include
the analysis of concepts as potential performatives and a conceptual history to establish how those per-
formatives have acquired their effect (and where); see Guzzini (2005).
12. Jef Huysmans has cautioned against these reflexive effects from early on. He has also insisted on expos-
ing the historicity of Schmitts approach to the exception in the discussion of contemporary security. See,
for example, Huysmans (2006: 23).
13. What I understand as security logic in our Western political discourses is a logic that reverses
Clausewitzs dictum: politics becomes the prolongation of war by other means. Putting war as the main
organizing principle for thinking foreign policy profoundly affects the role of politics.
14. Hence, the same outcome could have come about through the non-existence of mechanisms or through
their multiplicity, whereby they cancelled each other out. Elster insists that precisely for this possible
multiplicity of mechanisms, any explanation needs to focus on the process, not the outcome. For doing
otherwise runs into the problem of equifinality, that is, where the same outcome could come about by
following different causal paths.
15. I am indebted to Colin Wight for pointing me to this ambiguity and for the discussion in this paragraph.
16. See, for example, Tilly (1995, 2001).
17. It allows for both constitutive and causal relations.
18. For more on interpretivist process-tracing and the use of mechanisms therein, see chapters 3 and 11 of
Guzzini (forthcoming).

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Stefano Guzzini is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, and
Professor of Government at Uppsala University. Email: sgu@diis.dk. For the revision of this article, the
author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments and criticisms from Andreas Behnke, Jef Huysmans,
Patrick Jackson, Anna Leander, Jon Mercer, Ludvig Norman, Heikki Patomki, Vincent Pouliot, Colin Wight,
Ole Wver, three anonymous referees, and Karen Lund Petersen and Ulrik Pram Gad, the two editors of this
special issue. He is aware that he could not address all of their incisive queries.

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