Critically examine the neorealist and postmodernist approaches to human security.

 There are two main contemporary theories of international relations in which the concepts of human security could be placed.  At one end of the continuum is and approach, based on a neo-realist theoretical framework, which maintains a continued emphasis on the primacy of the state within a broadened conceptualization of (human) security. Some call this approach the ‘new security thinking’. At the other end of the security discourse is the postmodernist or ‘critical human security’ approach that is rooted within the pluralist theory of international politics.

This approach is based on a set of assumptions that essentially attempt to dislodge the state as the primary referent of security, while placing greater emphasis on the interdependency and transnationalization of non-state actors Barry Buzan has advocated the neo-realist or ‘structuralist’ approach to human security in his seminal work ‘People, States and Fear’. Buzan argued that the ‘straitjacket’ militaristic approach to security that dominated the discourse during the Cold War was ‘simple-minded’ and led to the underdevelopment of the concept. 

He subsequently broadened it to include political, economic, social and environmental threats; in addition to those that are militaristic. Although Buzan examines security from the three perspectives of the international system, the state, and the individual, he concludes that the most important and effective provider of security should remain the sovereign state. The ‘critical’ or postmodernist approach to human security, reflected in the work of Ken Booth, also advocates a broadened conceptualisation of security that goes beyond a military determination of threats.

But he and other advocates of the postmodernist approach stress quite explicitly that the state must be dislodged as the primary referent of (human) security, and encompass instead a wide range of non-state actors, such as individuals, ethnic and cultural groups, regional economic blocs, multinational corporations (MNCs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and just about all humankind.  In expanding the concept of security horizontally and vertically, Booth argues that human security is ultimately more important than state security. To put differently, the postmodernist conceptualisation of security does not equate state security with human security.

In Booth’s view, states and implicitly governments must no longer be the primary referents of security because governments which are supposed to be “the guardians of ‘their peoples’ security”, have instead become the primary source of insecurity for the many people who live under their sovereignty, rather than the armed forces of a neighbouring country, this approach challenges the very idea of a state as an effective and adequate provider of security to its people.

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