ABSTRACT
The emerging ‘world risk society’ (Beck 2008) is making it increasingly difficult for states to cope with transnational risks such as terrorism and organized crime, including maritime piracy. The question is how to deal with the challenges of globalization in terms of political rule beyond the nation state. Not only the notion of security, but also the variety of instruments by which security is provided and the scope of actors has been widened by including ‘new risks’ and threats. Security governance is a policy approach that deals with such a complex design. It is usually defined in terms of several factors, including the collective effort of state and non-state actors; the heterarchical relationship between the actors involved; the use of a variety of instruments, means, and methods; and a common objective based on common norms or preferences (e.g. Krahmann 2003). We start from the idea of using security governance as a critical tool by touching on three basic problems: the assumption that the new forms of security governance yield more effective results; the question of legitimacy challenges; and the assumption of a heterarchical constellation of actors. The case under scrutiny here is the EU’s comprehensive approach toward Somalia.
