Vital Interests Readings Summary
Ansell (2019, chapters 1-2)
This protective role is at the heart of an implicit social contract between state and society.
The protective state seeks to protect against discrete harms, accidents, hazards, threats, and risks.
“People depend on government regulation, to ensure the safety of virtually every human activity”
(Beermann, 2015)
Protect – to defend or guard from danger or injury; the state’s protective role goes beyond physical
harm to also protect property and property rights, critical infrastructures, and data, but also to the
environment and animals.
Discrete harms, accidents, hazards threats and risks are often protected by the state
Potential harms are often understood to be exceptional in nature, produced by breakdowns
of the normal social order, institutional failures, market externalities, or unintended
consequences.
While scholars judge the welfare state in terms of how “universal” (or decommodified) versus
“residual” (e.g., means tested) it is, the protective state is judged by how preventive versus reactive it
is.
The public often expects the state to prevent accidents and disasters from happening in the first place,
even though they might seek compensation once it has actually happened.
- The protective role is at the heart of an implicit social contract between state and society
Tragedies and disasters are often framed as failures of the state to take adequate precautions or to act
in a timely fashion. => “In reaction to failed prevention, more prevention is proposed” (Peeters, 2013)
Accident has changed over time from being something that is unavoidable towards something that can
be prevented.
- Some scholars argue that “protection” entails “prevention”
Public health communities traditionally argue for prevention strategies. => the preventive approach
extends to policy domains that have traditionally been reactive (criminal justice ex.)
Limitations of reactive approaches often become the foundation for proposing preventive action.
Protective state: signals that the political dynamics of protection are not limited to any single branch
of government or any particular mode of governing, such as regulation, social services, or security.
- It means to illuminate how protection serves as a basic source of political legitimation, based on “a
new and urgent emphasis upon the need for security, the containment of danger, the identification and
management of any kind or risk” (Garland, 2001).
State protection crosses left/right divides because the left tends to be concerned about protecting
citizens from the market and corporate power while the right prioritizes harms that threaten or result
from social disorder and national security.
State protection can at times have moral ambiguity, since seeking protection often entails giving up
civil liberties.
The protective state does not simply protect against risk. It also uses risk as a governing technique.
“who bears the risk?” – a theme often linked to debates about whether risk is an individual or a
collective responsibility.
- Helps rationalize demands upon the state and limits the fallout from failures to protect
While risk assessment and risk management have grown, so have criticisms of their ability to address
uncertainty.
Greater public and scientific concern about uncertainty and the irreversibility of consequences
has reinforced a precautionary approach to risk.
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, This however often leads to a “worst-case” type of thinking that can lead to overestimation of
threats
Who bears the risk? Debated topic whether risk is an individual or a collective responsibility. =>
Neoliberalism seeks to shift risks back onto citizens through an emphasis on “responsibilization” and
“resilience”
Security a response to an existential threat, traditionally military treat.
If threat is understood as potential but intentional harm, we come to appreciate that security
is not limited to military threats -> IR literature refers to the process of extending the logic of
security to issues beyond military security as securitization
= The process of extending the logic of security to issues beyond military security as “securitization”
Politics of the protective state widen the scope of securitization, raising questions about which
problems and risks should be under the security umbrella. Answers of which risks are regarded as
security threats to a state has important consequences because it can completely change a state’s
response and how it focuses the attention on prevention of the threat.
- Securitization of disease can for example shift the focus of a state from protecting the territory of the
state to protecting the welfare of the population.
Chapter 2 puts the development of the protective state in a statebuilding perspective, focusing on the
major developments that have molded the contemporary transformation of the protective state.
States have protected their “citizens” from foreign invaders or from their neighbours since well before
the consolidation of the modern state system.
Wave metaphor: As these four waves suggest, the expansion of the protective state often cuts across
different policy sectors. Although state protections are typically instantiated in particular sectoral
policies or programs (food safety, human trafficking, etc.), state protection often expands in a more
general fashion, affecting several sectors at once.’
1. The first modern wave of protective state building was in the last third of the 19 th century,
before this, the state’s protective role was primarily focused on preventing foreign invasion,
maintaining public order, and to some extent maintaining public health.
a. This was however expanded, as police forces began to specialize in crime control,
and the “sanitation revolution” led the state to expand its role in disease prevention
b. Some “protective legislation”, which regulated conditions of labor with a strong focus
on women and children, was also developed
c. Protection of consumers also began to expand
d. Early attempts to protect children and animals from abuse
2. The second wave of organizing was seen between the 1930s and 1940s; the New Deal in the
US expanded the state’s role in protecting women workers, strengthened the state’s role in
food safety and aviation safety, and took new steps to protect consumers.
a. New Deal also sought to expand the state’s role in security by creating the Federal
Security Agency, which broadened the state’s security umbrella to a range of
domestic issues.
b. WWII expanded the state’s domestic emergency response capacity.
3. The third wave of protective state-building began in the 1960s and 1970s; a wave of
legislative developments expanded and consolidated consumer and environmental protection
a. New developments in occupational safety, automotive safety, child protection,
teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment,
aviation security (mostly in Europe), and data protection
4. A more loose “fourth wave” started developing in 1980s with the AIDS crisis, the “mad cow”
disease, the SARS epidemic, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11; deregulatory pressures places
significant constraints on further development of the protective state, despite the fact that the
EU regulatory state developed rapidly at the end of the 1990s.
