Definition of Key Concepts and Scope of the Empirical Analysis

Securitisation vs. Politicisation and Degrees of Success

To distinguish securitisation from politicisation I adopt the first part of the general conception of securitisation by the CS. That is, security threats are not objectively given but socially constructed by designating something as a serious threat to a referent object. However, I do not follow the CS concerning the second part of their definition about the consequences of (successful) securitisation moves. The core theoretical claims derived from the GA are that in the era of governmentalised security practices we will witness various distinct ways of securitising a topic, which in turn have different political consequences that are not necessarily exceptional. Hence, in my approach, it is not the legitimised or already adopted exceptional or extraordinary measures that define a successful securitisation. Instead, I follow a counter-factual argumentation, amongst others introduced by Maria Trombetta (2011b), which takes policies that otherwise would probably not have been adopted or seemed legitimate and the transformation of the meaning of the securitised issue (or other affected policy sectors) as indicators for successful securitisation. Connecting to that, I argue, that there is no clear-cut threshold between successful or failed securitisations. Rather securitisation processes should be seen as continuum allowing for a broad spectrum between weakly securitised and highly securitised topics that cannot be defined a priori but has to be explored in each empirical case (see also Diez et al. 2016: 9-10, 19). In this context, it is important to note that different climate security discourses and their power effects are never deterministic. Rather, they constitute a structural environment in which agency and resistance is possible to a certain extent. This is why it is of vital importance to take a very detailed look at the actual effects in terms of changed political perceptions and policies and not just look at the broader picture, as has been a tendency in existing governmentality studies (Angermüller 2010).

Actors and Audiences

Securitisations are not only performed by single elite speech acts uttered by securitising actors and accepted by definite audiences, but they are embedded within a broader context and specific

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security discourses (Balzacq 2005; Salter 2011). Accordingly, my analysis of the securitisation of climate change in different countries will cover a broad timespan and will include an analysis of the cultural and institutional setup in which the securitisation discourse is embedded, and which makes the specific securitisation possible in the first place. By relaxing the criteria to distinguish between failed and successful securitisations I will also abandon the idea of a fixed audience that has to accept the securitisation to be successful, which has been much debated in the literature (Balzacq 2011c; Léonard and Kaunert 2011; Roe 2008; Karafoulidis 2012; Stritzel 2007). Through the process of securitising a topic in a very specific way and by focusing on certain discourses, the actors that speak security, the referent objects, as well as the relevant audiences are constituted at the same time (Hansen 2000: 303).

Having said that, there are of course always actors that stand out particularly in specific securitisation processes and who wield more influence than others. Methodologically it can make sense to start the analysis by looking at texts produced by these actors in order to access the dominant discourses that are reproduced and reinforced by these texts. According to findings from the secondary literature, NGOs, think tanks and scientific organisations have played a key role in constructing climate change as security issue (see also Sending and Neumann 2006; Oels and von Lucke 2015; Diez et al. 2016; Brzoska 2009). They have relied on the attention generating and agenda setting qualities of designating something as a security threat (Elbe 2006, 2009; Floyd 2007b, 2013) and hence the possibility to pressure politicians to act on issues they would otherwise neglect. Thus, while my focus is on reconstructing broader discourses, I will nevertheless have a closer look at which role specific actors have played in the debate.

Level of Analysis and Case Selection

Empirically, I do not look at debates at the global level, but at three individual country cases, namely: the United States, Germany and Mexico. The aim is to identify which securitisation discourses (or combinations of these) were dominant in each country and to inquire how they have led to specific political consequences. The focus is on understanding the multitude of securitisations and the interlinkages with varying domestic contexts and hence to foster a contextual understanding of security (see also Ciuta 2009). Moreover, this comparative setting closes a gap in securitisation and governmentality studies that so far have focused predominately on the global level, isolated case studies and exemplary data. I expect the political consequences to be much more concrete within national environments than on the

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global level, therefore also allowing me to overcome the above-described emphasis of governmentality studies on the broad programmatic level to a certain extent.

I selected these specific country cases based on several interlinked considerations.

Starting out from my overall research question about how to understand different forms of securitisation, the challenge was to find cases that are similar enough to be comparable, but also different enough to allow for diverse forms of the securitisation of climate change to become dominant. Hence, I chose the United States and Germany, which are both highly industrialised, democratic countries that display roughly the same level of overall development and share many cultural similarities (UNDP 2015). At the same time, both countries differ considerably when it comes to other cultural and political variables and especially concerning security policy (Gerhards 2000; Böckenförde and Gareis 2014) and also have shown quite different approaches to climate change. Beyond that, I also wanted to address the Western or Northern bias in securitisation studies (Boas 2014; Bilgin 2010; von Lucke 2016) and the scepticism in governmentality studies about the usefulness of this approach in non-Western societies (Joseph 2010a, 2010b). Thus, I included Mexico as a third case to gain insights into how a different level of development and cultural background could play a role in securitisation processes.

Despite its differences, due to longstanding close relations to Western countries, membership in the OECD since 1994 and a considerable economic growth since the 1990s (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2012; Dussel Peters and Maihold 2007; Akerberg 2011), Mexico is similar enough to allow for a meaningful comparison. Apart from these factors, Mexico constitutes a promising case because it is expected to be directly affected by a variety of different climate effects (Ibarrarán et al. 2008; Brodziak et al. 2011; José Cárdenas 2010) and has already put forward several progressive policies to address its perceived vulnerability.

Timeframe of Analysis

My more detailed analysis of climate security debates in each country covers the period between the late 1980s and 2015. The reason for this rather broad timeframe is that I want to explore the influence of the broader historical context on the climate security debate but also to capture key transformations of each of the discourses over time. I begin with the late 1980s because it was at that time that climate change became more important on the political level i.e. it ceased to be predominantly discussed by climate experts or in an academic context. Indicators are the establishment of the IPCC (1988), the adoption of UNFCCC (1992) but also several more influential domestic policies on climate regulation in the US, Germany and to a lesser extent

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also Mexico (Pielke Jr 2000a, 2000b; Schreurs 2002; Park 2000; Jänicke 2011; Weidner and Mez 2008; Mumme and Lybecker 2002; Dussel Peters and Maihold 2007).

In relation to the climate security debate, the secondary literature has given some indications that there were at least two roughly distinguishable phases between the 1990s and the mid-2010s (Floyd 2010, 2012; Oels 2011, 2012a). In the first phase, that peaked around the mid-1990s, climate security argumentations were part of a broader debate on ‘environmental security’ or ‘environmental conflict’ (Homer-Dixon 1994a, 1999; Myers 1995; Kaplan 1994).

The second phase gained momentum in the mid-2000s (with a peak between 2006 and 2011) and focused almost exclusively on the perceived security implications of climate change. While my analysis covers both, the emphasis will be on the second phase. One reason is that the more recent episode focused more exclusively on climate change and in general was more successful in triggering tangible political responses. Other reasons are of practical nature as availability of empirical material as well as access to organisations and individuals involved in the debates were more readily available for the more recent period.