ABSTRACT
The securitisation model of the Copenhagen School (CS) has become one of the most influential tools for the study of security, broadly conceived as military security, environmental security, economic security, societal security, and political-security. The CS allows and encourages the comparative historical and empirical investigation of securitisation and de-securitisation practices across political systems. According to the CS, securitisation occurs ‘when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object (traditionally, but not necessarily, the state, incorporating government, territory, and society)’ (Buzan et al. 1998: 21). As this definition emphasises, the Copenhagen School’s focus is directed at domestic security discourses within the institutional context of national political orders. With reference to Southeast Asia and the ASEAN Regional Forum, this chapter is interested in two questions: first, do securitisation practices differ in liberal and authoritarian polities? Second, how do the specific dynamics of changing domestic security discourses impact on regional securitisation moves? To address these questions, this chapter discusses the domestic security discourses and securitisation practices in Indonesia and the Philippines. It asks as to whether and to what extent securitisation in the context of national policy making of these two countries has impacted on regional responses to security challenges. In other words, have Indonesian and Philippine security practices in matters of intra-state affairs affected the identification and inter-governmental management of security in either ASEAN or the ARF? Indonesia and the Philippines have been chosen as case studies for three reasons. First, both states have undergone substantial processes of political transition from authoritarian to democratic rule.1 Second, these two countries have had a tradition of military interference in politics, and the post-authoritarian regimes in Manila and Jakarta have consequently introduced far-reaching security sector reforms aimed at curbing the political power of the generals (and, related, at reducing the military’s quasi
monopoly on performing securitisation speech acts). Third, over time Indonesia and the Philippines have been ASEAN’s most proactive members as regards envisioning and shaping the regional cooperation agenda.2 A discussion of these two cases allows us to draw conclusions about the differences between securitisation practices in autocratic and democratic political systems. Also, to the extent that political liberalisation has resulted in broader and more open security discourses within the two states, the chapter can also provide some preliminary answers to the question of whether new approaches to non-traditional security issues in Indonesia and the Philippines have influenced ASEAN’s and ARF’s securitisation moves and the management of regional security. This chapter makes three arguments. First, democratisation in the Philippines and Indonesia has resulted in a diminishing capacity of the armed forces to monopolise security ‘speech acts’ both in the national and regional context of policy making. Second, the liberalisation of political space in the Indonesian and Philippine polities and the related securitisation of a range of national political issues has also resulted in an increasingly active role for both countries in the identification and management of security challenges in ASEAN. This is particularly true with regard to the ASEAN Charter and key agreements on anti-terrorism, defence cooperation, environmental security, and societal security, including human trafficking and labour migration. Third, the link between domestic security discourses in Indonesia and the Philippines and their respective interests and roles in the ARF is less clear than in the case of ASEAN.
