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ABSTRACT
The literature on securitisation provides surprisingly little clarification on the meaning of legitimacy and how it operates in the securitisation process. Scholars repeatedly employ the term, but seldom define it in the context of securitisation. This study seeks to contribute to critical security studies by developing a conceptual analysis of the meaning of legitimacy in the securitisation process and to explore what happens when legitimacy itself becomes the referent object of securitisation. Legitimacy is not exogenous to the securitisation process. Does that mean that the securitisation of legitimacy is always, by default, successful or can we find cases in which the securitisation of legitimacy though successful, results in the opposite effect of delegitimisation. This study suggests that the securitisation of legitimacy may result in the loss of legitimacy caused by a securitisation dilemma. The securitisation dilemma refers to actions taken by an actor to securitise a referent object, but result in an increased threat to that referent object. To illustrate this perverse outcome, I examine the Israeli response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Results indicate that while the BDS movement itself has not demonstrated effectiveness in delegitimising the Israeli state, the state’s actions in response to the movement, may have.
Acknowledgment
An Earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Political Science Association in San Francisco in 2017. The author would like to thank Shelley Deane, Grace Huang and Angela Kachuyevski, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this journal, for their critiques and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. This determination was later repealed in resolution 46/86 in 1991 after Israel made this a pre-condition to its participation in the Madrid Conference, which was initiated by the first Bush administration to begin an Arab-Israeli peace process after the end of the first Gulf War.
2. For more on the anti-Israeli bias of the UN Human Rights Council see Rosa Freedman (Citation2013).
3. Croft developed a ‘Post-Copenhagen theory’ in which he expands the social actors in the securitisation process to include not only political actors but cultural–social ones as well (Croft Citation2012, 82–83).
4. When securitisation was first introduced by Waever (Citation1995) the speech act itself was conceptualised as securitisation. The focus on ‘speech acts’ alone has been criticised and it is now conventionally accepted that other forms of warning can take place such as images, riots, performance and cartoons. See for example Williams (Citation2003), Wilkinson (Citation2007) and Hansen (Citation2011).
5. As was the case with NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, an episode which in retrospect was determined as ‘illegal but legitimate’.
6. Institutional legitimacy sees legitimacy as ‘a set of constitutive beliefs. …. Cultural definitions determine how the organisation is built, how it is run, and, simultaneously, how it is understood and evaluated’ (Suchman Citation1995, 576).
7. A code of conduct developed by Reverend Leon Sullivan in 1977 to practice corporate social responsibility by applying economic pressure on South Africa as a means to end Apartheid. Available at: http://www.marshall.edu/revleonsullivan/indexf.htm (accessed 16 June 2016).
8. Refers to the Israeli Separation Barrier.
9. For more on the BDS movement, its strategic logic and objectives see Erakat (Citation2010), Barghouti (Citation2011), Ananth (Citation2013) and Munayyer (Citation2016).
10. See for example Julius (Citation2010), Klaff (Citation2010), Fishman (Citation2012), Curtis (Citation2012), Brackman (Citation2013), Dershowitz (Citation2014) and Sheskin and Felson (Citation2016). Even Hillel Schenker, the co-editor of the left-leaning Palestine–Israel Journal noted that the movement has an ambiguous attitude towards Israel’s right to exist, thereby fueling the fear of even left-leaning Israelis who would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause (Schenker Citation2012, 81).
11. Dennis Ross was the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and led the US efforts in the 2000 Camp David peace process.
12. Pew Center defines Millennials as born after 1980 and therefore have come of age in the new millennial. Available at: http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/millennials/ .
13. Ironically members of the organisation are entitled to immigrate to Israel by virtue of their Jewish identity under Israel’s Law of Return, which grants automatic Israeli citizenship to all Jews.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ronnie Olesker
Ronnie Olesker is an associate professor in the government department at St. Lawrence University specializing in the field of international relations and Middle East Politics. Her research focuses on securitisation studies and majority–minority relations in ethnically divided states.