RESEARCHING THE SECURITY-DEVELOPMENT NEXUS THROUGH A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Ramses Amer, Ashok Swain and Joakim Öjendal

Introduction

Following a global flurry of 'new wars' and 'new conflicts' in the post–Cold War era (Kaldor 2007; Keen 2008), a lot of rethinking has been done (and certainly will be done) on the causes of violent conflict in the global system. After a decade dominated by, inter alia, '9/11', the unstable and violent African development context and the relatively sustainable peace (and very successful development) in East Asia, reflections on the relations between development and security (and vice versa) became unavoidable. In policy documents (e.g., UN 2004; OECD 2007; DFID 2005; European Council 2003, 2008; UNDP 2005), as well as in academic circles (Buur, Jensen and Stepputat 2007; Chandler 2007, 2008; Duffield 2001, 2007; Paris and Sisk 2007), the 'development-security nexus' was coined as a concept and emerged as a hotly contested topic. Unsurprisingly, the policy world was jumping to 'new solutions', with reductionist conclusions, whereas research remained more sceptical. For instance, irrespective of whether we listen to the 'new' United States foreign policy articulated by Colin Powell or by General Petraeus, to the secretary-general of the United Nations and to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty on 'Responsibility to Protect' (UN 2009; ICISS 2001), or the European Union's 'European Security Strategy' (European Council 2008), the attention is increasingly on how conflicts of various sorts can be prevented through greater focus on 'development'. The nexus became a commodity over which intellectual ownership was as unclear as important. Voices critical of the good intentions (Duffield 2010) as well as the clarity of the concept (Stern and Öjendal 2010) emerged, and the idea is struggling with credibility. In this light, in this edited book we offer an intellectual contribution in order to further the debate through both conceptual, theoretical and case study analyses from a multi-disciplinary approach.

Although the nexus between security and development has come onto the policy agenda explicitly after 9/11, the idea has been influencing international development policy for some time. Even the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine were products of this. In the post–Cold War period, the definition of security has been redefined to include people's security. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report argued for human security as 'freedom from fear' and 'freedom from want' (UNDP 1994). The recent political priority of emphasizing the nexus has led to the securitization of development policy, and rich countries allocate large portion of their aid to countries and regions perceived as a risk to their security interests. In the post-9/11 period, the US aid policy has been open and obvious in this regard, but the EU donors have also increasingly joined the trend to allocate most of their aid strategically. There is no doubt that this securitization trend of the aid policy has further reduced the already limited resources available for the development to the poor countries. However, the predicament is much more complex than this.

As development and security are relational concepts, many question whose security and whose development this nexus is concerned with. Short-term security considerations of rich and powerful countries increasingly override the long-term developmental challenges of poor regions. This approach also poses challenges for long-term engagements necessary for sustainable peace. There are also huge coordination gaps between different agencies and their policies in connecting development and security. There is a certain move towards policy standardization, but as Chandler (2006) and Paris (2004) argue, that coordination is in most cases limited to rhetoric only. Besides the lack of coordination among relevant agencies, the policies driven by the nexus approach also suffers from a huge disparity between policy and implementation, an absence of real local involvement, and a scarcity of resources. Moreover, the security-development nexus has led, to a certain extent, to a conceptual chaos.

The rationale behind this edited book is to use a multi-disciplinary perspective to address the discussion of different positions on what the security-development nexus necessitates. In the context of the book, several academic disciplines are brought together – peace and conflict, peace and development, international relations, international law and political economy. All contributors have their academic background in one or more of these disciplines. The majority of the contributors come from peace studies and its two main sub-fields, peace and conflict and peace and development.

The main theme of this edited book draws from the 2009 Conference of the Swedish Network of Peace, Conflict and Development Research (PCDRNET) on the topic 'Development and Security Nexus' held in Stockholm, Sweden on 6–7 November 2009. The contributions to the book are revised and updated versions of the keynote address and selected papers presented at the conference. In addition, one chapter has been commissioned and this introductory chapter has been added.

A Multi-disciplinary Approach

As noted above, the security-development nexus can be researched through a number of academic disciplines, and in this book the various contributors address the nexus from several relevant academic disciplines. The majority of the contributors come from peace studies.

Being a relatively young academic discipline, peace studies draws on other more established disciplines including international relations, international law and political economy in the context of global, regional, and other forms of interstate disputes and conflicts, as well as from...