The Evolution of International Security Studies

International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, ‘new agenda’ or critical.

Barry Buzan is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Honorary Professor at the Universities of Copenhagen and Jilin. His books include: The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First Century (2004); Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver); The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (1998, with Eric Herring); Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998, with Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde); People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (1991) and An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations (1987).

Lene Hansen is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (2006) and the co-editor of European Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of the Nordic States (2002, with Ole Wæver).