Security, Liberty and the Myth of Balance: Towards a Critique of Security Politics
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Security, Liberty and the Myth of Balance: Towards a Critique of Security Politics Mark Neocleous Politics and History Section, Brunel Business School, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
This article aims to challenge the idea of a ‘balance’ between security and liberty. Set against the background of ever greater demands for security, the article argues that the idea of balance is an essentially liberal myth, a myth that in turn masks the fact that liberalism’s key category is not liberty, but security. This fact, it is suggested, undermines any possibility of liberalism challenging current demands for greater security, as witnessed by the thoroughly authoritarian ‘concessions’ to security by some contemporary liberals. More ambitiously, the article also suggests that attempts to develop a ‘radical’ politics of security are misplaced, and that what is needed is more a political critique of the concept. Contemporary Political Theory (2007) 6, 131–149. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300301 Keywords: security; security studies; prerogative; liberalism; Locke; Foucault
Introduction There’s a question widely used by political theorists trying to get their students into political theory, and it usually goes like this: ‘Liberty and Equality: Must they Conflict?’. If you put it to students now, they might think there’s something just a little odd about this question. Surely, if there is any question to be asked, it is whether liberty and security must conflict. Shifting the question this way would be a reasonable reflection of the extent to which security has come to the fore in social, political and criminological discourse. One can now go for weeks or months without encountering the question of ‘liberty vs equality’; one can hardly say the same about ‘liberty vs security’. Likewise, one can go for days without reading in the newspapers about issues pertaining to equality, but one can barely turn a page (or a corner, for that matter) without coming up against the question of security. So if these are bad days for equality, then they are also bad days for liberty. For any claim to liberty in the contemporary world quickly runs up against the (counter-) demand for security. Much of the discussion concerning the theory and practices surrounding security centres on the relationship between these and their consequences for liberty. Either explicitly or implicitly, the assumption is that we must accept that we have to forego a certain amount
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of liberty in our desire for security. The general claim is that in seeking security, states need to constantly limit the liberties of citizens, and that the democratic society is one which has always aimed to strike the right ‘balance’ between liberty and security. This question has received a new lease of life following the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the subsequent ‘war on terror’. Contemporary newspapers and periodicals are saturated with articles on the ‘balance’ between liberty and sec
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