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A Normatively Attractive but Analytically Weak Concept

premised upon military defence of territorial integrity – are a necessary but not sufficient condition of human welfare. Citizens of states that are ‘secure’ according to the traditional concept of security can be perilously insecure in terms of their daily existence. Human security thus reorients security thinking and policy around the individual as the referent object. This is normatively attractive, but analytically weak. Through a broad human security lens, anything that presents a critical threat to life and livelihood is a security threat, whatever the source. A rigorous analytical application of human security, even broadly defined, is not impossible. If the individual is the dependent variable, then it is possible to identify and codify every physiological security threat. But this would be of little use, as it would generate an unmanageable array of variables. At the same time, arbitrarily drawing lines to include and exclude certain types of threats is problematic. The academic treatment of human security has foundered upon this fundamental conceptual point. Nevertheless, human security has stimulated new – mainly normative – lines of inquiry in the security discourse, and these should be pursued more rigorously. First, human security raises questions regarding the relationship between the individual and the state, and regarding state sovereignty. Traditionally, state sovereignty and sovereign legitimacy rest upon a government’s control of territory, state independence and recognition by other states. The role of citizens is to support this system. The human security approach reverses this equation: the state – and state sovereignty – must serve and support the people from which it draws its legitimacy. Related to this, human security holds normative implications for the evolution of state sovereignty at the international level. The concept of ‘conditional sovereignty’ has taken on a renewed importance through human security: the international legitimacy of state sovereignty rests not only on control of territory, but also upon fulfilling certain standards of human rights and welfare for citizens. As a corollary, the sovereignty of states that are unwilling or unable to fulfil certain basic standards may be jeopardized. The use of military force for human protection purposes is the starkest example of this concept. Second, the human security debate raises interesting questions for the structure– agency binary as it relates to the security discourse. Human security has at its core the individual as object. Some advocates of human security also identify the individual as the key vehicle for attaining security through empowerment. Yet, much human insecurity surely results from structural factors and the distribution of power, which are essentially beyond the reach of individuals. Exploring the rela358 Security Dialogue vol. 35, no. 3, September 2004