ABSTRACT
There is a clear, yet largely overlooked, link between conflict processes and securitizing speech acts. More precisely, the link between conflict emergence and securitization indicates a large space for a better conceptual understanding of whether, and how, desecuritization processes and conflict management activities relate to and inform each other. On the one hand, conflict management activities aim to affect parties’ antagonistic perceptions of each other and the issues at stake, and thus minimize the potential of a speech act to perpetuate a security dilemma between the parties. On the other, to desecuritize implies a process of unmaking securitization, opting for an alternative way to regulate security issues. In order to unpack this conceptual link, the present chapter explores how different forms of conflict management may elicit and reinforce desecuritization, largely through information control and incentivizing. At the same time, a nuanced exploration of various desecuritization tools offers new insight on various conflict management activities, in the form of a three-step approach to prevent, mitigate, and reverse conflict escalation using desecuritization as a benchmark. As such, this chapter expounds a comprehensive and hybridized conflict management approach as a means of desecuritizing intractable conflicts.
