Welcome to the UPF Digital Repository

Weapons prohibitions through immanent critique: NGOs as emancipatory and (de)securitising actors in security governance

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.author Petrova, Margarita
dc.date.accessioned 2021-03-08T10:25:28Z
dc.date.available 2021-03-08T10:25:28Z
dc.date.issued 2018
dc.identifier.citation Petrova M. Weapons prohibitions through immanent critique: NGOs as emancipatory and (de)securitising actors in security governance. Review of International Studies. 2018 Oct;44(4):619-53. DOI: 10.1017/S026021051800013X
dc.identifier.issn 0260-2105
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/46692
dc.description.abstract The article examines the roles of NGOs in banning cluster munitions that resulted in the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions and the campaign against landmines in the 1990s. It argues that NGOs have managed to move questions about the use of force from the closed decision-making sphere of military commanders and arms control diplomats into open public debate. Thus NGOs have simultaneously desecuritised the use of force by states, securitised certain weapons technologies, and made human beings the referent object of security. This has marked a shift from state security and strategic disarmament to human security and humanitarian disarmament, without fundamentally challenging the laws of war. However, in contrast to realist views that only militarily useless weapons ever get banned and radical critical perspectives that see new legal regimes as legitimating war and US hegemony, I argue that NGOs have engaged in immanent critique of military arguments and practices based on prevailing principles of international humanitarian law. The resulting weapon ban treaties have both restrained US policy and undermined its legitimacy. The article explores the discursive choices that underpinned the remaking of the security agenda by NGOs and their role as de/securitising actors and emancipatory agents of change.
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language.iso eng
dc.publisher Cambridge University Press
dc.relation.ispartof Review of International Studies. 2018 Oct;44(4):619-53
dc.rights © Cambridge University Press. The published version of the article: Petrova M. Weapons prohibitions through immanent critique: NGOs as emancipatory and (de)securitising actors in security governance. Review of International Studies. 2018 Oct;44(4):619-53. DOI: 10.1017/S026021051800013X is available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies
dc.title Weapons prohibitions through immanent critique: NGOs as emancipatory and (de)securitising actors in security governance
dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S026021051800013X
dc.subject.keyword Weapons prohibitions
dc.subject.keyword NGOs
dc.subject.keyword Immanent critique
dc.subject.keyword Emancipation
dc.subject.keyword Securitisation and desecuritisation
dc.subject.keyword Critical security studies
dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search DSpace


Advanced Search

Browse

My Account

Statistics

In collaboration with Compliant to Partaking