‘We are at war’: securitisation, legitimation and COVID-19 pandemic politics in France

ABSTRACT

This article makes a case for studying the legitimation of emergency politics from the vantage point of securitisation. To that end, it zooms in on politics during the COVID-19 pandemic – a many-sided crisis that generated a heightened insecurity environment. Based on a qualitative content analysis of the French official rhetoric on two COVID-19 emergency measures, it foregrounds how securitising speech acts construing a macro threat and notable shifts in hierarchical ordering of securitisations underpinned justifications for COVID-19 pandemic politics. Conceptually, this research bridges the literature on legitimation and securitisation by synthesising scattered securitising elements in typologies of legitimation and outlining the legitimating function of two securitisation dynamics – macrosecuritisation and securitising dilemma.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• emergency politics
• legitimation
• securitisation
• macrosecuritisation
• securitising dilemma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For discussions on the difference between the internalist, poststructuralist understanding of securitisation as a self-referential practice (security as a speech act) and the externalist, more constructivist account of securitisation as an intersubjective process (security as negotiated between a speaker and an audience), see Balzacq (2005), Stritzel (2007), McDonald (2008, pp. 572–573), Vuori (2008, pp. 73–76) and Hansen (2011, pp. 359–360).

2 On the enactment of the two emergency measures, both official rhetoric and competing frames reference to the importance of different valuations (i.e., referent objects) such as public health, the economy and democratic rights. The difference lies in the relative weight assigned to them.

3 The focus here is on securitising speech acts, which constituted only part of the justifications. Other discursive strategies such as referencing to scientific expertise, cost-benefit rationalisation and positive self-presentation versus negative other-presentation were present as well.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hai Yang

Dr. Hai Yang is currently assistant professor at the School of International Relations, Sun Yat-sen University. His research focuses on the role of language in political practices, with a focus on the issues relating to legitimacy and legitimation. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in International Studies Review, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Global Governance, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, and The Pacific Review.