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Summary Vital Interests (Bsc Security Studies, Leiden University)
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A comprehensive summary of the course Vital Interests that is taught in the second year of the bachelor Security Studies
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Vital InterestsLecture 1: Introduction
What are vital interests?
The definition of safety that is being used is “the protection from harm against acquired values”, where acquired values
refers to what is of high value to a state, nation, group or individual. Harm is referred to as a result of actors (security
threats) and/or circumstance (safety dangers). Protection as a (political) priority, means, organisation, attention. Acquired
values are the same as vital interests. However, we have to keep in mind the subjectivity and objectivity of both. Is there
a hierarchy of vitalness? Who gets to say what is vital for themselves and for others?
The Protective State (reading):
Protection is the action of safeguarding vital interests. Ansell (2019) takes a historic approach and starts at the most
basic form of protection against (external) threats (e.g. foreign invaders, public order, water and diseases). In the late
19th century and onwards, the state’s idea of protection becomes more encompassing (waves). The more the states
stars to protect, the more it puts pressure on for example budget. It is about a balancing act focused around the vital
interests, what do you protect? It is trade off between protection and freedom. The more the state tries to protect, the
more liberty it takes away. Ansell (2019) talks about different waves. Consumers became more important, concern about
public health did too. The end of the Cold War shifted thee attention to threats other than nuclear war. Different waves:
1. First wave: late 19th century, expansion of protective functions of the state, protective legislation (Bismarck).
2. Second wave: 1930s/40s, protection expanded to cover things e.g. food safety. Domestic security agencies were
developed (Roosevelt and New Deal)
3. Third wave: 1960s/70s, consumer and environmental protection mainly
4. Fourth wave: 1980s-2000s, a radical change in how the state protects its citizens (9/11, AIDS, Hurricane Katrina etc).
Features of the protective state:
1. How preventive is the state?
- Eliminating accidents and tragedy, spread of prevention
- Prevention and pre-emption
2. The many faces of risk
- The state protects against risk, but also uses it as a governance technique
- Risk and collective vs. Individual responsibility
3. Security and Securitisation
- Securitisation is done through a speech act and is a way for politicians to allocate more resources to certain
problems, to bypass normal laws and safeguards
- Security as raison d’être of the state, but an expansive concept
- Blending of safety vs. security, internal vs. external security (security of the state)
Vital interests as a moving target:
As the state expands and starts to develop an administrative system it can then deliver services (e.g. protection). A risk
society replaced an industrial society —> a greater concern about safety and the future. Advancement in science,
technology, organisations led to a better control of the world, but at the expense of individual control (e.g. people no
longer had control of their food supply).
Protection is politics
- Power politics
- Framing and agenda setting
- International governance
Protection is layered
- History adds layers to protection, for example look at the Enlightenment, social contract, etc.
- Technology is a engine of globalisation which adds layers to protection but also creates new risks
- Globalisation adds layers to protection
1
, The Policy State:
⁃ Citizen protection became institutionalised. However, this increased concern about risk.
⁃ “Policy networks” about risk were developed, they were very representative.
Rights and the Social Structure:
⁃ Development of rights from the protection of minorities to the right to have safe products; family and gender
rights changed.
Science
⁃ Science replaced religion in explaining disasters.
⁃ It finds legitimate solutions, but science also creates risk.
⁃ Distrust in science impacts decision making (e.g. climate change).
Welfare, Regulation and Crime
⁃ There has been a shift from punishing people for how they act to having regulations that tell them how they
should act (from reactive to preventative).
⁃ The victim culture allows the state to intervene.
Globalisation and vital interests: Not all protection can be organised and not all vital interests can be achieved at the
national level. International cooperation is needed to avoid problems (global public bad) or to safeguard an interest
(global public good). From national to global: The global arena lacks a government (singular). The global arena requires
thinking about ‘the public’ (who are beneficiaries, who are free riders?) What is the global public? Countries? Socio-
economic groups? Generations?
Vital Systems Security Collier and Lakoff (2014) (reading): Layering of protection: national, population, system
security. The important thing from the text you need to take away is the table stated below.
Global Public Goods as vital interests (reading): Where does one buy a traffic light? We all pay taxes because it is a
collective good. At the international level we also need traffic lights. GPG is something that benefits a large
international public (non-rival and non-exclusive) and benefits must be quasi universal in terms of countries, people and
generations. Examples of global public goods and global public bads are clean air, stability of the financial system,
globalisation. There are two types:
1. Pure public goods are non-rivalrous in consumption and non-excludable. A pure global public good is very
rare. It is marked by universality — that is, it benefits all countries, people and generations
2. Impure public goods are goods that only partly meet either or both of the criteria. An impure global public
good would tend towards universality in that it would benefit more than one group of countries, and would
not discriminate. Club goods are non-rivalrous in consumption, but excludable. An example is NATO.
Common pool resources are mostly non-excludable but rivalrous in consumption, e.g. apples from a tree.
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