‘Events dear boy, events’: terrorism and security from the perspective of politics

Abstract

This article asks what it would mean to consider terrorism and security from the perspective of politics. It argues that security politics – defined as the activity of politicians when connected in some way to security – has been largely excluded from existing scholarly approaches to terrorism and security. In contrast to the assumptions about existential threat and sovereign/executive power characteristic of existing approaches, the article argues that if we consider security in terms of what is at stake for politicians, then it can no longer be considered as separate from ‘normal’ politics. From the perspective of politics, security events are just like other politically salient events.

Keywords:

• terrorism
• security
• politics
• events
• securitisation

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for comments on the article by Philippe Bonditti, Victoria Loughlan, Richard Jackson, my colleagues in the IR Research Group at the University of Edinburgh and the two anonymous reviewers for CST.

Notes

1. Hansard HC vol 505, cols 914–926 (10 February 2010), David Miliband.