ABSTRACT
The first research theme covered by WP 8 of the CHALLENGE project concerned the central, constitutive role played by war and security in current national and international politics. Attention thus focused on the transformations of the forms of war in contemporary politics, the different subjects involved in these processes, as well as the discursive, political and social forms of legitimization (see Conflitti globali nos. 1, 3 and 6). The basic theoretical assumption was to consider contemporary global politics as being shaped by a continuum between war and security politics, which has progressively abolished any distinction between internal/national and external/international politics. Therefore, the research addressed the impact of this pervasive and displaced scenario, both at a national and international level, questioning the (dis)order that it has continuously produced, its provisional balances, and the uncertain sovereignty that has characterized it in the aftermath of 11 September.
