ABSTRACT
Many scholars and policymakers have turned to the concept of security governance in order to better understand international politics. The concept describes new modes of security policy that differ from traditional approaches to national and international security. While traditional security policy used to be the exclusive domain of states and aimed at military defense, security governance is performed by multiple actors and is intended to create a global environment of security for states, social groups, and individuals. By pooling the strength and expertise of states, international organizations, and private actors, security governance is seen to provide more effective and efficient means to cope with today’s security risks. It is far from certain, however, whether security governance will be able to keep that promise. The integration of various actor-types in decision-making and policy implementation creates new cooperation problems that can reduce efficiency. New procedures and practices often lack legitimacy, hampering policy effectiveness. The transformation of old institutions and the evolution of new ones create complicated governance networks that render the formulation and implementation of long-term strategies elusive. Effects and effectiveness have become contingent to so many factors that it becomes increasingly difficult to attribute both success and failure to specific policy measures. In fact, wellintended policies are often haunted by unintended consequences. That unintended consequences are a perennial problem of social action, has long been recognized (Merton 1936). Indeed, we can never do one thing only. While unintended consequences do not need to be negative, often they are. The CIA term “blowback,” for example, refers to the phenomenon that a long nurtured group may turn against its sponsor. The rise of al Qaeda, which had benefited from US policies, is only one example. While there are many studies of myopic foreign policies, there are few empirical works on the unintended consequences of security governance. Moreover, no attempt has been made yet to conceptualize and theorize unintended consequences. Exploring unintended consequences of security governance thus fills an important research gap. Furthermore, it can also help make security governance more effective by raising
awareness about unwanted and even paradoxical policy outcomes and by suggesting ways of avoiding damage or limiting their scale. This chapter sets the scene for the book’s case studies. The first part distinguishes between security governance by government, without government and with government. The second part shows that scholars have neglected unintended consequences of security governance and international politics more generally. The third part distinguishes between different types of unintended consequences. Subsequently, we discuss ways of analyzing unintended consequences. The fifth part of this introductory chapter provides an overview of the book.
