SECURE Consortium

With partners from Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam, and Radboud University our SECURE programme aims to identify how security practices, governance and experiences can be improved through new, revised relation­ships between citizens, firms, states, and international institutions. Security governance has long been envisioned and con­ceptualised as an institutional structure or architecture, as a set of rules, laws and institutions only. Building and extending on this insight, our programme conceives security governance as a set of relations that make up different types of (successful, or unsuccessful, democratic or less democratic) security arrangements.

Designing such new security arrangements entails more than asking how new threats can be effectively countered, it demands a whole new way of conceptualising existing and future relations between different components, parties, and actors in the domain of generating, providing, receiving, applauding, undergoing and protesting practices of security governance. To this end, our project develops a theory for a new social contract for security, by rethinking social contract ideas and identifying the existential flaws in our security arrangements. SECURE will thus develop new measures and tools for arriving at balanced security arrangements, in which investments in effective protection against threats co-exist with investments in legality, legitimacy and social trust.

In doing so, we respond to a key societal and scientific challenge of the 21st century: How can liberal societies maintain high levels of internal security while preserving deeply embedded values (democracy, freedom, rule of law, respect for minor­ities) and core institutions (constitutional and responsible government, social and political rights, trias politica, independent media, civil society organisations) in an era where both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of current arrangements are at risk.

Foregrounding security relations focuses analytical attention on a number of components, including the plurality of actors involved in security practices and arrangements; the levels of trust between parties to the security contract; the spaces that structure security interventions and responsibilities; and the commodities of security (data, goods, people). To provide sus­tainable, balanced security, these relationships must be brought into balance with arrangements that are as transparent as possible, accountable, effective and legitimate. Guided by this definition, the SOS HUB will (a) map, (b) explain, (c) evaluate, and (d) (re)design both existing and emerging security governance arrangements and relations (between state/citizens, private/ public, domestic/foreign, physical/virtual domain) in a variety of settings.

Six components

There are six components that make up the balanced security arrangements in which investments for the provi­sion of effective threat mitigation are met with equal investments in the upholding of open society values: These components will be investigated and re-designed in their mutual relationships:

  1. The security environment, made up of pre-existing security governance arrangements and relationships, as well as the ongoing and emerging security threats;
  2. Security actors: the ‘contracting parties’ to security arrangements;
  3. The level of trust between these actors, including the prehistory of their relations, and the (informal) ‘rules of the game’ governing their interactions;
  4. Public spaces that are imagined, defended, protected, or opened up by security governance arrangements;
  5. Commodities to be protected, negotiated, utilised and impacted through security governance arrangements;
  6. The impact of security arrangements: their performance in terms of the balance between effectiveness (assessed through the twin lenses of positive and negative security, as well as observable and perceived security) and legitimacy (assessed through levels of trust in and commitment to key parties and features of security relations).

Through feedback loops these impacts are filtered through to the security environment as well as the configuration of actors, the levels of trust, spaces and commodities of the security arrangements themselves.

Delivering on these ambitions requires a broad-based yet seamless interdisciplinary effort: sweeping in its temporal, sectoral and geographic scope; comprehensive in its attendance to citizen-societal, philosophical-legal, technological-industrial, political-stra­tegic and regulatory-governance perspectives on the issue; and guided by a coherent analytical framework and fit-for-purpose suite of methodologies. Moreover, it requires an approach that combines scientific excellence with the will and track record to ensure that both the process and products of the research suitably engage and influence the relevant stakeholder communities.