ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, security governance has risen to prominence in debates about increasing internationalisation, informalisation and privatisation in the diversified field of security provision. It has been cast as a scholarly concept highlighting new actors, arrangements and instruments and as a political practice providing the basis for a more effective and legitimate provision of security (Bevir and Hall 2013). Security governance has broadened our perspective and questioned simplifying narratives about the Westphalian nation-state and its search for top-down military security. So far, however, the literature has tended to employ security governance in a descriptive and technical manner, which reflected and reproduced a benign view of the respective cooperative process and its problem-solving capacities. This approach leaves aside important questions regarding its claims about consensual, inclusive, hierarchy-free and voluntary coordination as well as built-in effectiveness and legitimacy. After a decade of research, it is time to take these challenges more seriously and move beyond a functional understanding of security governance.
