ABSTRACT
It has become a staple of conventional wisdom to note that long-standing security paradigms are no longer adequate for explaining our rapidly changing world. As traditional military threats take a backseat to ‘new’ threats ranging from suicidal terrorism to climate change, conventional conceptions of security are rethought and refashioned. This new thinking is prompting national and international security organizations to reform, retool and recast. This chapter summarizes key findings of crisis management research and explores the
relevance of these findings for the security community. Scholars in this community have traditionally focused on existential threats to the nation-state. With its strong foundation in International Relations theory, the discipline of Security Studies has investigated how stability and peace depends on the levels of mutual confidence among nations. Since the early 1990s, they have begun to study other threat agents and other referent objects of security. The interdisciplinary field of crisis management research concentrates on a society’s efforts to prepare for, and deal with, urgent threats to its core values and lifesustaining systems. It comprises theoretical and empirical findings that help us understand how societies can protect themselves against a wide variety of hazards, be they man-made or natural in origin. The overview of this research area follows three steps: Section 1 briefly reflects on the
concept of ‘crisis’ and presents an overview of the various schools of thought on crisis development and crisis management. Section 2 discusses the various causes of crisis. Section 3 offers a framework for understanding the response to emerging threats. This chapter concludes by considering the complementary nature of crisis management research and Security Studies.