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, a. Concerns about infectious disease, food safety, natural hazards, human trafficking,
public safety, and terrorism were still highly prominent.
b. Concerns about critical infrastructure, patient safety, aviation security in the US,
disability rights, elder abuse and neglect, human trafficking, “dangerous dogs’,
dietary supplements, and sexual predators developed on both sides of the Atlantic.
Each wave of developments of the protective state built on political and institutional developments
form previous waves, and new developments responded to perceived gaps or failure of protective
legislation or programs that had been developed in previous waves.
“risk society” was replacing “industrial society.” (1980s). In this new society, concerns about the
consequences of risk were magnified and fell on rich and poor alike. “Poverty is hierarchic, smog is
democratic”.
People were bound together by a commonality of anxiety rather than a commonality of need
The ethical rationale of society shifted from equality to safety, and the risk society became
oriented toward the future and the potential for harm. => “It is a society increasingly
preoccupied with the future (and also with safety), which generates the notion of risk”
(Giddens, 1999)
The contemporary protective state is born of the paradoxical tensions between rising expectations
about being protected and the fear, anxiety, and distrust that comes with personal loss of control over
protection.
On one side of the ledger sheet, our success produces expectations that collective control over risk is
possible. On the other side of the ledger, the fear and anxiety that come with our loss of individual
control often convince us that protection is necessary.
The postwar period led to educational expansion, where science, technology, organisations,
and markets created increased capacities for control, and ramped up expectations over what
should and should not be controlled.
This mastery of nature led to new types of risks – “manufactured risks”, which have more
catastrophic potential
o The modern world expands our expectations of control, but erodes our sense of it.
The culture of fear began in the 1970s and developed in the 1980s and 1990s.
Can encourage crisis-driven or panic-driven policymaking or “moral panics” that can stem
from any number of specific anxieties.
o Youth wearing hoodies, the welfare state, drug use, pandemic, sexual predators
The politization of science raises the uncertainty of certain matters, which can also increase
public anxiety about threats
o Increased anxiety increases support for protective policies, more punitive crime
prevention, and disproportionate demands for protection.
The rise of the protective state can be attributed strongly to the major expansion of the policy state in
the second half of the 20th century. By creating policies and programs, the state can institutionalize
concern about protecting citizens. By extending surveillance, funding research, or collecting statistics,
the policy state can increase concern about some risks and reveal new risks.
With the expansion of the policy state, sate networks formed to control the details of policy outcomes
and the timing and context of policy change.
The growth of the policy state leads policy subsystems to become more open and susceptible
to
policy innovation.
These networks could be open, affecting the production of public policy, protective issues can
enter the policy-making agenda as closed policy networks become more open. More open
networks allow for increased consumer representation, leading to stronger protection of
certain aspects of an industry (the environment for agricultural industries)
Expanding role of science in policymaking also contributed to the development of the protective state.
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, Science has replaced religion in explaining and giving meaning to disasters
In politics, science has the authority that has been woven into the fabric of governing
“medicalization of issues”
o The legitimacy and authority of medical science is used to rationalize problems and
their solutions in medical terms
Science has discovered potential harms and can justify action to prevent them, while on the
other hand, it can also produce these harms in the first place
Another source of the protective state has been a “rights revolution.” This revolution is sometimes
understood to be a particularly American phenomenon. “[t]he expansion of the concept of rights to
apply to an ever more diverse array of issues and problems is the core of the new constitutional order
that animates the new politics of public policy”
Rights claims have led to domestic program expansion in a range of areas of protection from
playground safety to data protection to disability rights.
o Standards that do not take into consideration the costs can be justified by arguing that
a certain right is a basic human right, such as healthy environment
Human rights became a “universal language” after WWII, and globalization deepened
concerns about human rights in the 1980s
o A new wave of international rights activism broadened the agenda for health rights,
women’s rights, economic justice, and indigenous peoples’ rights
Domestic violence was traditionally seen as a private matter, but initiatives toward securitizing the
problem formed a legal basis for civil protection in the mid-1970s, and all US states had these laws by
the 1990s, while similar movements occurred in Europe, such developments are understood to be
“progressive”, as they protect previously unprotected groups, less progressive responses have been
seen from the shift in family and community.
A focus on protecting citizens from specific harms may, in part, reflect a retrenchment of the more
commodious social protections of the classic welfare state.
Risk has replaces need as the dominant logic for allocating social protection
New social risks have been recognized ( differentiation of risks by age and status)
A “stream of policy-related arguments presses for greater regulation of individualized
lifestyles”
Welfare state retrenchment (freer markets have led to more rules) and expanding use of regulatory
instruments (there was the desirability of using regulatory instruments to deal with complex
problems) are related to the extending protections to individual victims and vulnerable groups
Vulnerability, victimhood, and rights can provide justification for state intervention. “An
emphasis on vulnerability and victimhood may elevate personal security to a collective good”
What this discussion suggests is that a focus on rights, a concern with vulnerability and victimhood,
and a fragmentation of social welfare around different life stages and statuses may interact to
encourage specific claims for protection from a wide range of specific ills.
Consumer mobilization is another source of the expanding protective state.
Consumers want legal and institutional protections so they don’t get fucked over
Consumption has been a basis for political mobilization many times in history
Consumer protection emerged as a political response to inflation in the mid-1060s in the UK
and US and expanded in the late 1960 and 1970s
Consumerism interacted with the expansion of rights.
The shifting role of public health has also contributed to the transformation of the protective state.
While expanding its role to include chronic disease and widening its focus to consider social and
political determinants of health, public health’s attitude toward infectious diseases also shifted.
Taken together, these various developments have encouraged the public health sector to engage in a
more expansive protective agenda.
1. In the 19th century, the state’s role in public health expanded
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