Introduction to 2018 special issue of European Security:“ontological (in)security in the European Union”

The European Union (EU) faces many crises and risks to its security and existence. While few of them threaten the lives of EU citizens, they all create a sense of anxiety and insecurity about the future for many ordinary Europeans. Amongst these crises are the more obvious challenges of sovereign debt and fiscal austerity; refugees from conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; and the rise of populist far-right parties across Europe. But behind these challenges lie less visible insecurities about economic prospects, social wellbeing, and a widespread expectation that the EU is unable to answer the challenges of twenty-first century global politics. In other words, the greatest security challenge facing people across Europe is not physical, despite the threats of Putin and ISIS, but is a sense of fear and anxiety over their daily lives

Causation, complexity, and the concert: the pragmatics of causal explanation in international relations

A causal explanation provides information about the causal history of whatever is being explained. However, most causal histories extend back almost infinitely and can be described in almost infinite detail. Causal explanations therefore involve choices about which elements of causal histories to pick out. These choices are pragmatic: they reflect our explanatory interests. When adjudicating between competing causal explanations, we must therefore consider not only questions of epistemic adequacy (whether we have good grounds for identifying certain factors as causes) but also questions of pragmatic adequacy (whether the aspects of the causal history picked out are salient to our explanatory interests). Recognizing that causal explanations differ pragmatically as well as epistemically is crucial for identifying what is at stake in competing explanations of the relative peacefulness of the nineteenth-century Concert system. It is also crucial for understanding how explanations of past events can inform policy prescription

Mershon Faculty 2018-19 Jennifer Mitzen

Home Department: Political Scienc

Ontological security and conflict : the dynamics of crisis and the constitution of community

In an era defined by insecurity, uncertainty, and increasing anxieties, ontological security has proven to be a fruitful lens for analyzing world politics. This Special Issue joins other recent compilations, contributing to the growing research agenda on ontological security and insecurity in world politics. The articles herein conceptualize and apply ontological security at the international, transnational, and state levels, oriented around the broad themes of conflict and community. Behravesh and Greve draw on ontological security to shed critical light on the well-established IR concepts of revisionist states and security communities. Ejdus focuses attention on critical situations and eruptions of ontological insecurity at the collective level. Krolikowski and Solomon home in on the individual, examining how the state and how transnational affective currents play roles in ontological (in)security. Stepping back and reflecting on the range of insights from these diverse contributions, a powerful unifying theme emerges, namely, the sense that the search for ontological security can never be fulfilled but is a constant quest for something that will always, at every level, from the personal to the world political, remain out of reach: the complete, whole Self