Is there an English School discourse of security?
This paper identifies an evolving discourse of security in English School approaches to International Relations. It begins by arguing that contributors to this discourse share three common ideas: (1) security is a normative value not an instrumental object (2) Security is socially constructed and therefore does not rest on fixed foundations. (3) The invocation and resonance of security discourses takes place within a political community, but the community is not necessarily limited to the state. This discourse was initially shaped by the pluralist account of security put forward by Hedley Bull, Martin Wight, Herbert Butterfield and Michael Howard (and was later reiterated by Robert Jackson). The pluralist conception of security rested on the communitarian assumption that states permitted diverse moral communities to pursue their own moral paths and that therefore rules, norms and institutions had to be constructed to secure states. This pluralist consensus was shattered by RJ Vincent’s
